Author Archives: Mary Ann O'Donnell

Falungong appears on baidu, must mean Jiang Zemin is going, going, gone…

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Learning to read Chinese media more often than not means learning to understand the significance of the information to those playing behind the walls of Zhongnanhai.

Today, for example, it is possible to get on Baidu (百度) and successfully search for Falungong (法轮功). We all know that 1999, Jiang Zemin ordered the violent suppression of Falungong. This led to over a decade of sustained persecution against practitioners. Observers speculated that he did so because he (and others in the Party) saw Falungong as not being a religious organization, but rather a potential political player in Mainland society. In English, Michael J. Greenlee provides a useful overview of the organization’s history and Jiang Zemin’s response. However, for many of us the most interesting part of ending censorship of information on Falungong is not that we can now jump to Li Hongzhi’s tomes 大圆满法 and 转法轮, but rather that it signals the end of the Jiang era. The Two Meetings are churning relentlessly forward and it seems that power has been wrested from Jiang’s hands.

Jiang Zemin came to power precisely because he was willing to implement Deng Xiaoping’s decision to suppress anti-corruption protests in June 1989. Moreover, it’s been a while since we could baidu ourselves to information about Zhao Ziyang, the former Party Secretary who apparently did not support the use of violence against protestors. So the question du jour is: will the firewall on news about Tian’anmen also fall? Or will Tian’anmen remain off limits as long as Reform and Opening remains the main Party line and Deng Xiaoping is identified as its architect?

Rumors, Rumors: What’s Bugging Guagua?

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Two days ago, an open letter allegedly from a member of Bo Xilai’s family popped up on the internet, expressing the desire for a public hearing (“此信来自薄家亲戚, 希望公开发表”). Epoch Times – the media arm of Fa Lun Gong – broke the “story” saying that Bo’s son, Guagua may have written the letter. Maybe. Maybe not. Whatever else it may be, I believe that the letter is interesting for four reasons. First, in the absence of political opposition, satire formulates an alternative position. Second, the level of moral outrage that compelled the implied author to write seems genuine. Third, the fact that this letter is circulating as “news” reveals the extent to which the sentiments reflect popular dissatisfaction with the Center and its melodramatic backbiting political infighting Two Meetings. Fourth and relevant to Shenzhen, is the call that Chongqing might have been a Special Zone, like Yan’an and implicitly not like Shenzhen.

Translation of the Guagua letter below.

A FATHER’S TRAGEDY, A PEOPLE’S LAMENT – BO GUAGUA’S PUBLIC LETTER TO THE NETIZENS

In my last open letter to my father, I urged him to return the Chongqing Sing Red, Attack the Black back to the Yan’an years, making Chongqing the flag bearer for a democratic Party and the living spirit of Yan’an; to truly become a Special Zone for political reform. Unfortunately, my father has been too-long educated by the Party, ultimately prioritizing the Party and national power. I had hoped that through reflection and regret, the negative effects of the Chongqing model could be ameliorated. I had hoped that by sacrificing your political future, my Father could have restored the Party and the Country’s stability and harmony. Continue reading →

Daban Bridge Road

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The other day, Annette Kisling and I walked from Xiangnan Village-Neighborhood to Guantou along Daban Bridge Road (大阪桥路), which once paralleled the coastline, connecting the old Yamen at Nantou to Dongjiaotou, a small cove that geographically marked the entrance to the Shekou Port. The stone bridge went over a small tributary from the inner Pearl River Delta. Today, of course, Daban Bridge Road twists parallel to Qianhai Road and the tributary has been reclaimed. In addition, Nanshan District’s extensive road network has partitioned the villages/ neighborhoods that Daban Bridge Road used to link, creating city blocks. Unfortunately, these blocks to not conform to historic breaks between villages along Daban Bridge Road, but rather enforce a strict traffic grid. Pay attention not only to the diversity within neighborhoods, but also between. Enjoy.

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Textual Logic: life as gerund

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For me calligraphy has been one of the real pleasures of learning Chinese. Indeed, even when I can’t read what I’m seeing, I enjoy trying to following the line and figure out the character. Yesterday morning as part of the Textual Logic (书与法) exhibition at the OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal there was a calligraphy performance by Qiu Zhenzhong (邱振中) and Wang Dongling (王冬龄). So I was kind of “wow, calligraphy onstage. Fun.” However, it turned out that I had approached the event naively; calligraphers may or may not be fun, but the event felt like a cross between a movie star press conference and an art seminar.

The audience for the calligraphy performance was not OCAT’s typical audience who tend to have western aesthetics and a passion for conceptual art. Instead, the audience (not including the calligraphers’ respective entourages) was made up of calligraphers and folks who might be classified as calli-groupies, whose comments ranged from how the room had been set up through how the ink was mixed to how difficult it was or was not to write at this scale for so long. Indeed, it was a happy, almost fair-like event with pauses for watching and then commenting. Needless to say, the audience also complained that photographers and videographers had been given front row positions and could follow the calligrapher.

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The level of audience participation in the exhibition struck me wonderful.  Continue reading →

Unapologetically superior — Bo and Blago

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Without a name card, I’m have difficulty distinguishing Bo and Blago. Both are given to rhetorical flourishes — Bo quotes Mao Zedong poetry and Blago quotes Kipling. Both have channeled money out of their country of service. And both have both given highly public press conferences in which they continued to express their righteousness in the face of national misunderstanding.

Indeed, yesterday when I opened my yahoo account I discovered that Bo Xilai was suddenly all over the U.S. of A. (here, here, and here, for example), even in Utah! Meanwhile, literally just up the street, former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich headed off to prison on corruption convictions, not with a whimper but a full-on press entourage.

Here’s the rub: Bo and Blago are talking the same talk, albeit one filtered through Indo-Eropean grammar and the other through Sino-Tibetan tones — but don’t let it fool you.

When asked about the Wang Lijun affair during his March 9th Chongqing press conference, for example, Bo Xilai admitted, there may have been a “personnel oversight (用人视察)”! This language not only distanced him from Wang Lijun’s actions, but was the rhetorical equivalent of kicking a dog out of the house for crapping on the carpet. Not my fault, but not really a problem. Less than a week later, Blago picked up where Bo had left off, emoting “Saying goodbye is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I’m leaving with a heavy heart, a clear conscience and high, high hopes for the future.”

So in the spirit of he said, he said, a few quotes to test how well you can distinguish between the rhetoric of being corrupt unapologetically superior in Chongqing and Chicago: Continue reading →

handshake urbanity — xinqiang community

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In 2003, Shenzhen initiated a sanitation beautification project called the “clean, smooth, peaceful project (净畅宁工程)”. The aim of the project was to clean up roads and gutters and trash and beautify public areas, which included razing the shanty communities (棚户区) that once flourished deep in the area’s lychee orchards.

How common were the lychee orchard shanties? Continue reading →

（光明新区）楼村: Of what use is [urban] planning?

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Located in Guangming New District (光明新区), Lou Village has the largest area of any in Shenzhen and a villager population of 4,000. Of course, it is no longer Lou Village but Lou Village Neighborhood (楼村居委会) and its population is no longer under 5,000 — and therein lies today’s tale.

At the 15th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, the second line (二线) still divided Shenzhen into two distinct administrative structures, the SEZ (now called guannei or “inside the gate”) and Baoan and Longgang Districts (now called guanwai or “outside the gate”). The year was 1995 and Baoan and Longgang District governments had been built and staffed, 25 urban markets soon to be precincts (镇 into 街道办事处) had been designated, and consequently the work of incorporating over 200 guanwai villages into the municipal apparatus begun. Economic advancement was an important aspect of political incorporation precisely because 15 years into reform, Shenzhen had discovered that “allowing a few to get rich first (让一部分人先富裕起来)” undermined social stability. Continue reading →

in the aftermath of housing reform (房改)

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Much of what I know about Shenzhen, I know through hearsay. How much might be confirmed through other sources — people, reports, maps, or books, for example — is a methodological question. Sometimes I can track down confirmation, other times I can’t. What I do know, however, is that most folks are willing to talk about other people’s affairs, even when not willing to disclose anything about themselves. The other day, I heard a story about the Baoping Community compound and here’s how it goes:

Built in the area around the train station and then moving north parallel to the train tracks, the earliest residences for Shenzhen cadres were small, danwei compounds. In 1980ish, the Xili Industry and Trade Enterprise bought land rights from Caiwuwei Village and built a small compound along what became Heping Road, just east of the railway. Xili went out of business and Shenzhen Travel took over the compound. However, Shenzhen began privatizing danwei houses in 1988, a full ten years before the rest of the country. Thus, China Travel employees who had housing in the residential area were able to purchase their benefit housing (福利房) at cost.

Sometime after privatization, the residential compound was renamed, Baoping. Old and small, the residential compound is no longer upscale housing. Instead, most of the homes are shared rentals (合租), in which each bedroom is rented out and then the kitchen, bathroom, and living spaces are shared. Continue reading →

hubei old village, dusk

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Thursday last, I walked Old Hubei Village with Chen Ting, an architectural graduate student with an interest in the landscape of Shenzhen’s state-owned industries. A walk around the train station and then through the Dongmen pedestrian street brought us across the Dongmen pedestrian overpass to the complex neighborhood where Hubei Villages Old and New abut the Luohu Culture Park, crumbling 80s factories, and 90s high-rises and one of the oldest Shenzhen food-streets eased into dusk. Impressions below:

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蛇口荔园路 — fraying urban fabric in Old Shekou

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A shaded, two-lane boulevard that borders Sihai Park, Liyuan Road (荔园路) retains the intimate spatial layout that characterized Old Shekou urban planning. Indeed, the scale of planning suggests the contours of the utopian society that Yuan Geng and his supporters hoped to build — residential, working, and leisure spaces all within walking distance to each other. Indeed, the architectural differences between management housing, Shuiwan New Village, and nearby factory dormitories were noticeable but not overwhelming because the layout of Liyuan Road, the predominance of concrete construction, and common access to Sihai Park made all residents neighbors.

Over the past few years, as residential and manufacturing plats have been razed and rebuilt, and factories have been repurposed for yuppie consumption, the Liyuan Road neighborhood has become somewhat frayed. 80s residences now function as low-income housing, Shuiwan has been razed for urban renovation, and many upgraded manufacturing spaces have privatized leisure consumption. Indeed, one of the newest China Merchants’ real estate projects, Park Mansion Estates (雍景湾) entices buyers with the promise of “Undisputed Possession of the World” in its advertising. Nevertheless, Liyuan Road still threads through an interesting patchwork of Shekou Old and ever Newer. Images below:

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