Growing Up With Shanghai Book Fund

About this Crowdfunding Campaign
This crowdfunding campaign is for the production of the Luxun Park booklet for the Growing Up With Shanghai project.

Sally takes us to the area that she grew up in before she and her family emigrated to Canada. It was an amazing walk filled with sounds and sights of the local streets in the Hongkou district of Shanghai. Her intimate and amusing details of her childhood bring out the flavor of the neighborhood as it was and as you see it now.

We need your help to raise $692 in order to complete the final Shanghainese transcription and the layout of the digital book.

About Growing Up With Shanghai
Growing Up With Shanghai is a project I started 8 years ago in order to learn more about the city I live. What it has become is a huge and amazing document of the city, its language, its people, and culture. The recordings follow Shanghainese young adults talk about their memories through locations in the city that they have a deep connection with. The participants that have been selected are between 30-40 years old so that their memories are mainly during the 1990s when Shanghai’s massive development began. The simultaneous development between the City and the Storyteller who, in a sense, were both in their adolescence at the time, influenced the title of the project- Growing Up With Shanghai.

 
All the stories are recorded in the location in which they happened in their local Shanghainese dialect because the dialect is also part of the true sound of the city. Within each person’s story are hints to the local neighborhood culture that could also be linked to one of many facets of the greater Shanghainese culture. Finally, the background documents the present and serves as a marker to compare the future changes of Shanghai. To hear all of the audio released for this project so far please visit the project website: http://www.bivouacrecording.com/guws/

 
The goal of the project is to record 100 stories in the Shanghai Municipality which includes all the surrounding districts. Each story will have a digital booklet produced that includes a hand-drawn route map, Shanghainese and Putonghua transcriptions, and an English translation to be more accessible to a wider audience. While the audio and texts can be experienced separately, they are best when used together while walking along the recorded route.


I have personally funded and produced the previous releases for this project. Production was rather slow and expensive, but I don’t think that this stage could have been done any sooner. The team that has been put together for this project are the most professional and most passionate people that I have ever met and worked with. We cannot wait to get started!

Here are some samples of previously released digital booklets:








Production
Producing a single PDF booklet is a meticulous process that takes about 2-3 weeks to complete.


Our team of passionate and professional: photographers, translators, and graphic designers all see the value in this project as a unique document of the culture of Shanghai.


Each new PDF booklet takes approximately USD$1,500 to produce depending on the length of the translations and work needed. This is why we need your help.




Our Team
Below are the people involved with this project:


Jiajie Huang
Shanghainese-Mandarin transcriber

Jiajie Huang, born and raised in Shanghai, is a professional freelance interpreter and has a wide range of language service experience with both multinational corporations and translation agencies. He obtained his master degree in interpreting and translating from the University of Bath, UK. He specializes in architecture, automobiles, construction, and pharmaceutical subjects. Jiajie Huang is responsible for the transcription of the audio track to Mandarin.
 

Jenny Zhang
Shanghainese character transcriber, proofreader

Jenny was born and raised in Shanghai. Her family founded a paper mill and printed for the Business Books Bureau. Since childhood she has always open to western and traditional Chinese culture and has witnessed the “open up and reform” era of Shanghai. This era brought about tremendous changes not only in the city but also in the stories of the people. She LOVES Shanghai and is passionate about promoting the use of the Shanghai dialect and culture. Jenny also has a great support team of professors, linguists, and other knowledgeable experts to aid her in the transcriptions. 

The Shanghainese transcript is important for the story because it is the closest link between the audio and translations. Jenny also proofreads the Chinese and Shanghainese transcript. Jenny has been fundamental in finding participants and promoting on Chinese social media for this project.



Qiuchen (Rachel) Wu
Chinese- English Tranlsator 

Qiucheng (Rachel) Wu, native Chinese, is a professional translator and interpreter. She obtained her master's degree in translation from the University of Bath, U.K. and her professional experience involves wide and in-depth exposure in the entertainment, culture and art industry, including theme park, live performance, theatre and documentary production. As a translator and interpreter, she also participated in many business negotiations concerning capital investment and company acquisitions. Rachel is responsible for the Chinese to English translation.


Shen Yi
Photographer

Shenyi was born in the 80s in Shanghai. She received her undergraduate degree from Tongji University and her masters degree from the City University of Hong Kong. She is a filmmaker, poet, journalist, literary critic, and film critic. For her poetry writing, she won awards for two consecutive years in the Hong Kong “City Literature Festival” event (2008-2009). Her work "Empty Chairs" (The philosophy of chairs) was exhibited in the Lishui International Photography Festival (2009). Her work "Dismantled Notebooks" was featured in: the Dali International Photography Festival (2011),  Trans-Asia Photography Review magazine (2012), and the Toulouse Female Photography Festival (2013). She has exhibited her photography in Italy at the A+A Multimedia Art Center (2011). She curated poet and photographer, Beidao's first exhbition (2012). Her work "Fans" was included in the Shanghai Women's Photographer's exhibition (2013). She particiapted in the "My French Film Festival" review jury (2013). She participated in the Chinese Film and Media Awards jury (2012, 2014). Recently, she was art consultant and joint producer for the Golden Horse Nominated film "少女哪吒" (Nezha) (2014).


Terence LLoren
Graphic Designer/ Editor/ Sound Recordist
Terence is a professional sound recordist based in Shanghai since 2006. He has worked on reality shows, documentaries, and corporate videos. His current focus is to use sound in creative ways to connect people with their surroundings to show non-visual aspects of humanity such as language dialects, local culture, and relationships with nature. He founded his label, Bivouac Recording, in 2003 and since 2009, he has focused on releasing socially-relevant field recording album projects such as "Growing Up With Shanghai", "60 Minute Cities", and "Social Tapes". For more information about Bivouac Recording please visit: http://www.bivouacrecording.com

Funds Allotment
To ensure the best and consistent quality, all work is paid fairly. Quality and style are checked and rechecked throughout the process. Per translator standards, fees are dependent on the number of source characters/ words. The costs are based on our experience producing our previous works.

We have already completed the audio transcription to Putonghua and the translation from Mandarin to English. Below is a breakdown of costs:

$402 - Shanghainese character translation/ final proofreading of Mandarin and Shanghainese texts. (@$0.07/ Source word (Total words: 5748))

$290 - Sound editing, layout, text editing, production of the final PDF, and promotion

For a total of $692 

It takes about 2-3 weeks to produce the final booklet. We will add updates during the production you can see how your contribution is being used as it progresses.

Thank you so much for your support!