“How to imagine a relaxed and calm, concrete and vivid, eternal and future lifestyle? Welcome to follow Mercedes-Benz to Friendship Bay and Mo Village Hotel, and wait for the breeze to come when everything is ready.“
In modern life, which is convenient and fast and materially abundant day after day, it seems that basic needs are no longer lacking. In the film La vie moderne (2008), French director Raymond Depardon traced the farming life of farmers in this fragmented and uneasy life, which can become a natural remedy for chaos and disorder in a sense. Facing the unknown future, what should we pursue and desire in the circulation cycle so that we can better maintain the common rhythm of life and the quality of thought, so as to reach the ideal state smoothly? Perhaps one of the answers is: stay calm – when the long clouds stretch, there will be a galloping wind.
The autumn wind begins to caress the mountains and the earth with its unique coolness. From Mogan Mountain in the south of the Yangtze River to Aranya Friendship Bay in Changli, North China, people can finally relax their busy and impetuous lives in this good season of “Golden September and Silver October” and wait for the harvest. With the community landscapes in the south and the north, Mercedes-Benz, together with Xuxu Watson and Long Live Friendship®, from the perspectives of content editing, space design, and lifestyle, specifically and vividly connects distant treasures and local neighbors, from point to line, creating a sincere experience that can continue to resonate with this era.
In 2023, Mercedes-Benz took “sustainability” as the starting point and brought a vivid picture of a sustainable future to the new Anaya Friendship Bay; in 2024, Mercedes-Benz focused on the spiritual concept of “the wind comes from the heart”, integrated into the Mocun Hotel, and returned to the Friendship Bay, reinterpreting the needs and thoughts of the current era in a visionary insight that is not startled by changes, and providing people with companionship, care and inspiration from body to heart. In two years, Mercedes-Benz has written different interpretations for “visionary life”. Between the focus and perspective of fluid change, whether it is worrying about energy or reflecting on the state of mind, the ever-new Mercedes-Benz always has its unchanging pursuit, that is, to use outstanding technical productivity and borderless concern to care for the present and reflect the distance. From one to all things, from mountains to bays, Mercedes-Benz invites visitors to witness the organic penetration of “vision” into “life” with its own brand vision and local interaction.
On January 29, 1886, Karl Benz invented the world’s first car, and this day is also recognized as the birthday of the world’s automobile. Since then, the whole world has begun to undergo earth-shaking changes from travel methods to life concepts. December 22, 1900 is regarded as Mercedes-Benz’s “historical day”. On this day, Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG) presented the world’s first car named “Mercedes” to its customers, and Mercedes-Benz became the leader in industry and the market.
For a hundred years, Mercedes-Benz has been recognized as one of the best car brands in the world. Whether in terms of various technologies, performance quality, or the scientific research capabilities of this legendary company that constantly innovates, its world-leading classic coupe models and advanced driverless concept cars have always maintained thinking and imagination about the future travel methods of mankind. In the impetuous and blind pursuit of efficiency environment, “Mercedes-Benz” itself is a forward-looking symbol. It never sticks to the paradigm, but insists on responding to the ever-changing travel methods and life visions of all mankind with a large amount of practical R&D investment and a far-sighted vision for the future.
In Friendship Bay, Mercedes-Benz, as the “visionary friend” of the community, makes everything in the present a place of peace of mind that no longer wavers by pouring in intellectual support, culture and care, and allows people to meet their own answers to life in this flowing free wind. For a long time, Mercedes-Benz has been deeply involved in issues such as the restoration of the earth’s ecology and carbon emissions in the human environment through continuous support for social welfare projects: establishing science popularization and practical education bases, focusing on issues such as reducing carbon footprints, building ecological civilization, restoring tropical rainforests and protecting biodiversity, and carrying out many public welfare activities to promote low-carbon sustainable development models, etc., using practical actions to heal the weaknesses of the overall social ecology, and trying to make more possible changes with the power of the brand. Fortunately, in our era, there are still people of insight who are truly concerned about the situation of a community with a shared future for mankind, so that in this complex time slice, we can have the wind to chase, the dream to reach, the home to return to, and the people to tell.
“Vision” is never a whim, but a path of action from the inside out and from this to that based on a diverse knowledge system, anchoring a better future picture in a series of forward-looking decisions and practices. Counting the ideal travel lifestyle, Mercedes-Benz is undoubtedly on the list; enumerating the quiet and leisurely travel destinations, Deqing Moganshan or Anaya Friendship Bay are both spiritual habitats that can revitalize life. Mercedes-Benz and Friendship Bay, also starting from a humanistic perspective, carefully care for every bit of the real scene, perhaps a unique gift carefully prepared for friends from afar, or perhaps every corner that has been carefully polished and condensed. In the specific scene built by Mercedes-Benz and Friendship Bay, clear doubts and live calmly; explore the common long-term lifestyle of mankind, let the heart go to the distance, not to a certain end. A clear standard answer is not what visionaries want. Mercedes-Benz has no intention of quantifying a universal solution for “how humans should live better” – this is the transcendent state of mind of “there is a wind coming”: go wherever the heart is, and keep going.
“Visionary life” never stops at poetry and the distance, but also includes rational ideas for the present, courageous action strategies and valuable like-minded people. With different cultures from all over the world as the longitude and various beautiful scenery as the latitude, Friendship Bay and Mercedes-Benz have woven a path to a life with more heritage and power in their common vision. In the small-scale knowledge community Friendship Bay, based on the strong cultural attributes of Aranya itself and a number of brands closely linked to Friendship Long Live®: mi casa su casa Friendship Club Hotel, Staple: Café, BASAO Project, Spring Patio, NORLHA and Changsheng Grocery Store, although the travelers are around the Tidal Plaza, their hearts may be moved by more than one corner. In just two years, how did this young community, where the wind blows and the songs sing, sketch out the ideal life through the touchable, tangible and accessible real-life design? We still need some quiet moments to carefully explore the human civilization full of insights from the historical review, and learn how to calmly deal with the current fog from those quiet and dazzling spots.
As the French poet Rimbaud said to the world: “For a young man full of longing, there is no life around, and the real life is always somewhere else.” And where is “somewhere else”? Different people always have different answers. However, if we gather in the cultural scenes of Aranya and Friendship Bay, somewhere else is also far away, and “vision” is the Noah’s Ark that can support us to reach the ideal place. “Visionary life” and “the wind comes from the wind” are a common concept that is closely integrated. Whether people are in the flow of thoughts or in the concrete landscape facing the wind and looking into the distance, being able to work towards sustainability with like-minded friends in a flowing and coherent state of mind means they are infinitely close to the best state where everything is ready and full of confidence.
*Originally published on Wallpaper Magazine, Nov. 2024 | ISSN: 1005-4669 | CN51-1737/G0
Yuting (Roxy) TANG 