Sometimes, I walk through older sections of the city, and I try to remember what it felt like the first time I walked there. Or, if I can’t track my emotional memories, I try to remember what this place used to look like. Who was here? What were they doing? Did I take pictures or […]
Once upon a time, Nantou was the Ya’men for Xin’an County, and before that for the imperial salt monopoly. It’s currently where Shen Kong integration is being seriously re-worked.
A five-part essay, “Laying Siege to the Villages” has been published online at Open Democracy. Here’s part two on the Nantou Peninsula. 2. Concentric Occupations: Nantou Peninsula The built environment of Shenzhen urban villages references three historic moments – late Qing and Nationalist-era rural society, Maoist collectivization, and post Mao reforms. Spatially, this history has been expressed […]
Walked with Emma Ma and her father, Mike along Shenzhen’s northern loop expressway (北环大道) from the Nantou Checkpoint to the northern entrance of Zhongshan Park. Our path followed the remains of the second line (二线), the boundary that once divided Shenzhen into the SEZ and New Bao’an County. Cobbled together out of debris and plastic […]
Guankou and Yijia Villages are located just outside the Nantou Old Town Arch and revamped walking museumon by way othe Shennan Road – Nanxin Road pedestrian overpass. The villages abut each other along the old, narrow road, which used to run parallel to Yuehai Bay and connected Nantou to Shekou. Guankou and Yijia are slated […]
Years ago, I published becoming hong kong, razing baoan, preserving xin’an, an academic paper on urbanization as the ideology informing the construction of the Shenzhen SEZ. Part of that paper included an analysis of Nanshan District’s decision to create a walking museum at Nantou, the County Seat of Xin’an from the Ming Dynasty until the CCP moved […]
One of the purposes of this blog has been to document changes in Shenzhen’s cultural geography. A second purpose has been to observe changes in what is represented and how the representation aesthetic have also shifted. Sometimes it’s like we’re not seeing and talking about the same city. Postcards from a long-ago Shajing oyster culture […]
Most are aware that the area we once knew as “Baishizhou” was located north of Shennan Road, comprising four villages–Shangbaishi, Xiabaishi, Tangtou and Xintang. The neighborhood’s name derived from the “Baishizhou” subway station. In turn, the station was named for the historical Baishizhou, a mudflat or sandbank, which was located south of Shennan Road. Historically, […]
So, I went back to the states and have just returned to Shenzhen. I did one covid test in Seattle and then flew to Shanghai, where I quarantined at a Vienna Hotel (维也纳酒店), where my quarantine was physically comfortable, if somewhat surreal because while I was in isolation, zero-Covid infrastructure was being dismantled. I had […]
no time passing… The melody is Pete Seeger’s, but the context is Shenzhen. Last night I was talking with friends, older friends of many years who have lived in Shenzhen since the early 1990s. We ended up talking about China’s population crisis and how it has been manifest in Shenzhen as the aging of menial […]
Shenzhen Noted 