‘Cats are healing pets’: old city of Shanghai becomes magnet for selfie-seeking tourists as artist festoons walls and streets with feline art
- Giant photographs, inflatable statues and augmented reality sculptures of cats attract tourists as old heart of city becomes selfie central
- Artist behind the works reveals he was forced to use domesticated cats for photos because strays in the area were too difficult to photograph
The Old City of Shanghai has become a photo-taking magnet after an artist transformed one of its streets into a feline thoroughfare festooned with cat murals.
Shanghai-born artist and cartoonist Gao Youjun, known more widely as Tango, has pasted more than 30 images of pet cats owned by local families on walls along a stretch of Fangbang Middle Road.
The feline images were enlarged to fit three-metre-tall walls, making them appear much larger than the people posing next to them. Tango said by doing so he hoped to let visitors experience “a cat’s perspective”.
The Old City was located on the banks of the Bund in the southeast of today’s Huangpu District.
The cartoonist added that the idea of making feline murals was inspired by stray cats he spotted while walking along the street.
“These cats might have never left Huangpu District,” Tango said: “They are the real ‘Shanghainese’.”
