Macau’s historic center presents us a fundamental conundrum. On the one hand, it’s Qing / Republican China meets Portugal spaces charm and entice; I find these older spaces beautiful in ways that the city’s casinos and glass towers are not. On the other hand, these spaces manifest colonial legacies; the East India Company’s cemetery and crucified Jesuses that adorn the Portuguese churches give visceral form to the foundational violence of the contemporary world system. Impressions of world heritage, below:
Author Archives: Mary Ann O'Donnell
The Cost of Business in Shenzhen
A translation of a 天涯深圳网 post, this time about a woman boss who set herself on fire to protest having her rental property revoked (罗湖文锦广场物管收回物业女老板自焚).
A Woman Boss sets herself on fire after the luohu wenjin plaza Property Management revokes her property by Nanfang Reporter, Feng Lei (南都记者丰雷 — 南方都市报)
Yesterday afternoon (January 12, 2012), Ms. Zou of Eastern Fengming Children’s Training, which is located on the 4th Floor, Building A of Luohu Wenjin Plaza set herself on fire to protest that the Plaza’s Property Management Firm had suddenly ended her rental contract, leaving her with over 2 million investment that cannot be recovered. At the moment of crisis, the Tianbei Fire Department and Plaza Management Firm came. According to the Management Firm, the contract stated that when the property owner needed to reclaim the property, then the renter would have to leave. According to Ms. Zou, the Property Management Firm was not the property owner and therefore has no right to evict her from the premiss. Continue reading
OCT Bay: Give Happiness a Coast?!
Visited OCT Bay (欢乐海岸) this afternoon. OCT Bay is the third Shenzhen development of “The New OCT‘” to expand and develop their brand throughout China. The first effort was OCT (now OCT Loft) and the second was OCT East. OCT Bay’s advertising slogans suggest the state-owned enterprise’s ambitions to provide fantasy shopping experiences, for example: Elegant Christmas, Fashionable New Year’s (风雅圣诞，时尚新年). However, their motto, Give Happiness a Coast (给欢乐一个海岸) is beyond ironic. Water light shows, an artificial lake, and boat rides on the winding river, notwithstanding, the entire complex is built on reclaimed land from Shenzhen Bay. In fact, the former coastline (at least a km inland) used to be edged with mangrove trees and, further into the bay (in the middle of the complex), oyster cultivation. Impressions, below:
Speculation about Shenzhen’s Cultural Industry
Today, I’m following up yesterday’s cultural industry post with a friend’s highly speculative explanation for the apparent decline of the Century Handicraft Plaza. This conversation interests me because it provides a sociological explanation for economic success; the question isn’t what can be known, but rather, in the absence of knowledge, what ought to be assumed. Moreover, the assumption is interestingly at odds with Weber’s puritans, who saw wealth as a sign of God’s blessing. In contrast, my friend sees wealth and economic viability as signs of corruption.
Me: When I went to the Yongfengyuan store in the Handicraft Plaza, I was surprised by the fact that they were selling the same cultural products as last year and that the second floor showroom had been converted to office space. How can this happen to a national level cultural enterprise? Moreover, many of the surrounding shops had closed. So despite architectural renovations, the Plaza seemed abandoned.
Friend: It’s actually not too difficult to figure out. The cultural industry fair is over, so there’s no reason to keep pumping money into the Plaza. Also, Yongfengyuan makes expensive gifts that officials exchange, so the brand has probably been a way of channeling public money into private pockets. Continue reading
How should we judge the success of Shenzhen’s cultural industry?
According to released statistics, in 2011, Shenzhen’s cultural industry accounted for 8% of the SEZ’s GDP, with a total 87.5 billion (875亿) yuan of goods and services. More importantly, cultural industry in Shenzhen grew at a rate of 20.5%, making it one of the strongest sectors of the local economy. Dafen and OCT Loft are often promoted as exemplars of successful cultural industry. Nevertheless, I don’t know how to interpret these statistics because when I visit some cultural industry sites — Dawang and 518, for example, I’m underwhelmed. begging the question, how universally successful is Shenzhen’s cultural industry or do these statistics more accurately reflects the determination of and concomitant investment by the government to push the economy in a certain direction?
Today, for example, I visited the Century Handicraft Culture Plaza (世纪工艺品文化广场), which was one of the earliest attempts to transform Shenzhen’s economy from industrial manufacturing to creative industry. Continue reading
Who’s in charge?
The online entry for Shenzhen Mayor Xu Qin (许勤) reads: 深圳市委副书记，市政府市长、党组书记 (Shenzhen Standing Committee Vice Secretary, Municipal Government Mayor and Party Secretary). However, Xu Qin isn’t the highest ranking official in the city; that honor goes to 中共广东省委常委、深圳市委书记、深圳警备区党委第一书记 (Standing member of the Guangdong Provincial Standing Committee, Secretary of the Shenzhen Standing Committee, and First Secretary of the Shenzhen Garrison Command) Wang Rong (王荣).
Here’s the curious moment du jour: to find an entry on Wang Rong, we have leave the Shenzhen Municipal Government website and head to either Baidu or the Central Government website. Also of interest, the Baidu link is more current than that of the Central Government, which hasn’t been updated since June 2009.
For a text message take on Shenzhen’s power structure, revisit Life Lessons.
afternoon sun, tianjin
Sexing the Greed, or How We’ve Gone from “Marrying Shenzhen” to “Can a Woman Get Married in Shenzhen?”
Surfing 天涯深圳, I came across a brief post by an author who claimed that her friends had urged her to leave the city because
“A woman can’t marry in Shenzhen. The most desperate are those who’ve been here form more than two years. There are more and more leftover women in Shenzhen and it’s a big problem (在深圳嫁不掉。其中一个在深圳待了两年的人更是发感慨，深圳剩女越来越多，是个大麻烦)”.
Clearly, this is a small blip in the much larger national discussion of “leftover women (剩女),” which (according to 百度百科) designates upwardly mobile, successful women who are still unmarried as they approach their 30th birthday. The over-30 crowd, it goes without saying, are desperate or resigning themselves to being single for the rest of their lives. The term as well as the debate are obviously misogynistic. More distressingly, however, like the phrase “naked marriage (裸婚)”, the expression “leftover woman” sexes the greed that has come to characterize Socialism with Chinese characteristics as if by fixing what’s wrong with women we could fix what’s wrong with society.
It’s a scary logic. Continue reading
lament of generation 80
Opportunity in the post-Mao era — like all opportunity — has been a question of being in the right place at the right time. Below, I have translated a blog post, lamenting the fact that even if Shenzhen is the right place, it is no longer the right time; the opportunities are going, going, gone and if what remains are wage labor and education, even they are not enough for the poor.
Of note, the author uses the expression “poor second generation (穷二代)”, the direct opposite of the “rich second generation (富二代)”. More interestingly, he refers to “second generation farmers (农二代)”, as if the transition from farmer to urban resident was a natural progression. However, there have been generations of Chinese farmers — in fact, this is one definition of traditional Chinese culture. What then, we might wonder, is it about Shenzhen that gives rise to the expectation that each generation must do economically better than the last?
Shenzhen: Unfortunate Generation 80, Unhappy Workers, and the Hopeless Poor Second Generation
First of all, let me explain that my title refers to me. Perhaps you, who are reading this heading are one of the lucky Generation 80, the happy office workers. Or, maybe you’re one of the poor second generation or a second generation farmer but aren’t hopeless. If so, congratulations. My opinion isn’t going to be yours, its only representative of my thoughts.
Why is Generation 80 unfortunate? Continue reading
listening to firecrackers
I’m in Tianjin, listening to the firecrackers that go from dusk well into the early hours of the morning. Traditionally, people set off firecrackers from New Year’s Eve through the Lantern Festival. Firecrackers also provided an opportunity for Tianjin friends to distinguish themselves from Cantonese people because “northerners love firecrackers more than southerners”. In fact, they said, the further north you go, the more festive the towns as firecrackers don’t stop.
I don’t actually know how much of my friend’s claim about northern enthusiasm for pyrotechnics is true. I do know that early on, Shenzhen attempted to outlaw firecrackers. In fact, I remember buying illegal firecrackers and setting them off at the coast. We drove with a truck full of illegal poppers to houhai land reclamation area, snuck out, and set them off. This year and last, however, I’ve noticed stands selling firecrackers because — according to a friend — the SZ Municipal government finally accepted the fact that it was safer to sell legal firecrackers and regulate production than the alternative.
I’m also told that people set of firecrackers just to “burn money”. Last year, the economy was good and people celebrated by “burning money”. However, this year I’m told that there are fewer people willing to buy firecrackers because of economic difficulties. Nevertheless, everyone I’ve talked with has set off firecrackers or played with sparklers; we bought a box of fireworks and watched them light up the sky for all of five minutes. New Year’s — relatives and friends emphasize — is the People’s holiday. In contrast, on National Day, only the government willingly burns money and, my friend joked, those fireworks are of different quality.
Shenzhen Noted 