By Dai Qian

At one time, the Huangpu River was lined with a large amount of docks and factory buildings on both banks, one of the cradle lands of modern Chinese national industry; in the same place, a great event / party of human being -- Shanghai World Expo will be held in 2010. What kind of feelings will be rendered to those who once spent almost all the life in these factories and in this land, when they have a chance to see the sculptures be made of those familiar parts and components dismantled from the production lines, which witnessed the development of our national industry? These scrapped metals are endowed with new lives by a pair of magic hands, to tell vivid stories -- about history, about Expo, and about the people who make great efforts and contributions to prepare and organize the Expo.

Who owns the magic hands? This is the famous oil painter and sculptor, Mr. Huang Yinghao.

A sculpture creation with regret

Huang Yinghao majors in oil painting. He once worked with Chen Danqing (a famous oil painter), and produced film with Chen Yifei (a famous oil painter and film maker). In recent years, thanks to the rapid urban development in Shanghai, Mr. Huang opened up a new area in his art creation. More than 10 years ago, Mr. Huang was invited to provide environmental art design for Changshou Road expansion project. Today, a large amount of works made of metallic materials still stand on both sides of the road.

Changshou Road, together with its perimeter areas, is also one of the birthplaces of Shanghai's national industry, particularly the textile industry, for a lot of cotton mills are located here. At that time, local authorities of Putuo District, where the Changshou Road is located, had an aggressive conceive of utilizing parts and components of textile machines as raw materials in making sculptures. Such a post-industrial genre in sculpture creation was too much advanced in Shanghai at that time, and was finally put away, although substantial attempts had been made in western countries in 1950s and 1960s. A great number of mechanical parts and components with certain aesthetic values were recycled as scrapped irons. In mentioning that, Mr. Huang still feels it was not a creation without regret.

Scrapped steel can tell

Relocation project within Expo area started in 2005. Workers carefully dismantled everything, and made great efforts in protecting historic sites and valuable articles, and trying to keep our memories of the past times as much as possible. From then on, Mr. Huang moved into a new office, an abandoned warehouse within Expo area, with 10 assistants. They have been working there for years.

With insight of an artist and skill of a wastes collector, Mr. Huang and his team followed workers and looked for scrapped components and distorted steels with historical and aesthetic values in debris, before they were trucked off site. Such materials, from small screws of 10cm to large components of several tons, were collected as treasures, with total weight of more than 500t.

Scrapped components as well as profiled geometric forms became brand new elements in Huang's hands to be suitably located, welded together, to create natural and smooth rhythms even if they were irons and steels of tons; thus we can find pieces of sculpture works with post-industrialism features and various shapes and expressions, inside Expo Mansion -- on the walls, in the lobby, and at the corners. Stand in front of these works, you may hear roar of machines, and see rolling wheels on docks.

Of course, the sculptures in Expo Mansion constitute just a small part of all the works planned by Huang Yinghao and his team, and more of them will welcome you in Expo area. After special treatment, those parts and components and irons and steels will never be weathered and eroded again, and the original rust stains will be kept as they are. In the hands of artists, these sculptures, inheriting the past, are endowed with new life, and will become a highlight in Expo area. In Shanghai No.3 Steel Works, there are many workers and families had been working in this place since their parents and even grandparents. Steel works related population is around 200,000 -- 300,000. When they have a chance to see these sculpture works, they would be brought back to the past scenes, a long-cherished wish to them as well as to Huang Yinghao and Expo builders.