Monthly Archives: February 2011

how do talk across our experience?

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On the ride home from RDU airport to Southern Pines, my brother pointed to the road leading to friend’s new house, “She lives out here in the country.”

I asked incredulously, “And you live in the city?”

“That’s right. Downtown.” And we all laughed.

Now I knew that town and country were relative concepts, but it is difficult here in Southern Pines to describe the scale and velocity of urbanization in Shenzhen.

What can I say in response to the question, “How urban is it where you live?”

I usually answer, “Very. There are few places in the US (outside NYC and LA) that are as expansively urban as Shenzhen, but even NYC and LA have significantly fewer people than Shenzhen.”

And there’s the rub. It’s difficult to imagine the intricacies of Chinese urbanization here in Southern Pines, where the wind rustles through long pine needles as the tree tips bend toward each other in early summer warmth. I keep asking myself, what would allow the diverse experiences of urbanization in Shenzhen and Southern Pines to become reciprocally meaningful? After all, over the past few years Southern Pines has experienced an estimated 20% growth rate. Life here, too, isn’t what it used to be. Nor is it the straightforward alternative to China that many people – both here and there – believe. But there are commonalities – shared desires for better education, government accountability, and public safety, to name the tip of grassroots unrest – that could grow into dialogue.

So point du jour: If we are to figure out a language of global sustainability, we need to develop empathy for each other’s reality in the absence of compatible experience.

Topics you’d like to see comparatively discussed? And why?

another call for a housing boycott in shenzhen

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Folks in Shenzhen continue to protest the price of housing. This time, an armless beggar wrote the boycott call on the chest of a Generation 90s young woman. The interesting twist in this story? The young woman is from Hong Kong. I’m not sure how the protagonists’ collaboration ties into the ongoing re-structuring of a grassroots Shen Kong identity and deepening cross border integration (as opposed to official planning). Nevertheless, it is interesting to think about the implications of this protest performance: it took place in Lizhi Park, Futian, neither of the protagonists is identified as a Shenzhener, and yet this protest was represented in the press (晶报) as a Shenzhen story. Details, here.

Update (Mar 1): surfing in Youtube, I discovered a report that she had first tried to get a place to live by offering her chest as a pillow. However, the “price was too high” according to a man in the street.

80s nostalgia

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More text message fun; this time 80s nostalgia

We miss the 80s, when medicine still cured illnesses; doctors took care of the sick and dying; people wore clothing for photographs; borrowed money was returned; you didn’t need a paternity test to know who the child’s father was; schools weren’t money making enterprises; being sick was respected; housing was allocated; idiots couldn’t be professors; the married didn’t take second wives; meat could be confidently eaten; rats were afraid of cats; and people had clean consciouses.

怀念1980年代, 那时候药是可以治病的；医生是救死扶伤的；照相是要穿衣服的；借钱是要还的；孩子他爹是不用做鉴定的；学校不是为赚钱的；有了病是看得起的；住房是分配的；白痴是不 能当 教授的；已婚者是不能找二奶的；肉是可以放心吃的；老鼠还是很怕猫的；人还是有良心的。

And sometimes I do wonder (with Rey Chow) if nostalgia is no more than dissatisfaction with the present, looking for an anchor (any anchor) in the past. . .

layered densities

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Came across Christopher Dewolf’s photos of the area around Diwang (or Shun Hing Square as it is officially known, mostly outside Shenzhen). Worth a look.

Shenzhen+China, Utopias+Dystopias Conference

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Those in the Boston Area, please join us for the Shenzhen+China, Utopias+Dystopias Conference. Program details, here.

Time: Saturday, March 12, 2011, 09:30-16:30

Location: MIT Department of Architecture, Building 7: Audio Visual Theater (7-431)

Topic: In 1979 when the People’s Republic of China embarked on its current course of economic liberalization, the city of Shenzhen was created as a new model city for policy experimentation and global contact. Shenzhen’s very existence amounted to a tacit acknowledgement of the failures of socialism to provide for the communist society once promised, and a host of new institutions, laws, and opportunities were assembled alongside China’s first skyscrapers and amusement parks. Three decades later, while the promises of post-socialist plenty and international parity have been achieved in many respects, Shenzhen remains a model of China’s recent economic achievements but has also come to represent a dystopia of industrialization and urbanization. Unequal citizenship, quasi-legality, corruption, exploitation, and the rebirth of the propaganda apparatus closely accompany Shenzhen’s success and render its achievements widely questioned. The inequities brought upon by a fast-developing China is intensified outside the PRC, where growing Chinese economic strength is more often than not posed as a threat to everything from liberal democracy to environmental protection to human rights. This conference convenes scholars in humanities and social science whose newest research examines the utopian and dystopian dynamics of the Chinese reform period in Shenzhen and beyond. Employing historical and comparative perspectives in the areas of health, labor, law, art, and urbanism, we examine the historical and transnational trajectories of the enormous changes within contemporary Chinese society as represented first, in Shenzhen’s rise, and second, in the global imagination of China’s post-socialist future.

the fable of donkey island and piggy island

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乌有之乡网 (Utopia Net) offers socialist stories, analysis, and insight into contemporary China. Two days ago (Feb 21, 2011), they published the Fable of Donkey Island and Piggy Island, a story which challenges mainstream economic thinking – both American and Chinese – about how the past thirty years have transformed the world as we know it. Importantly, the fallout from trade imbalance that progressive Chinese intellectuals are grappling with in the Fable are the same issues to which the Wisconsin protests call our attention. Specifically, globalization has not trickled down to the common people, here or there, and so we continue to labor and not get what we need. I have paraphrased the fable, below; Chinese version, here.

Once upon a time, there were two islands, Donkey Island and Piggy Island.

The people on Donkey Island were industrious, working every day to produce grain. The interesting point is that the Donkeys were also very frugal and unwilling to eat this grain. Instead, they saved it up and then shipped it to Piggy Island, where the Piggies ate it. Continue reading →

What does it mean to call someone a 农民?

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One of the most derogatory expressions among urbane Shenzheners is to call someone a “peasant (农民 nongmin)”.  As a slur, it’s meanings range from stupid through uneducated to uncultured, but back home in the South, I’m thinking that the culturally appropriate translation might be “red neck”. However, I’m also wondering if “nigger” would work, especially given the connection to fields, agricultural labor, unfair renumeration, and constant disrespect from the country’s elite.

Why am I thinking about peasants, red necks, and niggers? Continue reading →

Early Forms of Shen Kong

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These past few days, I have been thinking about new forms of Shen Kong integration. Shen Kong (深港) is an abbreviation of Shenzhen-Hong Kong, which is frequently used as an adjective, but may also refer to the two city area.In fact, these past few years, Shen Kong collaborations have included: a 24-7 border crossing, linking the subway systems of the two cities, loosening the travel restrictions on Shenzhen residents for visiting Hong Kong, the architecture biennial, and planning the Qianhai Cooperation Zone and the Lok Ma Chau Loop. In this post, I give a brief contextualization of Shen Kong history in order to explore how power balances have been shifting in the Pearl River Delta since 1980. Continue reading →

The Lok Ma Chau Loop

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In addition to the Qianhai Cooperation Zone, Shenzhen and Hong Kong have recently approved the Lok Ma Chau Loop, which will deepen integration of the two cities as well as displacing one of the few remaining nesting places for Black Face Spoonbills (黑面琵鹭) in the area. Also like Qianhai, the Loop was proposed a few years back, but only reached fruition as part of Shenzhen’s Thirtieth Year Anniversay. Three points. Continue reading →

over 350,000 illegal buildings in shenzhen?

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I have been reading and translating texts about the latest effort to clean up (raze and rebuild) urban villages to conform to changing definitions of what constitutes a modern global city, which is, of course, the goal of Shenzhen’s 2010-2020 overall urban plan. Below an excerpt from an online report on the results of a survey to catalogue all the illegal buildings in the urban villages. Of note: illegal status is defined historically, in other words: buildings become illegal over time (either they become dangerous or come into conflict with changing codes). Worth remembering: Shenzhen’s urban villages occupy roughly 4% of Shenzhen’s actual land, but are home to an estimated 50% of the population, and generate a significant percentage of the local economy.

去年6月2日，《深圳市人大常委会关于农村城市化历史遗留违法建筑的处理决定》（以下简称《决定》）颁布实施，为了搭上这个政策的末班车，深圳掀起了新一轮违法抢建高潮。按照此决定要求，要对全市违法建筑进行全面普查，建立违法建筑台账和数据库，并在一年内出台《决定》的实施办法。今年以来，违法建筑的信息普查工作在全市各区全面展开，实施办法的制定工作也在紧锣密鼓的进行之中。

截至今年6月2日，全市基本完成了信息普查的数据录入工作。根据信息普查数据统计结果，全市农村城市化历史遗留违法建筑普查总量为35.7万栋，建筑面积为3.92亿平方米，用地面积131平方公里；已申报了34.8万栋，申报率97.63%。与此同时，6月8日，《决定》的实施办法已经获得市政府常务会议原则通过，下一步获得市人大常委会通过后便可实施。

Translation: June 2, last year [2009], the “Shenzhen Municipality People’s Congress Standing Committee’s Decision for Handling Illegal Buildings Left from the History of Rural Urbanization” (below “Decision”) was promulgated, opening another surge of illegal construction in order to take advantage of this policy. According to Decision requirements, there would be a thorough inspection of all illegal buildings in the city to establish an archive of illegal building costs and numbers, to be finished within one year. To date, inspection of illegal buildings has been conducted throughout the city, even as the work of documentation has been accomplished with much fanfare.

By June 2, this year [2010], the basic work of gathering information and recording statistics had been completed. According to the survey results, there are 357,000 illegal buildings left from the history of rural urbanization. These buildings have a total area of 392 million square meters and take up 131 square kilometers of land. 348,000 buildings have already been reported for a report ratio of 97.63%. At the same time on June 8, the implementation of the Decision was in principal approved by the Standing Committee of the Municipal Government and will next go to the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress for final ratification.  You Xiping, Xinlang Real Estate, August 17, 2010