Ghosts, non-existent existences, unconscious consciousness, echo, traverse, and disrupt the time and space clues of the past, future and present; thus, they allow us to follow and grasp the voices and powers in the dim and dark places. Ghosts are often the incision through which anthropologists understand community, and hauntology has become a theoretical approach to thinking about history and politics.
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In highly modern cities, legends about ghosts have never disappeared. On the Internet, ghost stories in contemporary life are one of the most popular topics that interest netizens. In the constant discussion and attention, urban legends carry various meanings and have vitality and energy.
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This issue of Tian Yebian discusses such an urban legend about the “ghost building”. This large-scale shopping mall, which was once highly expected by developers, is located in the center of Chengdu, but it has been operating poorly for many years and has few customers; the empty shopping mall environment and the much-criticized Feng Shui pattern have made it a lot of self-media detectives. “The object of the incident; related companies’ accidents and lawsuits make this mall often hotly debated. Here, the story of “Ghost Building” seems to be a way for people to explore and talk about the economy and society. It uses half-truths to express the confusion and ridicule of leaps and bounds and the development of bubbles.
Author / Luo Ziyu Editor / Ye Wei
Urban legend as an academic concept, its starting point is the book “The Disappearing Hitchhiker” by American folklore scholar Blue Vander in 1981; a modern evolution of . In today’s era of widespread disenchantment, various interpretations of urban legends cannot be supported by a strong belief system like ancient poems and strange stories, and they often fail to gain general recognition from people, so they often end up hastily as “unsolved mysteries”. Folklore scholar Shi Aidong (2007) compares urban legends to the “sewers” of urban culture, and believes that they are at the bottom of the cultural structure. On the one hand, this metaphor seems to treat urban legends as a secondary cultural phenomenon, but on the other hand, we can imagine that a city without sewers will become a foul-smelling sewage discharge site – if we are willing to drain deep sewers If you explore it carefully, you will often be closer to the core of a city .
This article will introduce the most familiar “ghost building” in Chengdu – Chengdu R&F Plaza. It is obviously a bright and spacious modern building and a crowded business place, but in legend, it has become a magical place with ghost elevators, blood-stained toilets and underground shopping malls in the underworld. Whether there are ghosts in the world is not the question that this article intends to discuss. Whether ghosts exist or not, the human heart can give birth to ghosts. How did these ghosts in their hearts occupy this department store in the most prosperous part of the city center? And how do owners of department stores resist the definition of “ghost buildings”? What does the struggle between capital power and popular opinion about this definition mean? This is the topic I want to discuss.
01. “Ghost Building”: Urban Legends and Failed Operations
R&F Plaza is located in the center of Chengdu, on Shuncheng Street between the perennially popular Chunxi Road business district and Luomashi business district. Its development history can be traced back to 1993, with a construction area of about 500,000 square meters. Now it is famous as “the first ghost building in Chengdu”, and every design of it is given the meaning of Feng Shui by the folk.
The urban layout tradition of Chengdu has always had a profound cultural background, and the Fengshui issue of R&F Square has also been criticized or fabricated by the people as part of the overall Fengshui of Chengdu. All kinds of media have collected all kinds of Feng Shui analysis that people have inquired about, and even the new media under the professional media The Paper also went to the field to “explore”. The birth of the city of Chengdu is closely related to the theory of feng shui. “Sou Shen Ji” records that Chengdu follows the advice of wizards and “builds it according to the turtle”. (Wu Qingzhou, 2010) and Shudi has always been a place where ghosts and ghosts are frequent in Chinese legends. It is said that Zhang Daoling, the founder of “Five Dou Rice Road”, “expelled evil and executed demons” in Sichuan during the reign of Emperor Ming of the Han Dynasty (Dingyangzi, 1998). According to folklore, there is a Taoist Qingcheng Mountain in the northwest of Chengdu, and a family of Puxian Bodhisattva Emei Mountain in the southwest. The only thing is that there is no fortification in the northeast. The north-eastern part of the Eight Diagrams is called the Gen position, which is the alternating position of yin and yang, and is called “Ghost Gate”. The R&F Square was built in the northeast, between the old imperial city of Chengdu and the Wenshu Monastery, which was responsible for suppressing ghosts.
As for the building itself, there are 6 pillars standing at the main entrance of the shopping mall, which are called coffin nails by netizens, which firmly nailed the shopping mall and blocked the popularity and wealth of the shopping mall. The northeast gate opened wide, facing the northeast where the “ghost energy” kept pouring in. The escalator at the main entrance leads directly to the fifth floor, pouring the “ghost energy” of the entire northeastern part of Chengdu into the shopping mall. 【1】
The main gate of Chengdu R&F Plaza (Photo source: “Yi Chu Guoxuetang” public account)After entering the mall, the most criticized is the maze-like overall structure and the dizzying elevator. The entire R&F Plaza has five areas: main shopping mall, apartment building, office building, mezzanine and sky parking lot, and only some of the passages can be connected in series. The elevator’s logo is puzzling, the numbers are paired with the letters LDMP and don’t correspond to the actual floor. After getting out of the elevator, customers often find themselves trapped in the locked corridor, between the elevator and the fire escape, in the abandoned mezzanine… Long before the reputation of the “ghost building” spread, some netizens shared their lost experience, and the security guards will After he took it away, he joked: “Why would you take this elevator, we don’t take it, this is a ghost elevator.” Not only the straight ladder, but the huge escalator has also aroused a lot of suspicion, and is described by folklore as two swords inserted straight into the belly of the mall. The locals who lived near the shopping mall reminded the media people who came here to pay attention: “As the saying goes, ghosts walk in pairs. The even-numbered elevators inside only go out, which means to send out all the ghostly things.”[1]
Described as an escalator inserted straight into the belly of a shopping mall (Image source: Chengdu Big Bang) 
Design complex elevator buttons (Image source: see Weibo watermark)In addition, the design of the bathrooms on the second and sixth floors of R&F Plaza has always been puzzling. The toilet on the second floor is located in the center of the entire shopping mall. Netizens commented that it is a symbol of a catastrophe by placing the dirt in the center of the house. The bathroom on the sixth floor needs to be reached through a dark corridor, and the color is depressing dark blue.
Corridor of the famous sixth floor toilet(Image source: Chengdu Big List)
I interviewed a chef who used to work at R&F Plaza. He said that he accidentally broke into an abandoned area on one floor of the plaza with red paper and dummies. Regarding supernatural events, he has his own conclusion: “There was absolutely an accident in this square before, but it was suppressed.” Due to the high enthusiasm of people to “explore” in R&F Square, the security work of the mall has become more and more strict. In an expedition video of station B, the UP master just discovered a hidden area and was immediately discovered by security personnel and repatriated. 【2】
However, for a department store, the last feature of R&F Plaza that is not supernatural may be the most “terrifying”. “Autumn” is a dialect used by Chengdu people to describe poor business. Although the location is superior, the business of R&F Plaza has always been “autumn”. As early as 2012, there was a real estate network service platform on the Internet that pointed out that it was in a development dilemma (real estate.com, 2012), and that was the first year of R&F Plaza’s opening. For the next 11 years, R&F could not get rid of the adjective “autumn”. The research team of the “China Real Estate Finance” project also tried to find out the reasons for its sluggish popularity during the research in Chengdu in 2015. (China Real Estate Finance, 2015)
From elevators to business “autumn”, every part of R&F Plaza has been interpreted and interpreted by “feng shui masters” on the Internet, but these supernatural points may also be explained by failed business choices and operations. For example, R&F Plaza is located in the “sandwich zone” between the two business districts. It seems that the address is unique, but in fact, it may be taken away by the two business districts. Another example, R&F Plaza itself has a bumpy and long construction history so that it no longer meets the standard of a modern and convenient shopping center, and it has defects in hardware settings, layout design, shop design, and catering ratio. I also get sick from the odd elevator and the occasional abandoned area while I’m on the ground.
A deserted shopping mall (photo source: Chengdu Big List)02. Where does the ghost come from
Bubbles and Phantoms
R&F is not the only mall in Chengdu with high vacancy rates and low popularity. As early as 2006, some scholars have studied the real estate bubble in Chengdu. In the decades since the real estate reform was implemented in 1998, my country’s real estate industry has shown explosive growth as a whole. Chengdu has an attractive city card of “the happiest city” and “leisure capital”, and is naturally regarded as a “competitive place” for commercial real estate. In 2016, the vacancy rate of shopping malls in Chengdu was 16.2% , which was not only higher than the average level of 10.5% in other second-tier cities, but also nearly three times the vacancy warning line of 6%; however, the area of shopping malls under construction reached 3.2 million square meters, ranking among the top It ranks second in the world, and its scale is more than 20 times that of the shopping mall under construction in Paris, the world’s shopping destination [3]. Some scholars call this phenomenon “Chengdu impulse” (Fang Shuai, 2013), which reflects the huge investment impulse in the development process of second- and third-tier cities represented by Chengdu . After the booming construction boom subsided, what awaits major shopping malls is adjustment, optimization, struggle, dying and exit. The densely packed shopping malls seem to be the embellishment on the laurels of the leisure capital of Chengdu, but in fact they are the ugly ruts left by China’s commercial rush.
From this perspective, R&F Plaza is the epitome of a large number of collapsed shopping malls. When taking stock of the less popular shopping malls on the Internet, R&F Plaza began to be called “ghost buildings” along with other plazas [4], but it was inconspicuous among them. However, after waves of big waves washed away the sand, it has stood at the original address for 28 years, which makes it quite unique. R&F Plaza is a material relic of the era of blind expansion of commercial real estate, but it still cannot fully explain why it later became a supernatural “Chengdu No. 1 Ghost Building”. The “ghost” belonging to R&F Plaza must be found in the history of the building itself. .
The name “Ghost Building” may first reflect the ridicule and ridicule of the owner of R&F Plaza. The depressed status quo contrasts ironically with the grand ambitions of the mall. In 1993, Chen Yuguang, “the first generation of China’s richest man in Forbes”, set out to build a “commercial real estate kingdom” in his hometown of Chengdu. The project was named Chengdu Panda City, and the investment reached 2.5 billion. However, Chen Yuguang was imprisoned on suspicion of high-level corruption, and Panda City faced funding problems and demolition problems one after another. The project was shut down for 8 years, and it ended dismal just a few months after Panda City finally opened. Decades of “tossing” have labeled “the first city in the west” as “the first pit in the west”. 【5】
The second owner of R&F Plaza was R&F Real Estate Company, known as one of the “Five Tigers in South China” in the real estate industry. At that time, it was vigorously developing the market and was determined to establish a “R&F City” in the whole country. In 2007, R&F completed the acquisition at a cost of 5.3 billion yuan, changed the name of “Panda City” to “R&F Tianhui MALL”, redesigned the shopping mall, and vigorously attracted investment. In the opening scene, people seem to see the phantom of the ideal city, but the sales volume really shattered this phantom again. The feng shui theory that has haunted shopping malls for more than ten years has come back again. Some media also pointed out that R&F, which started as a residential project, lacks commercial real estate experience, which makes the shopping malls unsustainable (Zhu Ling, 2012). Two years after its opening, the main cooperative flagship store quietly closed its stores, and it was initially estimated that the loss exceeded 10 million. R&F constantly readjusted the positioning of the mall, and the general manager changed wave after wave.
The constantly changing general managers expressed their confidence in interviews with the media, but the folk slurs never stopped. In 2016, Qu Haitao, general manager of the commercial company of Chengdu R&F Real Estate Development Co., Ltd. announced to the public that after adjustment, the passenger flow of R&F Plaza has increased by more than 30% (according to the truth, 2016); in 2017, Fang Yihua, general manager of Chengdu R&F Sales Planning Department, released the According to the news, R&F wants to enter the Chengdu Ten Billion Army as soon as possible (Phoenix Real Estate, 2017); in 2021, R&F even responded directly : “TA is also at the center of public opinion, BUT, for these, Chengdu R&F Plaza just wants to say ‘We are okay? ‘.” However, what these responses can’t refute is the fact that the mall is crowded, and it can’t stop the long-term pessimism.
At the same time, the confrontation between the two masters of R&F in court also added more discussion to the audience. In 2017, Chen Yuguang’s company took R&F to court, requesting an order to dissolve Chengdu R&F Panda City Project Development Co., Ltd. The industry and the media believe that this may be related to the just-adopted “Chengdu Center” Planning Plan, which aims to create a world-class new landmark “Chengdu Center”, R&F is the only shopping center. Although there is favorable policy information for R&F, what attracted more attention in this lawsuit is the gossip rumors from the capital side: Chen Yuguang’s imprisonment and overseas exile, rumors that R&F Corporation made a fortune on the relationship between government and business, and mutual condemnation in court. …
Litigation and gossip keep R&F-related news hot, and the depression of the shopping mall is an ironic contrast to R&F’s “hard-mouthed”. The exploration and mockery of this “ghost building” reflects people’s attitudes.
Murder and Court
In addition to ridicule and ridicule, the name “ghost building” seems to hide people’s sympathy, fear and anger.
In April 2019, in Chengdu’s R&F Taoyuan Community, an unsecured billboard smashed to death an old man. The medical expenses for the rescue of the elderly were about 150,000 yuan, but R&F delayed the compensation. “Can 150,000 medical expenses stymie a real estate company that earns hundreds of millions of dollars every year?” (Deep Blue Economy, 2020) The voices of public opinion are full of anger and irony. R&F became the target of public criticism for a while, and the related vicious incidents in the past were immediately known to Chengdu people: as early as 12 years ago, People’s Daily reported that the renovation of R&F Taoyuan in the incident area was not up to standard; in 2015, West China Metropolis Daily also reported that R&F Taoyuan’s external wall tiles fell off, tripping residents. In addition to Chengdu, the related casualties in R&F’s real estate buildings are also attracting attention:
- According to the accident report of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development in June 2018, an object attack occurred in the 17th project in District D, R&F City, Meixian County, Guangdong Province, which is under the responsibility of a subsidiary of R&F, and one person was killed.
- In October 2018, a tower crane signal worker of R&F Properties’ Jinxi Yuecheng project in Nanchang, Jiangxi died of overwork.
- In March 2019, one person fell to his death from a height in the C&D R&F Xiyuan project in Longyan, Fujian.
- In the same month of the same year, a staff member of the fourth phase of the Yongjing Haoting project of R&F New City in Jinghai, Tianjin fell from a height. Since 2016, R&F Real Estate’s project in Tianjin has experienced 3 construction casualties within 3 years. The general contractor has been investigated and dealt with potential safety hazards for many times and has been banned from contracting projects in Jiangsu Province.
- In the face of these distressing murders, China Economic Weekly questioned: “Why did the promise of the chairman of R&F Properties fail when the casualty accident happened again?” (Sun Tingyang, 2019)
- …
This series of events is inseparable from the development dilemma of R&F itself. In 2018, in the face of the cold winter of the market, R&F had debts of 296.3 billion yuan, and the net debt ratio was as high as 184.1%, and began to continuously finance and repay debts. However, R&F announced to the outside world that it would complete the set target, and companies across the country began to rush to work. This has caused related pressures either indirectly or directly.
Is there any ghost in Chengdu R&F Plaza? I think there is. “Although people are born in the world, they know that the dead are ghosts, but they don’t know that those who are not dead are also ghosts. The wine, poppy, and rice bag, whether drunk or dreaming, and if it is a piece of clay, although the person is alive, it is the same as the dead. What is the difference between ghosts?” What exactly is ghosts, the words of Zhong Sicheng, a dramatist in the Yuan Dynasty, are very clear. The ghosts of R&F Square may be the unfortunate souls of the workers who lost their lives, or the greedy ghosts who repeatedly violate the law regardless of the safety of the project, or the vanity ghosts who pretend to be glossy and turn a deaf ear to the criticism from the outside world, or they may also be lost in modern urban life. Anxious soul.
03. Urban legends are a force of negativity
Chengdu R&F Plaza, a reinforced concrete building wrapped in bright advertisements. If people walk here, they need to walk through the smelly underground tunnel, and there are some dimly lit small shops on both sides of the tunnel. The modern behemoth at the end of the tunnel will once again bring a strong sense of tearing: due to unclear planning, it is difficult to attract investment; the shops on the ground floor and the first floor sell medium and low-grade products; and the second floor is full of young people Favorite fashion store. Downstairs, there is constant hawking, and the old people are holding their grandchildren to choose the goods. The young clerk upstairs had delicate makeup and kept his head down and brushing Douyin. The impact of different income groups appearing on the same occasion reminds us that this is an era of constructing our identity through consumption behavior. Department stores place merchandise supremacy, yet feel insecure, vulnerable, and chaotic.
In a city full of “ghost building” shopping malls, shopkeepers are faced with chaotic property management and miserable business. Like a maze of desires, the shopping malls that make oneself dizzy, the increasingly unattainable housing prices, the demolished former residences… All the confusion, loss, fear and pain of urban life, how to express and tell?
Urban legend is a special way of speaking. It is a negative force: even though the R&F Square still stands there with a bright appearance, even if the real life of the real estate millionaires is unknown to the common people, everyone can easily toss one to those forces that we cannot see clearly Disgusting vision – “The feng shui is bad, it’s very haunted, don’t go.” In the real political and economic hierarchical world, the people who constitute the majority of the society are exploited and silenced; but in the surreal impossible In the field of knowledge, in the “sewers” of urban legends, the voices of most people have formed a new power: the rumors that people talk about a lot, the rumors have a great influence. You can ridicule this as a superstition, and you can avoid listening to the “gossip” of street vendors, taxi drivers, mall waiters, restaurant chefs and countless “dagong workers”, but this right to speak cannot be taken away. Chengdu people say that you are a ghost building, you are a ghost building, you have to suffer.
Rather than “fear”, such urban legends arouse more people’s “curiosity”. “Curiosity” guides people to find the stories behind the rumors and explore the truth and the false. The gate of the shopping center is facing the street, even if you don’t buy it, it is still welcome. Unlike those more exclusive and intimate stories, it seems to encourage people to experience it for themselves, to rethink urban economics and business life in a different way. Urban legends, neither utilitarian nor scientific, give people a space to stop and joke, criticize and think.
Endnote [1] For the analysis of Feng Shui in Chengdu R&F Square, the main reference is to online literature: (1) Paike “Testing Institute”: I broke into the rumored “R&F Square”, I suspect that I am taking pictures and approaching science (https:/ /m.thepaper.cn/baijiahao_14081622); (2) “Baijiahao” UpFlow: Chengdu R&F Tianhui that Feng Shui masters can’t save (https://ift.tt/8utGiYI pc) [2] The video URL: https://ift.tt/FXcphso [3] The area of the stores under construction in Chengdu is too large, the vacancy rate is high, and the consumption is insufficient[J] .Modern Property (Early Issue), 2014,13(09):57.【4】Chengdu Chenghua Blu-ray Real Estate Development Co., Ltd. Dismal! cn/s/blog_ced3d4e60102vhnk.html) [5] Relevant internet and media sources include: (1) Linkshop, the largest “ghost building” in Chengdu, got a lawsuit, and R&F’s 5.3 billion investment went to waste? (https://ift.tt/KdXNAzU); (2) Official Account: Demolition of “Unfinished Tail” 3 The Dusty History of a First-Generation Big Shot (https://ift.tt/LYQjtxO ? / s __ biz = MzA3ODU0MDI2OA == & mid = 2651918870 & idx = 1 & sn = a489ca0e4dd197dc6e06c86e7bf11435 & chksm = 84a48e95b3d30783ec237fbbaa08d4e0b5271b7256f5570c700b053f5786e5f784b21185ccb9 # rd); (3) dark blue Finance R & F Properties, a former commercial dignity in Chen Yuguang and “the first western pit” (https: //finance.ifeng. com/c/7nLGHYAHcDg)
references:
Wu Qingzhou. Research on the Philosophy of Urban Planning and Design in Ancient China——Take the Turtle-shaped City Pattern as an Example[J]. China Famous City, 2010(08):37-46.
Ding Yangzi. Several materials about Zhang Daoling in the local chronicles of Shu[J].Religious Studies,1998(02):61-62.
Fang Shuai. “Chengdu Style” Impulse [J]. China Real Estate Industry, 2013(03): 78-81. Zhu Ling, it is difficult to follow R&F’s commercial real estate dilemma through land appreciation, Xinhuanet, 2012
According to the facts, the passenger flow has increased by more than 30%. Why does Chengdu R&F Plaza stand on the “Chengdu Center”? Winshang Sichuan Station, 2016 Phoenix Real Estate Chengdu, R&F Fang Yiguang: R&F will present more to Sichuan in the next 10 years, 2017
Deep Blue Finance. Because of the 150,000 yuan medical expenses, the subsidiary became the executor! How much money is R&F Real Estate short of, 2020
Sun Tingyang, why did the promise of the chairman of R&F Properties fail? , China Economic Weekly, 2019
About the Author <br />Luo Ziyu, often thinking about what kind of professional social idler he is
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