Category Archives: noted

choices, choices

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I enjoy hanging with Daomei because he lives the unexpected life. To support his nascent acting career, he recently decided to become a lifeguard and is now completing a series of trainings, including Red Cross training to recognize and respond to heart attack symptoms and pulling dead weight through cold waves.

Daomei’s career swerves and occupational dabbling may seem familiar to Americans, but in Shenzhen, it sparkles. Moreover, it reveals a crack in what is often perceived (in China and abroad) as Shenzhener’s relentless pursuit of economic prosperity. Although it is true that many of Daomei’s classmates have settled for more mundane career tracks, nevertheless it is also true that for the tens of students who have taken paths opened by their parents or slipped into more cynical careers such as corporate drinking buddy, there is one who has left Shenzhen to roam Yunnan and another who pursued yoga. All this to say, Daomei is probably an extreme case, but he is no lone ranger — Shenzhen’s thirty somethings are grappling with the choices and individualistic possibilities that the city’s wealth has created for a small, but active middle class.

I can’t wait to see Daomei at the beach!

educational experimentation in shenzhen

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For many years, I have noted the extent to which education has been closed off from the forms of social experimentation that characterize other aspects of Shenzhen society. Shenzhen was first to reform the danwei system, housing allocation, and even hukou laws. However, education has rigidly conformed to national standards — curriculum, methods, and goals, all have reflected national values and goals. When there has been experimentation, it has taken the form of international education — importing extant curriculums, such as the A-levels or American programs, rather than re-inventing Chinese schools. Even University Town (深圳大学城), which provides graduate education and research facilities has developed within a more standard academic model.

Yesterday, the opening ceremony of Southern Institute of Technology (南方科技大学) indicated a willingness on the part of both the national and municipal governments to invest in the search for new pedagogies. Differences with traditional colleges include: (1) size: SIT will offer small scale undergraduate education. The first class has only 45 students; next year, SIT will take in a class of 150, building until a cap of 400 students per class year. (2) recruitment: SIT recruits students through individual application rather than through the gaokao. (3) evaluation and graduation requirements: SIT has hired top academics to design classes and determine what course content should be. Moreover, at the level of specialization, students will be given the opportunity to design their own major. This is significantly different from the national standard, where undergraduate programs still reflect national standards. Moreover, there is little opportunity for students to study outside their major, let alone design their own. (4) residential dorms with house parents / teachers. SIT hopes to encourage a more familial atmosphere in its dorms and to provide life counseling for students as they adapt to academic life. Indeed, to my American eyes, SIT seems more like a liberal arts college than it does a university — Harvey Mudd, rather than a tradition technological institute like Qinghua or Cal Tech.

Four years to see what happens, at which point, presumably more cities and colleges will be given the opportunity to reform Chinese higher education.

my new favorite map

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I have just found my new favorite map of Shenzhen. Published in 2009 by the Bureau of Land Resource Use and Real Estate (深圳市国土资源和房产管理局), the map is not only large, but reads like a beautiful promissory note. Indeed the map promises that, “The Beautiful Shenzhen Will Have a Brighter Future.”

Said map includes the complete plan of the subway system, which is still under construction, proposed buildings, and as yet incomplete parks. Moreover, in the spirit of international goodwill, it includes the addresses of foreign consulates in Guangzhou, a map of the domestic and international flights from Shenzhen, business hours of the city’s various border crossings, and a list of rail connections to other cities. Indeed, its as if the map was designed to anticipate growth, much like a parent buys larger clothing for young children to grow into.

I’m not sure if the purpose of this map is to attract people to live in the city or facilitate their passage through on their way elsewhere. I do think, however, that the point is to eventually find oneself off the map. After all, we are walking forward into the not yet constructed, rather than heading toward the already built.

If even the Japanese can become refugees, what should China’s mortgage slaves do?

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The sight of Japanese refugees has forced us to rethink global modernity because if Japan’s house of cards can fall, then none of us are safe. Below, I’ve translated Yang Qian’s thoughts. Chinese version follows. Also, in Mandarin the term “房奴” literally means “house slaves”, however because the term refers to people who have been enslaved by their mortgage debt, I’ve used the expression mortgage slave. If anyone has a better translation, please advise.

If even the Japanese can become refugees, what should China’s mortgage slaves do?

By Yang Qian

The fact of Japanese refugees is something we’re not used to.

For Chinese people, we’re not surprised to see refugee centers and camps in Africa, the near East, or countries like the Balkans. While famine, drought, and panic cause people to loose their homes or even die of sickness in war torn places like Somalia, Pakistan, Chechnya, and Afghanistan. In these places, it’s not strange at all to see ordinary people take on extraordinary suffering. But who ever imagined that refugee camps would appear overnight in Japan, once the second richest country in the world, where 100s of thousands of people struggle with hunger and death? Continue reading →

News from Tokyo (by way of Shenzhen gossip)

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First night back in Shenzhen and went to dinner with a former student, who has just returned from Tokyo, where she has been studying a MFA in Theatre and Expression. What became clear over the course of the conversation was how Chinese political and news reporting conventions continue to shape understanding of what is happening in Japan.  Continue reading →

Householding perversions

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I have been thinking about the Generation 90s beauty who would would give her chest as a pillow (献酥胸当枕头求降房价的90后美女), householding as a way of locating oneself in a larger social order, the phallic order of Chinese writing conventions, and the perverse nature of Shenzhen’s housing situation.

Continue reading →

Delta restructuring, or the politics of economic expansion

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In the  Chinese administration of economic inequality, higher rankings may be converted into better opportunities. Indeed, that’s the point: to grow the stronger and pull everyone else into the future with you (which is one possible interpretation of the Shanghai debate about “adjusting” the economic dance of cities that constitute the Yangtse Dragon). Anyway, the ranking of each of Guangdong’s 21 地市 cities are:

1. Guangzhou; 2. Shenzhen; 3. Foshan; 4. Zhuhai; 5. Shantou; 6. Shaoguan; 7. Heyuan; 8. Meizhou; 9. Huizhou; 10. Shanwei; 11. Dongguan; 12. Zhongshan; 13. Jiangmen; 14. Yangjiang; 15. Zhejian; 16. Maoming; 17. Zhaoqing; 18. Chaozhou; 19. Jieyang; 20. Yunfu; 21. Qingyuan.

This ranking scheme interests me because it formalizes the power shifts that have occurred in the PRD as a result of Reform and Opening. According to Governor Huang Huahua, Guangdong has all sorts of plans for the next year (and yes, the year begins after Chinese New Year, no matter what the rest of the planet is up to), including deepening the integration of the Pearl River Delta, which is  Guangdong’s equivalent of an economic dragon and includes Hong Kong by way of Shen Kong connections.

Continue reading →

Planned obsolescence? The Dafen Lisa and Shenzhen Identity

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507 artists worked on the  Dafen Lisa for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. However, as the City beautifies for the next big international event (the Universiade), the piece was targeted for removal because it does not conform to (ever changing) urban plans. Unexpectedly, the decision was successfully protested because the scale of Dafen’s collective copy of the Mona Lisa has produced a cultural item that is recognized as being unique to Shenzhen, which in turn, has led to debates about “to raze or not to raze (拆，还是不拆).”

This debate interests because it speaks to Shenzheners’ increasing recognition that over the past thirty years, what they have done is valuable and worthwhile, no matter what other people think. The birth, if you will, of civic pride against the very standards that were once the city’s raison d’être. Here’s the quote:

深圳为大运会整顿市容本没有错，街道、城管相关部门没有错。政府关注的是安全、规范、整洁；媒体关注的是文化艺术氛围，艺术家与画工关注的则是生存与创造环境。若果一定要说错，那可能是我们的文化错了：在一次次国际盛会面前，我们是如此“激动”，以至于显得不太自信。

Shenzhen is not wrong to beautify the city for the universiade, the relevant street and city departments are also not wrong. The government is concerned with safety, order, and tidiness; the media is concerned about cultural and artistic atmosphere, artists and art workers are concerned about their living and creative environment. Perhaps if we have to say something is wrong, maybe its that our culture is wrong: in international event after international event, we become this “excited”, which makes us seem to lack self-confidence.

Homes within homes

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As Shenzhen moves forward in it’s five-year plan to clean up illegal housing, city newspapers are focusing on 房中房 – literally houses within houses. More specifically, subdivided rooms within an urban village home have become a media flashpoint of the real conflict between affordable and safe housing because even white collar workers (let alone rural migrants) are unable to find affordable and convenient housing – once the lure of urban village rentals to young professionals.

another call for a housing boycott in shenzhen

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Folks in Shenzhen continue to protest the price of housing. This time, an armless beggar wrote the boycott call on the chest of a Generation 90s young woman. The interesting twist in this story? The young woman is from Hong Kong. I’m not sure how the protagonists’ collaboration ties into the ongoing re-structuring of a grassroots Shen Kong identity and deepening cross border integration (as opposed to official planning). Nevertheless, it is interesting to think about the implications of this protest performance: it took place in Lizhi Park, Futian, neither of the protagonists is identified as a Shenzhener, and yet this protest was represented in the press (晶报) as a Shenzhen story. Details, here.

Update (Mar 1): surfing in Youtube, I discovered a report that she had first tried to get a place to live by offering her chest as a pillow. However, the “price was too high” according to a man in the street.