Shoreditch may be known for its relentless energy and creative edge, but just off the buzzing lanes lies Fangcun Gégend — a meditative cultural space that channels Chinese aesthetics, art, and slow living. Founded by Sam Ni and Chen, the venue is less of a physical location and more of a living, breathing invitation to pause and connect. From tea ceremonies and photography exhibitions to conversations about impermanence, Fangcun Gégend is a place where stillness isn’t an escape — it’s the essence. We caught up with Sam Ni to explore the soul behind this Shoreditch sanctuary.
Fangcun Gégend feels like a hidden sanctuary in the heart of Shoreditch. What inspired you to create this secret space?
People in cities — whether in Shanghai, New York, Hong Kong, or London — all long for a quiet refuge, a place where the rhythm slows and the spirit can rest. And often, it is precisely within the city that stillness feels most profound — more so than in the forests or mountains. It is like finding a soft bed when you are utterly exhausted, or being offered a cup of cool spring water in the heart of a desert.
This is what we hope to create: stillness within noise — a hidden calm at the center of the city’s pulse. At the same time, we wish to offer a sense of safety and sanctuary for those passing through urban life — a place where one can pause, exhale, and feel sheltered.
In this way, we believe the essence of commerce, too, holds a deeper symmetry with the logic of life — it is not merely transaction, but transmission and dialogue.
In a city that never stops buzzing, how important is it to offer a space dedicated to tranquillity, art, and slow living?
Stillness, Art, and the Slow Life: A Trinity in the Fast-Paced City.
The question of why stillness, art, and slow living matter in a fast-paced urban world is an intriguing one. But before we speak to their importance, perhaps we should return to something more fundamental: what, in essence, is stillness? What is art? What do we mean by a slow life?
Though these three may appear to be distinct, even distant, concepts, they can in fact be seen as a kind of trinity—a constellation of interwoven states. Each nourishes the others. Each leans upon and completes the rest. And together, they point toward a shared metaphysical core: the very possibility of being human. it might sound a little bit deep ,but it is the very essence of these three element!
Stillness: Returning to Inner Order Amidst the Noise
（Shall we move to the next part of this question. yeah lets begin!)
We often speak of a ‘longing for stillness,’ but what does stillness truly mean?
In philosophy, stillness is not merely the absence of noise—it is the manifestation of inner order. In classical Chinese thought, this state is known as jing (静): the convergence of all things into unity, the return to the origin. It is a way for the individual to rediscover themselves within a world of perpetual motion. Stillness is not stagnation—it is a profound alignment with the rhythms of heaven, earth, and all that dwells between.
In the Western tradition, Stoic philosophy offered the concept of ataraxia—a state of serene equilibrium where the soul is no longer disturbed by the external world. True stillness, in this view, is not only a destination but a point of departure: for it is only within stillness that art can emerge, and the slow life can begin to unfold.
(so let’s back to our space )
Fangcun Gegend was born from this very condition of stillness. It is not merely a quiet space, but a generative field—a space that invites each visitor to reawaken the stillness that already resides within them. We do not ‘grant’ stillness to those who enter; we create the conditions in which they may find resonance with their own forgotten order. this is essential and what we really care about
Art: The Window Through Which Existence Breathes
(Shifts to the next part, the definition of art in our perspective:)
When we speak of art here, we are not referring merely to aesthetic display or the arrangement of objects. Art, as we understand it, is a heightened sensitivity to being, an expression of existence itself. It is a resistance to the tyranny of time—a window flung open in the speeding carriage of urban life, allowing breath, light, and meaning to pass through.
As Heidegger wrote, ‘Art lets us see the poetics of existence.’ Art reminds us that life is not only about efficiency, progress, consumption, or competition—but also about dwelling, noticing, being, and experiencing.
In Chinese tradition, the arts of ink landscape painting, poetry, calligraphy, and zither-playing were never escapist pastimes. Rather, they were ways of wandering through art (you yu yi, 游于艺)—a form of encounter with deeper truths. This was freedom not as function, but as gesture; a reverence for the ‘usefulness of the useless.’
This might sound paradoxical — how can something be ‘usefully useful’? But perhaps this paradox touches something fundamental about our reality.
A cup, a meal, a lover — none of these hold inherent meaning on their own. They are not meaningful by nature, but they become meaningful to us, because we are the ones who create, define, and carry meaning.
By the same logic, human existence is not born with meaning — after all, everything that lives is destined to perish. We are mortal; we will die. Does that mean our lives are meaningless, useless?
Not at all.
Our very awareness of death, of impermanence, gives depth to our being. The fact that something will end does not strip it of worth — it amplifies it.
Not everything needs to be useful or purposeful in order to exist. The experience itself is meaning. The act of being, of feeling, of living — that is enough.
At Fangcun Gégend, art is not a destination, but a permission: a space that opens itself to the creative impulse of life itself. It is not about the finished product, but about the movement that gives rise to form. To create is to ‘make possible the possibility,’ to allow every meeting of lives—however brief, however accidental—to become a moment that matters.
In this way, art does not belong solely to the artist. It belongs to anyone who dares to feel, to approach, to respond. It is not a profession, but a way of being in the world.
Slow Living: Choosing Stillness in an Age of Acceleration
so Finally, we’ve moved to our last topic, slow life.
‘Slow living’ has become a buzzword in contemporary discourse, but its true meaning extends far beyond idleness or retreat in my understanding.
It is, in essence, a deliberate act of living—a conscious refusal, in an era obsessed with ‘faster, more, now.’(a very urgent impulsion, right). To live slowly is to push back against the urgency of the everyday, the overload of information, the relentless pursuit of productivity. It is a choice to return to the body, to the senses, to the present.
In the thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi, this attitude finds its form in the principles of wu wei and dao fa ziran— ‘non-action’ not as inaction, but as harmony with the natural flow, as an art of knowing when to leave space unfilled. In the West, it echoes in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, where he seeks simplicity, solitude, and the clarity of unmediated experience.
For those of us dwelling in the modern city, slow living is a choice,( it’s an action): the decision to press pause, to tune back into one’s breath, to hear the quiet beat of one’s own heart. It is not a lifestyle label, but a gesture of returning inward—a quiet turning toward oneself, a willingness to care, to see, and to listen.
Within a Square Inch: A Site for Spiritual Response
In a city that never quiets, to carve out a space that holds stillness, art, and slow living is both an experiment in living and a quiet act of social response.
Fangcun Gégend is not merely a physical shelter for the body, but a presence—one that stirs resonance, invites awareness, and gestures toward something deeper. Like a companion, it has its own rhythm, its own growth, shaped and reshaped by the people who enter and the world that surrounds it. What it offers is not a fixed definition, but a form of presence that accompanies and invites: an invitation to feel, to create, to choose.
Here, people and space co-generate, co-flow. And in that movement, another possibility of living quietly begins to take form.
The name Fangcun Gégend beautifully fuses East and West. How do you see this cultural resonance shaping the experience for visitors? You host everything from tea ceremonies to art exhibitions. How do you curate such a wide and fluid programme without losing the soul of the space?
That’s a very god question, absolutely! so what I’m gonna say is that.
Our space is, by its very nature, a nomadic and generative field. It is not a fixed tea room or house in the conventional sense, nor is it a static enclosure—it is a being that is becoming,it is a vivid lifeform: a vessel that continually takes shape through the ever-changing interplay of content, scenes, and participants. The word ‘Gégend’ in Fangcun Gegend refers not to a specific place, but to a field or zone in flux—a space defined not by boundaries, but by emergence.I first encountered this word by chance in an academic book on art history, and it resonated deeply with all of us.
In this sense, when asked whether a space like Fangcun Gegend might lose its essence as its forms and expressions evolve, we trust that its spirit flows through these very changes.
Its identity does not rest in any singular physical manifestation. Rather, it is the spirit that moves through all its transformations—fluid yet constant—that constitutes its core.
Seen from a more radical angle, Fangcun Gegend resists definition altogether. The moment we attempt to fix its meaning—to say definitively ‘what it is’ —we risk collapsing the very freedom, openness, and generative force that give it life. That moment of definition is, paradoxically, also the moment of its disappearance.
This brings to mind the philosophical paradox of the Ship of Theseus: if every plank of a ship is gradually replaced, until none of the original material remains, is it still the same ship? this is the very question at this sense !
Or if the microscopic life on its surface, the texture of its wood, and even the atmosphere around it all shift—does it remain the Ship of Theseus?
Perhaps the more essential question is not whether it is the original ship, but whether we still recognize it as such. In other words, the continuity of identity lies not in structural fixity, but in the ongoing act of shared meaning-making.
Fangcun Gégend is precisely this kind of space. Its subjectivity is not pre-established; it is continuously constructed, experienced, and animated through co-creation.
Every encounter—each conversation, gesture, gaze, and sensation shared within this space—is part of its ongoing becoming. Fangcun Gégend is in constant flux, yet it remains, in essence, ever the same.
What does FoldTheWorld mean to you?
For me, Fold the World is not merely a poetic phrase—it is an invitation. An invitation to step across the thresholds of perception and enter the deeper architecture of reality itself.
At its core, the world is made of space. But space is not a passive container—it is a relational field, a phenomenon that only emerges through presence, attention, and unfolding. In both quantum mechanics and metaphysical thought, reality is not fixed but contingent; not solid, but constantly being revealed, particle by particle, moment by moment.
To ‘unfold’ is to participate in that emergence. It is to move from the visible to the invisible, from the finite to the infinite. It is the gesture of creation itself—where limitation becomes a doorway, and form becomes frequency.
In the context of digital and AI-generated art, this unfolding takes on new resonance. Algorithms, like particles, only become meaningful through interaction—through a beholder, a prompt, a consciousness that observes. These generative systems mirror the quantum field: responsive, unstable, emergent.
To fold the world, then, is not to contain it, but to reveal its layers. To fold is to touch the threshold where information becomes emotion, where data becomes metaphor, where the synthetic becomes sacred.
It is in this recursive dance of unfolding—across code and canvas, logic and longing—that we encounter the real: ever-shifting, ever-becoming, and ultimately, infinite.
xxx
This interview is part of Foldthe.world series. Foldthe.world is a collectable art poster distributed around Shoreditch, combined with curated insiders map helping you to shorten distance and time made by TOANDPARTNERS productions and supported by Made in Shoreditch Magazine.
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