2025 - SHENZHEN

ANCERVILLE: SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NOUVEAU

First launched by Charles De Gaulle in 1962, ‘MS Ancerville’ anchors for good in Shenzhen’s ‘Shekou’ district, after a thousand day renovation. A sleepy old fishing village is now poster-child for globally-minded contemporary China, after becoming the experimenting place for public policy (granted flexibility and free-trade). Local culture and creativity merge with the East and West, concretizing Shekou as a feat of progress and reinvention.

Fuelled by this trailblazing spirit, a rendition of Art Nouveau plays through the interior. A desire to reinvent the present is what mobilized modern times’ first artistic movement; the design is steered by the underpinning ethos, tradition may be abandoned but history is still mined for inspiration.

Drastically shifting from level to level the escalator becomes a surrealistic vessel, transporting you from one world to another. Defined by lines radiating from a central point: Art Nouveau’s iconic shell is synthesized with the oyster shells of Shenzhen’s Lingnan culture, folk and futurism colliding to create something new. Lights and embellished accents developed in concert, studded pillars and structural curves become adornments. Costume jewelry worn by bold architecture.

Ancerville pours people, pleasure and performance into one place: experimental theatre, jazz bars, the list of offerings goes on. This universe of other-worldy grandeur is a love letter to sensation: stage and spectacle.