By Haoran Xia
April 9, 2023
Shanghai is no different from the sorceress’ island in Greek mythology: a perfectly decent person arrives, and before long turns into a beast.
—Qian Zhongshu, Fortress Besieged
Without realizing it, this has already become my second year in Shanghai. The more prosperous a city is, the fainter the traces time leaves behind. Two years, in another context, could once be dismantled by life into a series of vivid, heterogeneous fragments—so rich that one would need to scroll through photos or social media archives to recall them.
These fragments exist independently, each endowed with sufficient vitality of its own. But when time is placed inside a city like Shanghai, it is dismantled instead through multiple, interconnected mechanisms, producing forms of expression that are more conspicuous and more dazzling. These forms flatten the depth time ought to carve into a life, misleading the public into believing that time has been used in the most efficient or valuable way. Yet behind this dazzle and these shallow traces lies the city’s most nauseating essence: a cage.
Shanghai is refined and alluring, fashionable and avant-garde, enveloped by diverse cultural lifestyles and firmly labeled as “international.” It is at once charming, lovable, and visually seductive—and yet, in truth, dangerous: a Medusa wrapped in glamorous traps. In recent years, the directional shift within China has been unmistakable. The younger generation proclaims loudly: “Beijing is out. Shanghai is the city.” The center of gravity moves southward. Young people, along with newly returned graduates stepping tentatively into professional life, arrive in Shanghai with anticipation. Of course, high-quality employment opportunities are a primary consideration, but perhaps the city’s temperament and cultural atmosphere form the true core of this migration. For the younger generation—those raised, in other words, steeped in a “capitalist” environment—material conditions have never been their supreme concern. What matters is the texture of life itself. And Shanghai, therefore, appears as the optimal choice.
Shanghai’s temperament is pleasing, and its appeal stems from its diverse and abundant cultural life. Yet cultural life, as part of the superstructure, is rooted in a stable and solid economic base. Tracing this back to its source, Shanghai’s distinct personality arise from its continuously escalating economic momentum. But this same economic momentum has not endowed Shanghai with greater complexity of character; instead, it has driven its cultural life deep into the bottomless vortex of consumerism.
This vortex of consumerism is omnipresent—ranging from the miniature advertisements pasted onto food delivery scooters to the suffocating luxury billboards towering over Plaza 66. Consumerism, of course, is not unique to Shanghai. New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo are likewise engulfed by (post-)consumerism. Yet Shanghai’s consumerist trap differs in one crucial respect: it is young—so young that it breeds arrogance. Seen from another angle, Shanghai’s formerly singular and outdated cultural life was so deeply seduced by this bold, youthful consumerism that it granted it absolute freedom, allowing it to perform wherever it went, turning every site into its theater.
In New York and London, consumerism has been entrenched for centuries. A public long anesthetized within its vortex has gradually awakened, beginning to see that the cultural life constructed by consumerism—though diverse in appearance—is in essence singular; though dazzling, fundamentally hollow. As a result, their cultural life has retreated toward the classical forms of the last century: theater, exhibitions, concerts—cultural activities that leave an echo in the mind after one departs.
Returning to Shanghai, its cultural life is undeniably abundant: immersive murder-mystery games, stand-up comedy, flea markets, independent magazine fairs, and so on. These activities appear lively, playful, and infused with cultural elements. Yet when examined through the lens of cultural value, they offer neither genuine cultural reflection nor substantive meaning. Instead, they operate as a kind of cultural illusion—
Take stand-up comedy as an example. Internet phenomena staged on theater platforms, or sarcastic jokes rewritten from performers’ personal experiences, form an equivalent exchange with the fatigue and monotony of everyday life. Ten minutes after the show ends, as audiences leave the theater, the jokes dissolve into oblivion. What remains is merely the pleasure generated by surround-sound laughter. But this neurological pleasure can be obtained just as easily in bars, gyms, or karaoke rooms. Such pleasure is therefore redundant, useless—residue produced by consumerism.
—And this is where consumerism extends its dominion in Shanghai. The alliance between cultural illusion and consumerism represents the mildest—and safest—form of domination. Like stand-up comedy, these cultural illusions present flat, dazzling, novel, yet utterly hollow sensory pleasures. The more stimulation the senses receive, the more inseparable sensation and behavior become. Gradually, the senses compulsively seek the behaviors that once produced similar pleasure, until they are fully numbed, immobilized. At that point, consumerism achieves total victory.
Tragically, Shanghai has in recent years become a star city within China and even globally—yet its star cultural remains rooted in such illusions. Admittedly, Shanghai does host classical cultural experiences: theater, concerts, museum exhibitions. But the critical difference lies in their origins. These experiences are overwhelmingly imported from Western societies rather than emerging from cultural forms deeply embedded in Chinese traditions. When these Western phenomena are transplanted into Chinese soil, invisible filters produce unsettling chemical reactions along the way, resulting in uneven quality and deepening confusion. Another layer of shackles is added to an already bewildering cultural landscape.
This is not a wholesale negation of Shanghai’s cultural life, but a general diagnosis. In the 1960s, Susan Sontag proposed the notion of a “new sensibility,” aimed at retraining sensory and perceptual faculties lost in the age of mass media. Decades later, this new sensibility is perhaps one of the most urgently needed skills for Shanghai’s contemporary public.
Today, dominant cultural illusions have erected an unbreakable wall within urban life, tightly enclosing young people trapped in nine-to-five routines. Subconsciously, they come to accept that outside of work, cultural illusion is their only refuge. In this collusion, cultural illusion and capitalism together refashion Shanghai into a beautiful cage.
The cage phenomenon exists in nearly all global cities. New York’s solution was Central Park—a vast green space euphemistically called “the city’s lungs.” Seen from another angle, it is scarcely different from the exercise yard where prisoners are briefly allowed outside. London, by contrast, leverages its rivers and hills, constructing nature-based activities along the Thames and hiking routes across surrounding elevations. Compared with New York, London’s cage contains more natural elements.
Returning once more to Shanghai: its only true spaces for release may be the narrow riverside green belts and distant suburban forest parks. Yet massive population density and transportation render them inaccessible. Cultural illusion thus becomes the most convenient and efficient means of relaxation. Over time, people legitimize these illusions, institutionalizing them as standard leisure activities, spending their free hours—from dawn to dusk—inside the cage constructed by illusion.
What is truly disturbing is not the cage itself, but the closed-loop phenomenon it produces: individuals internalize their identity as prisoners. They subconsciously transmit the pleasures and satisfactions of cage life to one another. This pleasure is collective, reciprocal, and socially contagious. Once circulated, it crystallizes into ideology. In simpler terms, a social rule emerges: “I’m tired from work today, so I need to play a murder-mystery game with friends.” Other cultural possibilities are excluded, because a numbed sensory system no longer encourages deviation. Life inside the cage becomes the optimal solution.
The cage damages not only consciousness but vitality itself. Capitalism’s assembly-line logic already inflicts profound harm on life-force. Sensory pleasure produced by cultural illusion diverges even further from vitality. Such pleasure seeks stimulation, repetition, and familiarity. Vitality, by contrast, requires exploration rather than stimulation, freedom rather than cycles. Human vitality remains alive only when free to explore beyond the ordinary. Yet within the cage, under the dual shackles of capital and illusion, vitality is effectively sentenced to death.
The ideal tool for dismantling this cage—this social prescription—is nature. Nature is boundless, pure, agile, and alive. It mobilizes all sensory systems, confronting them with unpredictability. In this process, the numbed sensory apparatus awakens. Established patterns between sensation and behavior are disrupted. Nature’s unknown challenges everything the senses believe they know. The consciousness produced by cage life encounters a formidable opponent. Victory remains uncertain, but the vigilance and estrangement produced by this confrontation linger, generating an unfamiliar warmth within dulled perception.
If sensory numbness represents consumerism’s total victory, then the internalization of prisoner identity represents a deeper invasion at the ideological level. This collective identification spreads through social networks, and among its most representative—and most culpable—agents: influencers.
Influencers, or those aspiring to become them, rarely act with malicious intent. Historically, early bloggers in the 2000s shared life and leisure online in pursuit of connection and recognition. As Alfred Adler observed, humanity’s primal desire is to connect with others and gain social approval. This desire shaped blogging behavior then—and persists today.
But the profession of “influencer” has undergone seismic change, most notably through capital’s endorsement. Influencers now swarm the internet, hungrily monitoring markets and target demographics. Their supposed “output” largely consists of two things: accumulated experience, or imitation and repetition. Under capital’s shortcuts, most choose the latter.
Imitation splits into two forms. First, influencers often imitate Western or Japanese models. The results vary wildly in quality, forcing audiences to sift endlessly for suitable exemplars. Standards dissolve, and judgment shifts entirely to the public. Worse, such imitation fragments authoritative or professional narratives, masquerading as diversity while eroding aesthetic standards and learning processes.
The second form—repetition—emerges from imitation. Repetition stems from depleted reserves and diminished learning capacity. Unable to generate new ideas or images, and lacking lived experience, influencers settle for repetition. For them, repetition marks the end.
Whether fashion, beauty, music, or food influencers, each grinds down fragments of their own lives into virtual content, falsely equating this with cultural life. What they truly promote is a pulverized self—driven by market forces and by a desperate hunger for recognition and certainty of existence. Virtual validation soothes fragile identities. Cultural sharing becomes a pretext to anesthetize hollow hearts.
This is de-intellectualized thinking, trend-chasing, the erosion of style, the numbing of the senses, and the devastation of metaphysical consciousness. Their pulverized selves represent not only evasion of self-knowledge, but irresponsibility—an anti-existential, amoral act. Sartre’s assertion that existence precedes essence reminds us that choices carry moral responsibility toward others. The widespread dissemination of these fragmented selves thus becomes a form of arrogant irresponsibility—a delusional belief in one’s own authority.
Today, sharing is no longer about connection. It is about profit, fame, and visibility—private greed hijacked by capital and illusion.
To conclude: Shanghai, like other global cities, is dazzling and endlessly enticing. But if economic advancement continues while social consciousness and culture stagnate—if the cage is avoided rather than confronted—then all such progress is meaningless.
After all, even the most unfortunate prisoner possesses the capacity for resistance.
作者：夏浩然
二零二三 四月九日
上海这地方比得上希腊神话里的魔女岛，好好一个人来了就会变成畜生。——《围城》，钱钟书
不知不觉，这已经是我在上海的第二个年头。城市越繁华，时间的痕迹则越浅。两年的时间在过去能被生活拆解为多种精彩、丰富的碎片，其丰富程度已经达到“我需要翻看手机里的照片或者社交媒体记录”的程度，这些碎片相互独立，各自富有充分的生命力。但当时间被放置在上海这座城市时，它被多样的、串联的方式所拆解，使它的表现形式更为突出、更令人眼花缭乱，这些表现形式削平了时间本该在生命中留下的深刻痕迹，误让大众以为时间以最有效或最有价值的方式得到了利用，但这眼花缭乱和浅淡痕迹的背后则体现着这座城市最令人恶心的本质——牢笼。
上海是精致动人的、时尚前沿的、被多样的文化生活包围，被贴上牢固的国际化标签。上海同时也是可爱的、令人心动的、漂亮迷人的，但实则是危险的、被华丽陷阱包裹的美杜莎。近几年中国南北风向十分明确，年轻一辈纷纷高声宣布：“北京不行。上海行。”重心南移，年轻一辈和学成归国初入茅庐的毕业生纷纷满怀期待地来到了上海，当然，优质的就业机会必然是首要考虑因素，但或许，上海的性格和文化氛围才是这一大迁徙的核心要素，毕竟，年轻一辈，换而言之，从小被浸泡在“资本主义”环境里长大的Z时代们，对于他们而言，经济条件从来不是他们心目中的重中之重，生活的质感才是，因此上海成为了最佳选择。
上海的性格是令人讨喜的，讨喜的缘由来自于她多样丰富的文化生活，而属于上层建筑范畴的文化生活的根源则是稳固，扎实的经济基础，所以追根溯源，上海甜美迷人，与其他城市截然不同的性格特征来自于她持续高涨的经济效应，但持续高涨的经济效应却并没有使上海增添其他多样的性格，反而使上海的文化生活深深栽进了深不见底的消费主义漩涡。
这样的消费主义漩涡随处可见——小到饿了么骑手电动车上的小型广告，大到恒隆广场上高到令人窒息的奢侈品广告，当然，消费主义漩涡并不仅仅存在于上海，纽约、伦敦、巴黎、东京等城市同样被（后）消费主义包围，但上海的消费主义陷阱的不同之处在于，它很年轻，以至促成它狂妄自大的性格特点，反方向思考，过去上海单一陈旧的文化生活被该大胆年轻的消费主义深深吸引，便给予它100%的空间自由发挥，让它所到之地都成为它的剧院，允许它肆意地演出。纽约和伦敦的消费主义已经肆意盘桓接近一个世纪，而在其漩涡中长时间麻痹的大众也逐渐清醒，慢慢看清消费主义所搭建的文化生活虽然多样，实则单一；虽然华丽，实则空虚。
所以，她们的文化生活退回至上世纪古典文化生活的范畴——戏剧、展览、音乐会等，一些当你离开时脑海里会产生余音的文化活动。回到上海，她的文化生活固然繁多——剧本杀、脱口秀、二手市集、独立杂志展览等等，这些看似有趣、充满文化元素的互动活动，当回到文化价值范畴内讨论时，它们并没有为大众提供实际意义上的文化思考或文化价值，而是以一种文化假象——
以脱口秀为例子：被搬上舞台的网络现象或者被脱口秀演员根据生活经验改写的讽刺性笑话与大众在日常生活中形成的疲惫或乏味形成等价交换，而当表演结束十分钟后，人们离开剧院时，表演中所被传达的笑话一一被人们遗忘，唯一留下的则是剧院中立体声般笑声所带来的快感，但神经末梢所获得的快感实则在大部分环境，比如酒吧、健身房、KTV等地方都能获取，所以这类快感是无用的、多余的、因消费主义而起的杂质；——延展消费主义在上海的统治。
文化假象与消费主义的结合是最轻微，也是最安全的，因为如同脱口秀，这些文化假象所呈现的是一种平面式的、华丽新颖的、空洞至极的感官快感，当感官所受的刺激越多，感官与行为之间则会形成一种无法分离的依赖关系，则感官会无数次追寻过去产生相似快感的行为，以至于最后感官变得麻木，无法动弹，而这时，便是消费主义的完全胜利。可悲的是，近年来上海已成为中国乃至世界范围内的明星城市，它的明星文化生活却仍是以上提及的文化假象。
诚然，上海同样有戏剧、音乐会、博物馆展览等古典范畴的文化体验，但截然不同的是，这些文化体验的起源纷纷来自西方社会，并非东方社会/中国本土最熟悉的文化范畴，而当这些来自西方的文化现象被搬运至中国土壤上时，一层层肉眼无法瞧见的滤镜在途中起着可怕的化学反应，使得其良莠不齐、鱼龙混杂，为本已令人迷惑的文化生活铐上另一套枷锁。不过请注意，我并没有全盘否定上海文化生活的所有方面，而是概括性地进行总结。上世纪六十年代，桑塔格所提出的“新感受力”旨在训练大众在传媒时代遗失的感官能力和感知能力，而时隔多年，面对文化生活，新感受力无疑是当今上海大众最需要培养的技能之一。
如今，占上风的文化假象在城市生活中构建出一个难以打破的围墙，将迫于朝九晚五的年轻人们紧紧锁在围墙内部，使他们潜意识上默认，工作之余，只能投靠文化假象，冥冥中，文化假象联手资本主义将上海改造为一个美丽的牢笼。
牢笼现象几乎存在于所有大城市中——纽约为了破解这个牢笼现象，便在城市中央地带建立了硕大的中央公园，将其谎称为“纽约的肺”，从另一角度看，该硕大的中央公园与监狱中允许囚犯短暂放风的广场毫无区别；依山傍水的伦敦则利用其天然条件，在泰晤士河上打造多类自然活动，在周围丘陵上开拓登山路线，相比纽约，伦敦的牢笼则拥有更多自然元素。回到上海，唯二的自然放风地段或许是狭长的滨江绿地和远在城市郊区的森林公园，但因庞大的人口与不便的交通，文化假象则成了人们最方便，最快捷的放松方式。渐渐地，人们认可文化假象，把它们认作固定的消遣方式，从白到黑在文化假象所搭建的牢笼里欢愉地度过他们所有闲暇时间。
不过令人惊悚的并不是存在已久的牢笼，而是因牢笼而起的封闭式的牢笼现象，即人们在牢笼里自我认同的囚犯身份，潜意识里相互传递牢笼生活的快乐与满足。这一快乐与满足是群体性的、相互性的、具有社会影响力和社会感染力的。当这一快乐与满足在社会群体中被相互传递时，这已经意味着当下社会的主流群体——年轻一代/Z时代，在意识形态上形成面向认同，通俗点讲，一种社会规律，即“我今天上班有点累，我需要和朋友玩一玩剧本杀”已成为一种社会、群体性的规定，其他的文化生活选择更被抛在脑后，因为他们几近麻痹的感官体系不足以鼓励他们做出规定外的选择，牢笼内的生活是最优解。
牢笼现象不仅仅损伤意识，对生命力更具有毁灭性。资本主义所搭建的流水线车间已对生命力具有足够强的损害，而因文化假象而起的感官快感更与鲜活的生命力背道而驰，这些感官快感旨在刺激感官，形成固定规律，促使感官一次又一次回到往常熟悉的循环中，但生命力并不需要刺激，而需要探索，不需要循环，而需要自由，人的生命力只有在自由的维度下执行不同于常规的探索时，才能保持她的活力和美，而事实是，牢笼中的双重枷锁——资本市场与文化假象，纷纷将生命力判于死刑。
而打破该牢笼，破坏这一社会规定的理想工具则是自然。自然是无边无际的、纯粹的、灵巧且具有生命力的。自然帮助人们最大限度地调动所有感官系统感受自然中发生的一切以及她的无规律，在这调动的过程中，被文化假象麻痹的体系得到唤醒，过去感官与行为之间形成的规律被干扰。自然的未知挑战了感官的所有已知，而在这一被挑战的过程中，牢笼现象催生的意识便遇到了强劲对手，在这一场比拼中，输赢虽然未知，但被挑战的警惕感和陌生感则会久久留在麻痹的感官和意识中，产生一种前所未有的温热力量。
如果因文化假象而起的感官麻痹是消费主义的完全胜利，那么，牢笼现象所引起的自我囚犯身份认同则是文化假象与消费主义进一步在意识层面的侵略，这种群体性的囚犯身份认同固然是由点与点之间的传播而扩展为面与面的影响，其中最具代表性，也是使文化假象进一步得到巩固的罪魁祸首便是博主。
博主，或者想做博主的人，并非怀着恶意向大家传播文化假象，其实回顾历史，早期的博主，比如2000年左右的博客，促使他们不间断在互联网分享他们生活和玩乐是与不同群体连接和获得其他群体认可的欲望，正如阿德勒所说：人的原始欲望便是与他人合作并得到社会认可，这一欲望贯穿博客的行为模式，直至现在。到了当下，博主这一职业发生了翻天覆地的变化，其中最显著的变化之一则是该职业获得了资本市场的认可。于是，博主如蜂群般出现，他们遍布在互联网每个角落，饥肠辘辘地盯着市场和固定群体。他们具有吸引力和魅力的，便是他们在固定领域的输出和传播，但实质上他们所谓的输出和传播主要为：1/经验积累；2/模仿与重复；而在资本市场所提供的无数捷径下，大多数人退而选择后者。
模仿与重复分为两类，第一类是模仿，博主们的模仿对象——在仍以欧美为导向文化社会中——往往来自欧美国家或者日本（东亚体系里一个相对独立的文化存在），而这一模仿导致产出结果良莠不齐，使得大众在深似海的互联网中如大海捞针一般寻找属于自己的模仿对象。当角度切换至大众这里时，模仿的标准已不复存在，因为此时的标准评判权已转移至大众手中，则无论模仿的实际效果好与坏，博主本身不会遭受评判。此外，博主的模仿具有割裂性质，即他们的有效/无效模仿将以往受官方或专业群体传播的形象割裂，强迫主流经验分裂为多个流派，在看似提供了更多选择的同时降低了大众审美，破坏了大众的学习过程。第二类以重复和核心的内容则由模仿发展而成。重复的最大原因在于储备量的短缺和学习能力的下降，他们无法获取新想法或无法创造新形象，又因为自身经验的匮乏，便妥协选择重复，而对于博主而言，重复则意味着终点。
无论是穿搭博主、美妆博主、音乐博主，还是美食博主，他们分别将自己生活中的一部分碾碎、转化为虚拟内容，从而将自己与文化生活中的一部分相连接，再通过网络虚拟的途径将其进行宣传，而殊不知他们所宣传的内容与文化生活毫无关系，他们所宣传的是碾碎的自我。这一碾碎的自我，1/来自市场的推动，2/更多来自他们对于社会群体认可的迫切欲与对自我存在的不确定性。通过在虚拟空间建立的虚假联系和获得的虚拟名气，博主模糊的不确定的自我存在得到肯定，获得认可的迫切欲得到满足，所以他们以分享文化生活为借口，尝试抚平那不为人知的、软弱的、虚伪的、浮躁的贫瘠心脏。他们所做的是去智性化的学习和思考，是对趋势和风潮的效仿，是对风格和内容的逐渐摧毁，是对感官系统的麻痹、对形而上的意识形态的摧残。他们的被碾碎的自我不仅仅是对自我认知的回避，更是一种不负责任，一种反存在主义的去道德行为，这种去道德行为体现在他们对于内容的，基于完全主观性的随意选择，以及他们对于风格的蔑视和复刻。
萨特在他的存在主义学中点明：存在先于本质，即一个人所做出的选择和行动先于他作为人的事实，而这一观点更加以证明了人的选择负载着对他人的责任和对他人的道德，所以博主们的被广为传播的被碾碎的自我，在社会群体意义和存在意义上是一种自负式的不负责，一种“自以为我的内容是最好的”的无知观点。如今，他们的分享已不再是“想与他人连接”这般通俗的社会性欲望，而是“我想挣钱，我想成名，我想成为焦点”的被资本挟持、被假象迷惑的私人贪欲。
抛开本文所说的一切，上海，与其他国际都市相同，是一座令人向往、惊喜不断的城市，但如果随着经济前进，社会意识和社会文化仍停滞不前，大众选择避讳牢笼现象，那么一切便是无稽之谈。
毕竟，最不幸的囚犯也拥有反抗意识。