Went for a ride with Sarah.
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another park, this time in dongmen
Went for a ride with Sarah.
Author Archives: Mary Ann O'Donnell
mapping the southern block, hubei old village
Students of Hong Kong artist, Momo Leung Meiping created a series of interventions in Old Hubei Village. Projects included making pillows out of old clothing, poetry painted onto the walls, a balloon release, an exhibition of portraits, planters made out of old bricks, and a map of the area with renamed streets. We followed their tracks and discovered the joy public art can bring.
on shenzhen speed
When I’m free associating about the dovetail between addictions to pharmaceutical and economic speed, the problems of capitalism make uncanny sense.
Deng Xiaoping first used the term “Shenzhen Speed” during his 1984 tour to describe the construction of Shenzhen University, where students designed and built their own campus. During his second tour in 1992, Deng was taken to the revolving restaurant at the top of the the International Trade Building (国贸大厦), which went up one floor every three days. Just recently, the KK 100 Plaza broke that record, going up one floor every two days.
Today, most Shenzhen workers and leaders, in both the public and private sectors need to produce “results” at Shenzhen Speed. In addition to construction times, for example, students are expected to learn more Chinese characters in less time than students in other cities; workers are expected to fill orders as quickly as possibly; and leaders are expected to continue to grow the economy faster than other cities both in China and abroad.
All this speed, of course, is about competative advantage. If a student knows more characters than another, she gets a higher grade and more social status. If workers fill orders faster than in other companies, they get more orders and earn more money for their company. If leaders grow the economy, they get promoted from sub-provincial positions (like mayor) to provincial positions (like minister of transportation, Guangdong Government). And yes, all that social status feels good and is precisely why we push ourselves into the future — we win. If we learn more faster, we become valedictorian. If we make more faster, we get on the Forbes 500 honor roll of largest companies. If we grow the largest economy, we can start interferring in the economies of neighboring countries to our own benefit.
Shenzhen residents are justifiably proud of all they have accomplished in just over thirty years. The Municipality has become not only one of the most important cities in China, but also changed how the developing world thinks about development and how the developed world thinks about China. Sometimes, however, when I think about Shenzhen speed, my mind wanders off the question of rising gross domestic product (GDP) free associates to questions of drug addition and how good a rush can feel, even as it fries our brain.
Speed is the street name of
amphetamine, a psychostimulant drug that produces increased wakefulness and focus in association with decreased fatigue and appetite, which is to say amphetamine makes us feel more awake, happy, and sexy, without giving us the munchies. We feel like we’re moving. Fast. It turns out that Methamphetamine or ice or crystal meth is basically amphetamine squared, which is to say that meth does everything that amphetamine does and then metabolizes into amphetamine and so the body gets to go through the whole process again. Faster and faster and faster and faster. And moving fast can be fun.
One of the earliest uses of methamphetamine was to keep soldiers awake and fighting during WWII. In fact, it went under the names Pilot’s chocolate and tankers’ chocolate. After WW II, Japanese companies used meth to keep workers awake, while the United States and Western European countries imported methaphetamine to treat narcolepsy, Parkinsons, alcoholism, depression, and obesity. Methamphetamine was also marketed for sinus inflammation or for non-medicinal purposes as “pep pills” — and there’s the connection between pharmaceutical and economic speed. “Speeding up” feels good and enables us to achieve what we otherwise couldn’t. Indeed, students and workers take amphetamines to gain momentary competative advantage, while leaders constantly stimulate the economy.
Downside to amphetamine? It’s highly addictive and if we keep taking amphetamine we experience delusions and paranoia that are indistinguishable from a schizophrenic psychotic episodes. The crash and burn that comes from amphetamine abuse happens faster on meth. Unfortunately, the downsides of meth and regular amphetamine addiction can also metaphorically describe the downsides of cram schools, forced overtime, and urban planning that emphasizes real estate development rather than social wellbeing. Students are worried about getting good grades, workers are deluded into thinking that overtime will get them out of debt, and our leaders are paranoid about the aims and intentions of neighboring countries. Meanwhile, environmental deterioration continues accelerate.
Thought du jour: to the extent that profit under global capitalism is a function of time, we are all on speed. Moreover, that rush is about ranking and inequality and ultimately about how we define membership in world organizations. If nothing else, Shenzhen Speed set the pace for development in the Post Cold War order and it would behoove us to think about whose pushing the drug and why.
more on smog
Previously, sections of the Municipality had reported dangerous levels of carbon diaoxide, but on April 15, 2013 and for the first time in its history, Shenzhen recorded dangerous levels of air pollution in every part of the city.
Shenzhen is not alone in its unhealthy rush to a narrowly defined standard of wealth. Indeed, concern in Shenzhen follows upon the outrageous levels of pollution that were reported in Beijing. But as David Roberts reminds us, this level of pollution is just one example of a worldwide trend:
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) program sponsored by United Nations Environmental Program asked environmental consultancy, Trucost to tally up the total “unpriced natural capital” consumed by the world’s top industrial sectors. (“Natural capital” refers to ecological materials and services like, say, clean water or a stable atmosphere; “unpriced” means that businesses don’t pay to consume them.) …The biggest single environmental cost? Greenhouse gases from coal burning in China. The fifth biggest? Greenhouse gases from coal burning in North America.
Moreover, our respective industrial sectors thrive on coal:
I feel like I parrot myself at every opportunity: the United States and China are the same country. Really. The similarities are of kind, while our differences are merely of scale. And so the question remains: how do we fix shared problems, rather than getting settling for the politics of blame?
click this
The internet confuses us into thinking that everything we need to know can be found in one place, such as the Shenzhen Life Net (深圳生活王), where all sorts of information and experiences are just a click away. Questions about public welfare? Click 社保. Want to watch whatever is currently being broadcast on Shenzhen’s television 16 television channels? Click 电视. You can also find out about traffic conditions, confirm important dates on the lunar calendar almanac, and figure out how much tax you owe: click, click, and click!
In fact, Shenzhen’s ongoing efforts to modernize by becoming one of the most inter-connected cities on the planet continue to fill virtual space with all sorts of information. The government is online. The library is online. The museum is online. And the historical archives are online. Moreover, Tencent, one of the key Chinese companies inter-connecting us through qq and we chat is a Shenzhen company.
At the same time that Shenzhen builds its virtual world, China’s great firewall continues to make it difficult to click to the New York Times, or Facebook, or Youtube without a tunnel. Ineed, just the other day, China banned its media from quoting foreign news articles without permission. In this sense, Shenzhen’s vast internet culture is itself the form of a pervasive inequality and the ideological expression of this inequality. The point as Global Voices co-founder and author of Consent of the Networked, Rebecca McKinnon has argued:
A substantial body of previous work has been produced over the past two decades on human rights risks in sectors such as extractives or labor services. Much less work has been done on business and human rights in the ICT sector – particularly on free expression and privacy rights. The novelty of the technology requires a translation exercise of existing human rights principles, policy, and law to ICT platforms and services.
In practical terms, however, surfing the internet often seems less about human connection and building more just worlds (as in the human writes discussion) as it does a question of our tendency to mental addictions. On the bus and subway, in meetings and movie theaters, we click, click, click through life. There is a compelling distraction to click culture. At times, I find myself simply clicking to visit sites that I have just left. I click away not because I think I may discover another post, but because the repetive action distracts me from the fact that all I’m doing is procastinating. I have have found myself fascinated by the number of visitors and clicks that Noted receives; confirmation that I have an audience. So pernicious is my click addiction that sometimes I even confuse the number of clicks with the value of my research.
I also am wondering how much of my online dependency is an expression of other forms of alienation in everyday life. My friends, for example, work long hours across town. It is difficult to arrange time together simply to hang out and chat without internet access. Likewise, the extent of urbanization in Shenzhen means that I can’t simply walk outside and enjoy fresh air and mountains. Instead, I have to navigate a six-lane road to jump on a bus, which then trundles off toward a central hub. In other words, I’m not sure how much of my online life is an attempt to heal virtually problems that can only be solved through realworld communities and life changes.
So today, I’m thinking about questions of scale and what manageable communities might look like, on the ground, here in Shenzhen, where popoulation density is over 5,500 per square kilometer and we still haven’t figured out how to plan and manage integrated communities.
life is elsewhere
These past few days back in Shenzhen, I have had several conversations about the fact that so many Chinese families are sending their children abroad to study. Moreover, since the point is to get the children out of China, the consensus seems to be, the sooner the children leave, the better and so more and more families are sending their only children to boarding schools.
The reasons are many — better education, better job opportunities, better environment, healthier food, more access to information — but all boil down to the perception that life is better in the United States than it is in China. This is also a sentiment I’ve heard from thoughtful American friends, who are frustrated by the lack of public accountability and trust in public projects (mostly overbuilding for profit) in both Shenzhen and the interior.
By sending their children abroad, friends and colleagues make a clear statement about their confidence in Shenzhen’s future. The situation has me wondering whether or not it is wise to remain in China. What’s more, these doubts seem more pervasive than previously. Cetainly it’s ironic that just as Shenzhen seems to have made the international headlines, the elite — both economic and academic — are opting out of the Shenzhen dream.
cold war ghosts in shenkong
For those inquiring minds that wonder, what was Shenzhen before it was Shenzhen, the opening scene from the 1963 classic Tracking Threats (跟踪追击) reveals a threatened border and enemies whose souls have been twisted through betrayal. After the credits, the film opens with a scene of soldiers guarding the border and the Luohu bridge opening to allow peasants (and a spy) enter the country. From the filming, it is difficult to see immediately who the heroes and villains are. Instead, we find ourselves faced with a narrative tradition that begins with a social situation which the narrative gradually analyzes.
At the border, the guard opens an old woman’s bag, in which he finds a carton of cigarettes and candies. Suspicious, he opens the carton and discovers gunpowder hidden inside. Similarly, the candies also turn out to be decoys. The old woman protests that she’s never seen these items before. Her story is confirmed when another guard discovers an unclaimed bag, which includes toy cars that have been used to smuggle gunpowder
The security officer, Li Minggang leads a team to discover what’s happening. They follow the clues to the toy factory, where old Lin Dexiang works loyally. It turns out his nephew, Lin Yonggui was the spy who replaced the goods in the old woman’s bag. Li Minggang turns Lin Yonggui, who is used as a double agent to uncover the net of spies. This network includes refugees who try to escape to Hong Kong, smugglers of commercial goods, and of course, the evil chief spy, Xu Ying.
Tracking Threats was one of a series of movies that reflected the militarization of the Sino-British border during the 1950s. Indeed, between 1956 through 1958, the Guangzhou Security Department cracked several cases of Taiwanese incursions into Guangdong, and also discovered weapon stockpiles. During the 1960s, the Pearl River Delta Studio produced a series of red spy movies. The earliest, Secret Map (秘密图纸，1960) also filmed at the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border, but did not actually name the border crossing.
In retrospect, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border in Tracking Threats seems claustrophobic and artificially patriotic à la contemporary North Korea. There is heroic music. There are poor but honest peasants. The military is distinctly noble. However, we know that by the mid 60s, China had already suffered famine and that Hong Kong had begun its economic reconstruction. Thus, during production filmmakers were not allowed to film the Hong Kong side of the border. Moreover, several peasants tried to take advantage of the filming and cross the border. They were, however, caught.
And yet. In Tracking Threats, the ideal of patriotism as a source of ethical thinking appears as pure and noble and good and far, far away from where we find ourselves in the post Cold War world.
In 2009, the earliest of the 1960s spy films, Secret Map was remade into a 30 episode television series （秘密图纸）. Unlike the original movie, the television series opens with the spy murdering his godfather, who is portrayed as a Japanified elderly gentleman. The historic link, of course, was the Japanese colonization of Taiwan. In this way, the television series Secret Maps recodes race betrayals of Tracking Threats as a question of generational betrayals (the godfather raising his godson to hate the Communists). In scene two, the spy, now a sympathetic anti-hero, washes up on the Shenzhen coast, where he is immediately captured by a beautiful revolutionary, a gaggle of peasants, and a noble peasant-soldier.
And there’s the interesting neoliberal rub: in the transition from 1960s Guangdong to new millennium Shenzhen, the Mainland-Taiwan conflict has been recoded as a story of misplaced love, rather than misplaced patriotism, while the desire for forbidden consumer goods has been naturalized. Indeed, that naturalization is precisely what makes the anti-hero sympathetic; he may have loved wrongly, but he knew what the fight was about. However, as in any good neoliberal bromance, love conquers all just before the anti-hero dies.
chinatowns
Today, I’m wondering about how the prejudices that contemporary China exports overlap with historical prejudices in the West, especially when we talk about “Chinatowns” or “traditional” and “rural” China. In other words, what to make of the fact that Westerners continue to like Chinatowns (and urban villages), while China’s rising elite does not?
Yesterday, I ate lunch with Shenzhen friends at Hakkasan, a hip international Chinese-inspired chain (with amazing desserts) and then walked Chinatown, San Francisco. Before we separated, my northern Mainland friends (who had enjoyed the food) warned me that Chinatown was “just like Chaozhou in the 1960s”. The implication was not only that Chinatown was backward, but also that there wasn’t anything there to see or enjoy. Instead, they were interested in buying a home in Mission Bay, which was new and modern and, in many ways, just like Shenzhen albeit, “not as convenient”.
The historic link between Chinatown, San Francisco and other Guangdong settlements is explicit. The Kaiping watchtowers, for example, were not only built with monetary remittances from Overseas Chinese in San Francisco, but also with materials, techniques, and blueprints that were sent back home. In fact, there is a Kaiping Hometown Association on Washingtown St (开平侨网). I enjoyed my walk. But then again, I also like Shenzhen urban villages. I also appreciate informal forms of urbanization across Guangzhou, which nourishes dense settlements and lively commerce.
The fact that my friends drew attention to the “backwardness” of Chinatown, SF echoed similar warnings about urban villages, Shenzhen. In fact, explicit contrast either to neidi or locally to the urban villages predicates the celebration of modern Shenzhen. The difference hinges on the glorification of the wealthy and their tasteful lifestyles in contradistinction to the working poor and their traditional lifestyles. Of course, in practice, “tradition” glosses low-tech practices that enable the working poor to “make do” with less than their share of the goods their labor produced.
These past few years, Shenzhen has also become increasingly well known in the foreign media. It is no longer just a symbol of the government’s decision to reform and open the Maoist system, but also an example of the success of that decision. Today, Chinese no longer disparage Shenzhen as being backward, nor do they exhort me to go elsewhere to see the real China. Instead, new immigrants say how wonderful Shenzhen is and second generation residents are proud to say they come from Shenzhen. Indeed, they now claim it is the “best city” in China, and note that it is more livable than Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou.
On the one hand, my friends’ determination to distinguish themselves from the residents of Chinatown, San Francisco as well as the fact that they did so via Chaozhou should give pause. After all, within Guangdong, Chaozhou is considered one of the largest homelands for Overseas Chinese as well as one of the most “traditional”. On the other hand, Western racism enabled colonialism abroad and ghettoization at home. Guangdong immigrants appropriated elements of these twinned processes to create neighborhoods in their hometowns, new and old. Similarly, migrant workers to Shenzhen take advantage of reform and opening policies to create lives in adverse conditions.
Inspirations from Chinatown, San Francisco and culinary delights, below:
clarion alley
Sunshine + graffiti = joy. Thank you residents of Clarion Alley for reminding us what public art is and why we need it.
gentle reminder from the folks at tencent
Like many population questions in China, the actual population of We Chat users is guestimated but unconfirmed. According to its app page, We Chat boasts over 300 million users or the population of the United States and growing. In news reports, the population has been posted at 200 million users.
Throughout this trip to the US, I have maintained my links with Shenzhen friends via We Chat. This makes me one of a fast growing — what? — group? Community? Chinese speaking chatty Kathies? If it were a country, the We Chat app population would be the 6th most populous country in the world (population clock). The app would have 2/3 the population of the United States, 1/6 the population of India, and 1/7 the population of China. And here’s the rub: the We Chat population is mediated by one company in Shenzhen.
All this information came to a head because yesterday the We Chat Product Team at Tencent gently reminded me and over that:
Recently, the message that “We Chat will charge its users” has circulated on weibo. This is malicious gossip. We ask everyone not to believe these rumors. The We Chat Product Team states that it will not charge users, more we are currently developing new functions, hoping that We Chat will be more user-friendly and more fun.
近期在微博上流传的“微信要对用户收费”，纯属有人恶意造谣，请大家不要相信谣言。微信产品团队表示，微信绝不会对用户收费，并称正在开发下一版本的新功能，希望可以让微信更好用，也更好玩。
The team sent the message to me via the We Chat app. I also receive news casts via We Chat. Each message includes a main article with a large image, and three small articles with a thumbnail. Headlines du moment are:
- A Bali Plane with 101 passengers sinks into the sea;
- Xi Jinping will see American Secretary of State, John Kerry, the Americans call the North Korean question the key issue;
- The husband of a Shanghai woman with Avian flu catches it, however its still not clear if people can transmit the disease to each other;
- Geng Yanbo was selected Mayor of Taiyuan City, Shandong, he was once known unofficially as “the Mayor who builds cities”.
Now We Chat has a smaller population than Microsoftlandia, which has boasted 750 million users worldwide. However, unlike Mircrosoft, We Chat as actual access to every user through their phones. Mine chimes and I know I have received a message. Moreover, this app is being used to feed me information and news. Thus, today, I’m wondering what it means that (a) I received this message while traveling in the States — indeed, these few weeks We Chat has my primary form of communication with Chinese friends, and (b) given the number of users, the message is itself news — in other words, We Chat has a “private” line to its 300 million users that sidesteps Government oversight.
Shenzhen Noted 