Monthly Archives: January 2012

train station blues

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The Spring Transport (春运) continues. The railway has moved waiting areas outside the station, and people with placards announce departures and lead travelers into the appropriate terminal. The place names — Chengdu, Wuhan, and Nanning — remind me how large the country and diverse Shenzhen’s immigrant population.

I also visited the Luohu Commercial Center, where the English spoken by the various shopkeepers caught my attention. It seemed as if copied out of a stereotype of Hong Kong movie because it was so standardized, “Missy, copy watch. Missy, DVD.” In English, speakers shared the same accent, vocabulary, grammar, and inflections despite the fact that they spoke different Chinese dialects and had different levels of formal education. Some spoke Cantonese, others Mandarin, still others conversed in Hakka and I think I heard Chaozhou language, but the English had smoothed out into something recognizably “Luohu”.

So, I’m thinking about the way that situations — like immigrating to Shenzhen or working at the Luohu Commercial Center, for example — mold us into expected types, making it easy for our diversity to be discounted because rendered superfluous. I’m also wondering how we train ourselves to see beyond expected type, not only when interacting with others, but also when presenting ourselves because the differences actually make us interesting.

china’s 2011 clinker production capacity

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It’s true, in searching for statistics about how much cement has been used in Shenzhen (I keep hoping some social statistically minded engineer will do the calculations), I stumbled across China’s cement web. One of the articles, relevant to aforesaid search, was the clinker production capacity of China’s ten largest cement producers in 2011.

As of Jan 1, 2012, China’s big cement ten are, in order: Hailuo (海螺水泥)、Southern (南方水泥)、China United (中联水泥)、China Resources (华润水泥)、Sinoma (中材集团)、Hebei East (冀东水泥) 、TCC (台泥水泥)、Sunnsy (山水集团)、Huaxin (华新水泥)、and Hongshi (红狮集团). Together they have the capacity to produce just under 581 million tons of clinker, annually. Just how much can be built with all that cement? Well, the Empire State Building weighs in at 370,000 tons. This means that ten Chinese cement factories produce the mass equivalent of 1,570 Empire State Buildings.  Continue reading →

Collaboration with Elephanthouse Imagines…

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Yesterday went to the Fotanian Open Studio in Fotan, HK. Good friend, Elia is the creative energy behind Elephanthouse (象舍), encouraging collaboration and participation to repurpose calligraphy — ink and rice paper and water. Recently, she and I began exchanging a traveling scroll on the 往生咒, a chant to help departed spirits crossover to the Pure Land. Our scroll was displayed during the open studio. Pictures, below.

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of submission and changing the world…

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Last night had dinner with friends and learned (1) that Marxism in Mandarin means “materialism”; (2) rumor has it that the Party is promoting Buddhism as a way of preventing the growth of Christianity, and (3) submission empowers us to change the world.

[update Jan 16: realized last night that what I am interested in is a continuum of engagement — surrender-resignation-acceptance-submission. I skipped over the resignation bit in discussion below and that is where I should have headed. Instead, I jumped directly into the differences between surrendering and submitting. Nevertheless, am leaving original post, MAO]

About Marxism: I had been used to thinking in terms of “the dialectic” and “socialism — change the world”. However, when YQ made a joke about China being more Marxist than Marx, the Chinese laughed and I did not. One of my friends asked, “But you’ve read Marx, right?” Me nodding. “Well then you know about 唯物主义 (dialectical materialism).” Apparently, the joke is that Chinese materialism is no longer dialectical just in your face materialistic.

About buddhism, which links to recent post on Hongfa Temple. Friend’s neibu (内部 insider, but specifically within the Party) information is that there are two many Christians in China and, as a general rule, they are more frightening than buddhists. Reference to the Boxer Rebellion. Another mentioned that buddhists accept (接受) reality.

I gleaned three things from this conversational logic. (1) Christians (unlike materialists) change the world; (2) Buddhists are harmless, and; (3) 接受 in this context is surprisingly close to the English idea of submit. Continue reading →

butt-talk public administration

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Yesterday, in the midst of a bout of competitive reminiscing about personal experiences with Party corruption, Western misperceptions of China, and general human idiocy, one of my friends emphasized how ridiculous the world was by saying, “That’s when I finally understood the phrase butts decide the topic (屁股确定话语).”

This was fun. My friend had been telling a story about post-earthquake reconstruction in Wenzhou. Apparently, all the funding, including international relief, had been directed to specific villages, leaving roads between villages nothing more than rubble. However, when word came down that a Canadian official was coming the next day on an inspection tour, suddenly local officials leapt into action, working together to repair the stretch of road between two villages in one night. She clapped her right and against her left palm, emphasizing the unfortunate reality of butt-talk public administration. Continue reading →

三洲田村：Narrating the Shen Kong border

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So, review of Thirty Years of Shenzhen Villages continues from Episode 7 because for some yet-to-be-ascertained reason, episodes 5 and 6 aren’t available on youku net.

In 2005, construction workers unearthed a 10 kilometer section of the ancient tea route (茶马古道). This road once linked eastern Shenzhen to the new territories, more importantly (for the sake of narrating the Shen Kong border), this road connected to Sanzhoutian Village (三洲田村, literally “Peninsula Paddy Village”), where Sun Yat Sen (孙中山) lead the Sanzhoutian First Uprising (三洲田首义). In retrospect, Sanzhoutian became known as the first explosion of the Gengzi Incident (庚子事件), protesting the Boxer Indemnity that the eight colonial powers imposed on the Qing Dynasty.

Sanzhoutian is a rich symbol in Shenzhen history because it provides deep historic links between the SEZ and Hong Kong at multiple levels. Continue reading →

Buddhism in Shenzhen

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Located in Fairy Lake Botanical Park, Hongfa Temple was the first Buddhist Temple built in the reform era. The temple has been very active in spreading the dharma, and more interestingly, the Shenzhen government has permitted public events at the Cultural Industries Trade Fair and in the City sports stadium.

Several days ago, Hongfa held a groundbreaking ceremony for a new zen temple, Ten Thousand Buddhas Temple (万佛寺). Of note, was the list of attending dignitaries, which show the extent to which Buddhism is accepted in official Shenzhen. According to the website press release, Shenzhen vice mayor, Chen Gaiqi (陈改户) attended. Continue reading →

two walks in guangzhou

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Just spent three lovely days in Guangzhou, enjoying conversation at Sun Yat Sen University and visiting tourist spots, including a walk along the river and a ride on the bubble train atop the Guangzhou Tower. Very Tale of Two Cities simply because looking down is so different from looking through even though vertigo set in when I tried to walk out onto a glass bottom viewing deck. No, I didn’t leave the opaque floor and yes, strangely did not feel as afraid when I walk outside onto the viewing tower and into the bubble train. Images below:

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What’s the difference between Shenzhen and a 直辖市?

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直辖市 means “directly governed city”. There are four directly governed cities in China — Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing. The difference between a directly governed city and a special zone (特区) like Shenzhen is political ranking. Directly governed cities have the same political rank as a province. This means that directly governed cities have access to resources and policies that other cities do not.

Shenzhen is a sub-provincial city, which means it is subordinate to Guangdong Province. As a Special Zone, Shenzhen has some economic exceptions, however, in terms of political planning and any kind of social innovation, Shenzhen must operate within the purview of Guangzhou. Consequently, the SEZ has repeatedly chosen to frame any kind of social transformation in terms of “economic” reform.

From the outside looking in, Shenzhen seems different, certainly the most neoliberal of China’s large cities. But from the inside, Shenzhen just seems nouveau riche, a better version of the country’s second tier cities, but not a first tier city like Beijing or Shanghai. Or even Guangzhou. Continue reading →

Why does the West misread Shenzhen?

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Here’s a quote introducing the SEZ’s investment environment. I lifted it directly from the English website of the Shenzhen Municipal Government. I like it because it makes explicit the different ways that the Chinese government and neoliberal Western think tanks evaluate Shenzhen:

Economic Power

Shenzhen is fourth on the Chinese mainland in terms of economic power and one of the cities that has generated the biggest economic returns.

Shenzhen was second in an economic performance listing by the Brookings Institute and the LSE Cities. The Global Metro Monitor report published in November 2010, which examined data on economic output and employment in 150 of the world’s largest metropolitan economies, showed that Shenzhen’s economic performance was second in the world and first in China.

And that’s the point. In China, Shenzhen is fourth, behind Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. China ranks its cities not only in terms of economy, but also political clout. So yes, Shenzhen’s economic success has launched it ahead of other Chinese cities, such as Tianjin, which under Mao was city number three, but no matter what the SEZ’s international economic ranking, politically, Guangzhou is the highest ranking city in Guangdong Province. Full Stop. Continue reading →