Category Archives: noted

on loneliness

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Before she came to Shenzhen, my neighbor taught middle school English in Heilongjiang. Her son learned well and came to Shenzhen, where he was able to use his skills. Indeed, his ability to speak with his American boss in English remains a source of pride for Teacher Liu. And like many who came to Shenzhen, he brought his mother as soon as he could. However, opportunities in California called him and now Teacher Liu lives in Shenzhen, alone, reading, watching TV, and taking walks in the courtyard. Her daughter calls, but doesn’t believe a foreigner can speak Chinese; I have promised to meet her the next time she comes to Shenzhen.

Teacher Liu decided not to return to Heilongjiang because she is older and the weather here is better. At one time, she thought she would take care of her grandson, but her son and daughter-in-law left and are waiting for a more opportune time to have a child. When I ask why she doesn’t join them in California, where the weather is also nice, Teacher Liu shrugs and says, “They’re good, the two of them. I don’t want to go.” Nevertheless, she is alone and lonely and desires a way of participating in the community. “If I had something to do,” she repeats, “then I could be useful.”

Teacher Liu’s loneliness speaks to me. In part because my parents are older and elsewhere. In part because I too depend on the goodwill of friends, rather than deep kinship ties. And also in part because I see something fundamentally human in her condition. The care she takes to dress nicely, to go for walks, and keep her apartment clean — the work is the work that makes us recognizably human.

shekou nostalgia

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More documentation of historic selectivity than anything else, the photographs below suggest the crafting of Shekou’s meaning in larger Shenzhen discourse; the time is money, efficiency is life billboard has been upgraded, even as one of the old centers of reform, the plaza around the Shekou Theater falls into disrepair, old streets seem strangely empty, graffiti arts paint on construction site walls, and land reclamation has me talking about where the old Dongjiaotou docks used to be.

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Face Engineering Projects – 面子工程

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I’ve learned a new expression, face engineering projects (面子工程), which I understand to mean large scale social mobilization that is just for show and will vanish with the project’s intended audience. Continue reading →

Roadside witness

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Mud-splattered irises, temporary shrines, cracked toilets, and tightly held rows of imported topiary churn up and turn over at constructions’ edge. At dusk, the laws of science and the mind loom inevitable, rather than take their place among other hypotheses about how and what a modern world might be. So yes. Entropy and Freud – we bury the rubble of once coherent stories to reclaim Houhai waters. And yet. Here was once a mangrove boundary. A path to the docks. A boat to the oyster beds. Another world.

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manhole covers

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For several years, I have been taking pictures of manhole covers because they suggest how decentralized Shenzhen planning and development were back in the day. One of the “five connections and one leveling” or “seven connections and one leveling” was setting up a sewage system and so many early sewage connections were made by developers, rather than the city. Below, a sampling of manhole covers, ranging from village level through enterprise and district areas to the city itself.

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Japan Talk

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Yesterday at lunch, a friend from Hong Kong talked about the influx of Japanese and how there was now speculation about how the local housing market would be impacted. This led to speculation that soon Shenzhen might also see Japanese home buyers. Someone then commented that the problem had been caused by arrogance — the Japanese thought a dike would be enough to protect them, when they should have sited the nuclear plants well above the coast. Then partial sentences about Japanese national character and a pause in the conversation, which was broken when someone commented, “The Japanese really are to be pitied.”

My friends are of an age that they were raised to hate Japan. Indeed, a large component of their nationalism has been anti-Japanese. No matter how bad CCP abuses of power have become, nor how strongly they support anti-corruption efforts, nevertheless every National Day, they have celebrated winning the War against Japan and remembered Japanese atrocities in Nanjing. So yesterday was interesting because my friends were actively processing anti-Japanese sentiments along with a strong ethical sense that victims of disasters are to be pitied and helped. Their ethical sense carried the lunch.

Obviously human empathy can be engaged before tragedies of this magnitude occur; my friends had been amazingly sympathetic for Wenchuan earthquake victims, for example. Yet yesterday’s lunch conversation  has me wondering about how much tragedy or meditation or ethical training is needed to get each of us out of the complacent antagonisms that define us as individuals or activists or patriots. And as citizens, how do we learn to hold our leaders more accountable for nationalistic hate-speach even when (and yes because) we have come to believe so much of it?

weibo protests Shenzhen police action against migrant workers

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Follow-up on last post: there have been weibo posts about Shenzhen’s decision to force 80,000 people out of the city.  Of note, the incident has led to Lu Xun spirited condemnations of “Chinese character”. A few translations from the past 1/2 hour:

Shi Shusi‘s summery: 深圳为了确保大运会顺利举办，确定“黑八类”予以驱逐本身是个闹剧，而不少人在俺的博客留言对此政策表示拥护则是个杯具。他们不是神马强势阶层，仅仅有幸没被列入驱逐黑名单——类似阿Q面对更弱的小D，肆意欺凌，没有任何慈悲和怜悯。这证明深圳此举是有一定群众基础的，这有些令人绝望。

In order to insure safety at the Universiade, determining “a playoff list” to determine who is banished is a farce, and many people posted that those upholding the policy were in a bad play [sic]. The ones upholding the policy aren’t the advantaged, but rather the lucky ones who didn’t get black listed — like when A Q faced the even weaker Little D, wantonly humiliating him, without compassion or sympathy. This shows that the policy has a wide base, making some people despair.

  • 说明当权者成功的一面。许多人不知不觉中成为阿斗，成为帮凶，到自己也深受其害是才发觉周围已没有人再为自己呐喊了，华夏民族的悲哀。This just goes to show one side of success. Many aren’t aware that they’ve become fools and accomplices until they discover that there is no one around to yell for help when they are in trouble. This is the sadness of Chinese people.