A-BA-TTOIR

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The National holiday was approaching, and it was adjacent to the mid-autumn festival (for which I had already made mooncakes). This meant an eight-day holiday! Well, eight days in government speak, but in our more pragmatic way of thinking four days more off work than a normal week. Think of a weekend as a two-day holiday. (Double plus good?) The holiday was basically the first week of October, but to compensate, the last Saturday of September was a working day. Back in the office, however, it felt like the end of term at school, and being a Saturday, I was sure this would no ordinary highly productive start to the weekend. Lead protagonists of the tribe were organising a trip.

If your classmates told you that the end of term disco was cancelled and instead they were going to take you to an abattoir, would you be worried? Well, not wishing to offend them, I agreed to come along. We left work early, and after a small incident involving a pear, a van, a hungry Chinese girl, and a big fall onto the tarmac, we took the metro under the red light district I was calling home to Honkou district.

I was rather hesitant as we exited the station and meandered through the streets towards Suzhou Creek. The area is one of inner city degradation, with residents waiting to be rehoused or compensated by the government who would ultimately redevelop this central plot of land. The streets were bustling and despite warnings from the tribe to take care of my camera and bag, as with most places in the city, it felt completely safe. I was however surprised to see a women butchering ducks on a street corner. To her left a plump of live ducks (you'd be surprised how many collective nouns there are for ducks) looking on and to her right a sack full of slaughtered, disemboweled and plucked carcasses. If this was just the street corner, I could not imagine what was happening in the abattoir itself.

My fears were quickly allayed upon arrival. The 1933 Abattoir does not look like an abattoir, it looks like an art deco municipal building. Which it used to be. Now it is an art deco commercial building. It has recently been refurbished as a centre for art and design, in fact a shopping and dining centre (so it blends in with the rest of China). In fact it was quite at odds with the streets through which we'd just approached: containing some quite high-end design shops. A relief and a surprise.

But what is remarkable about the shopping centre, and even more remarkable about the abattoir which it once was, is its architecture. Arguably it's one of the most interesting buildings of 上海. The four-storey concrete structure was built in (you guessed it) 1933 to a design of the times. It comprises a central atrium linked to an outer building by "sky bridges" over which the animals passed; and contains many ramps for moving animals; and spiral staircases for moving workers. All these features are intertwined in something reminiscent of an Escher drawing. Why was such an unusual design given to an abattoir? I don't know. But apparently it was designed by British architects for the 上海 Municipal Council of the time. It has had many uses since it's slaughterhouse days, but it's hard to imagine it in being used for something totally practical. Offices, a museum, shops or restaurants: yes. Cold storage, a medicine factory, or an abattoir: no. an intriguing place to visit and to photograph. Sadly, it was getting dark, so I did not get many shots. I planned to return, but never made time.

For completeness, the rest of the end of term event was also incredibly fun: Sichuan food, followed by cocktails at a vey chic bar, a visit to a night street market, rounded off with a barbecue dinner on the street. It was a bizarre combination of events, but the abattoir itself was the most surprising. The accompanying photos, shot as the light was failing, only give some idea of the design.

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