Category Archives: shenzhen elsewhere

cultural smog

Posted on by

I am in Tianjin where the smog is thick. It creates grey on grey cityscapes and irritates eyes and throats. My niece, a lovely and talented young woman jokes that, “Chinese people have iron lungs,” instantly showing up the dystopian anxieties that animate cyberpunk and urban fantasy (as popular literary genres, not simply as lifestyle choices).

I remember similarly edged jokes from my mother’s relatives and friends when we went back to the UP, where iron mining and tree harvesting for the paper mills had reshaped the wild north. “That,” they said with a half apologetic laugh when they glimpsed our pinched noses, “that is the smell of money.” Continue reading →

occupy central: it’s not what you think

Posted on by

The US press, like many of my Chinese friends have focused on what the Hong Kong protestors won’t accomplish. This focus on future violence against students completely ignores the courageous possibilities that are offered in the present. Continue reading →

the violence of rural (re)construction (5): lessons from shenzhen

Posted on by

So what am I learning about Shenzhen through my engagement with Meizhou forced evictions and the young people who are trying to figure out how to articulate new relations to their Hakka past and rural injustice? Continue reading →

the violence of rural (re)construction (4): what gets preserved

Posted on by

Monday I joined the Meizhou preservationists in Enning Neighborhood Guangzhou, where we met to talk about how we could intervene in what was happening in Meizhou. There were two issues at stake. The first was straight-forward lay human rights–how do we help people keep their homes or guarrante a replacement home? The second was more abstract–what kind of buildings and spaces “ought” to be preserved for their historic value? Continue reading →

shen kong: hoodlum governments

Posted on by

The price of a night of sanctioned thuggery: image

This post from the anti-Occupy Central Blue Ribbon Organization offers HK$ 200 to meet up in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay and HK$ 300 to meet up in Admiralty. Also on offer are HK$ 500 bonus to dismantle supply stations and HK$ 1,000 to create chaos, which presumably means “incite students to violence so police can justify retaliation”. To receive payment, there must be documented proof. Those interested in the job can call Mr. Li at the listed number.

The scale of the October 2 attacks indicate that the thuggery was not only organized, but also condoned by the Hong Kong police. Indeed, tweets, Facebook posts and next day news reports agree that Hong Kong police watched while thugs attacked students. In response, the students held their positions even as leaders urged the to leave the site and keep safe.

The government’s decision to partner up with thugs rather than meet with students to discuss their concerns reveals how unrepresentative the administration is, demonstrating an ugly lack of good faith. More generally, the decision also reveals the foundational violence of states–in choosing not to protect students from thugs, the police reminded everyone that they have the authority to both oppose and sanction violence against unarmed citizens.

In Shenzhen, the ongoing news blackout about Hong Kong protests does more than create an ignorant populace (愚民政府). The Shenzhen news blackout serves the same purpose as Hong Kong police complicity with thugs. The blackout reminds the public (who in fact know about the protests and in general support the students) that the government has unequal access to weapons (informational, economic and military).

In Shenzhen it doesn’t matter what we know to be true because the official account has been set through the blackout–nothing is happening. After all, not just the specter of Tiananmen haunts us. We also know that this show of media dominance is a statement of intent: a government that is willing to suppress information is also willing to use violence to secure its goals. Thus, although we know the official story is a deliberate lie, we do not break it, becoming complicit in the lies and violence against the Hong Kong students, even though we are also being attacked. And thus talk of support protests is effectively stymied.

The logic of informational violence is clear: Shenzhen people know about the protests, but accept the news blackout as inevitable. This acceptance is a demonstration of government power. The blackout is a deployment of informational violence against the people because it indicates that the government is willing to deploy weapons to insure compliance.

Indeed, in Shenzhen as in Hong Kong, the government is acting to isolate people from each other, creating vulnerable individuals and ultimately creating targets. As Beijing lawyer activist Bao Tong (鲍彤) pointedly asks in an opinion piece circulating on We Chat, “who exactly is responsible for blocking peaceful resolution of the universal suffrage question?”

Meanwhile, on October 1, Anonymous, a group of hacker-activists declared virtual war on the Hong Kong government, including the very scary threat to post private information of functionaries.

occupy central: impressions

Posted on by

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Democracy movement and fateful crackdown on June 4, 1989. Annual commemoration protests have continued in Hong Kong since then. Perhaps 25 years of organized resistance to the violence of the Chinese State against unarmed protestors and commemorating student courage nurtured the soil for Occupy Central, nevertheless this year young Hong Kong people found voice and civil form for their own cause–truly democratic elections and autonomy in education, the media, and social organization. Indeed, if this level of civil disobedience is the result, all our children should grow up with the fine example of commemoration protests. And patience for our just seeds to bear fruit.

Beijing has already confirmed its support of Leung Chun Ying, the SAR’s unpopular Chief Executive, and crony of folks in Beijing. Unfortunately, the more cynical of us on this side of the border may be correct in supposing that as far as Beijing leaders are concerned what matters about the protest how it impacts Beijing.

Anyway, yesterday my husband and I crossed at Shenzhen Bay to Hong Kong, taking a bus directly to Sheung Wan. We arrived around 3 pm. The streets near the Macau Ferry Terminal drop-off point were quiet. As we followed the second floor walkway that winds from the terminal to Central and Wanchai, we passed several hundred Filipina and Indonesian maids, who occupied half the walkway. Like the students students, they sat on flattened cardboard boxes and plastic sheets, chatting, playing cards, and snacking, their umbrellas positioned to protect them from sunlight and rain. In fact, for over three decades, the guest workermaids have been occupying Hong Kong’s elevated walkways and public parks on their one day a week off. Arguably, it’s possible that the maids have taught the students something about how to make oneself at home on concrete.

The protest itself stretches about 6 kilometers. Without the cars, crowds, and noise of an open for business Central, the city’s amazing 3-dimensionality it becomes suddenly apparent. There are overpasses and walkways, underpasses and roads that split and curl into the air. The pristine glass and steel of Honk Kong’s iconic buildings shimmers into mythic forms. In the afternoon small groups of students sat on cardboard or plastic sheets chatting. Some had formed larger groups to listen to and and join conversations about the movement and the importance of securing social justice through civil disobedience. And yes, the reports are true. Hong Kong’s young people have put civility into civil disobedience.

A map of occupied area:

image

You can learn about the movement, their ideals and tactics at Occupy Central, a blog that keeps one abreast of the situation from a student perspective. You can also download the Chinese manual for peacefully occupying Central, 和平占中 which was published several days before the students began their collective action. As Sedna Popovic and Tori Porell argue in their article over at Slate, it’s the curtesy and non-violence that makes the Hong Kong protests formidable.

In solidarity with the students, impressions of an afternoon of peace and love for Hong Kong:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

the violence of rural (re)construction (3): living genealogies

Posted on by

If you google “Hakka” all sorts of information comes up, ranging from Wikipedia’s Hakka People brief through the overwhelming comprehensive blog 客家风情 to more academic takes such as “The Secret History of The Hakkas: the Chinese Revolution as a Hakka Enterprise“.

These articles emphasize that the Hakka left the central plains for Southern China in a series of migrations. Hakka literally means “Guest People” and in the anthology, Down to Earth: The Territorial Bond in South China, for example, David Faure, Helen Siu and their colleagues nicely track the differentiation of Han Chinese into various ethnic groups, including the Dan (boat people not allowed on land), the Hakka, and dominant Cantonese.

image

Over time, the Hakka developed a distinct culture and history, including unique roles in the Taiping Rebellion (Hong Xiuquan was a Hakka) and subsequent Chinese Revolution; Sun Yat-Sen, the Soong sisters, and Deng Xiaoping, for example, were all Hakkas. Distinguishing features of Hakka identity include language, food, architecture, and a commitment to tradition and education that is said to exceed that of neighboring groups. Importantly, however, given the geographic range of Hakka settlements both within and outside the Chinese mainland, there is much diversity within the group. The Hakka standard is set in Meizhou, the county seat of Meixian, which brings us back to what’s at stake with the forced evictions in Meizhou.

The Hakka have lived in large compounds, where extended patrilineal families resided in organized proximity. These complexes have functioned as material genealogies with hierarchy emphasized through one’s room(s) within and location relative to the ancestral shrine, which has pride of place in any Hakka homestead. Indeed, even after compounds have been abandoned for newer buildings, often the ancestral shrine continues to host rituals and family matters, such as death memorials.

Many of the large homes that have been or are threatened with forced demolition in the Meizhou suburbs are low-income realizations of the larger ideal of bringing one family line together in one place. Overseas family members have contributed funds to build the homesteads, where several generations do live together. Importantly, those at home hold it for family members who are working either overseas or in cities like Shenzhen. Indeed, memories of and anticipated arrivals of absent family members characterize these homes. As does the cherished expectation of reunion, when the homestead will be filled and the family complete.

Also of note, many of the people standing guard over a family’s living history are women, who have married into the line and are therefore not considered part of the genealogy. So when the householder is female, she holds it for her sons, rather than explicitly for her husband. It became clear in conversation, that many of the women wanted a house for their families–children and maternal relatives, rather than explicitly to continue a particular line. Moreover, while the women told stories of their lives in these homes, the men would emphasize how these homes held a larger family together. Thus, the 5 or 6 women I spoke with were spoke of the need to keep a place for memories and future visits, while the men were more likely to demand compensation that would allow them to reproduce the building itself.

The unmaking of the multi-generational family has been one of the most obvious consequences of rural urbanization. After these homes are razed, they are replaced by smaller homes for China’s version of the nuclear family–an elder or two who take care of the only child of two working parents. In terms of traditional history, this breakdown clearly causes suffering and disorientation as family members try to make sense of a life without a shared root, even as it is also clearly that another uprooting has already taken place; the young people spoke Mandarin while their elders spoke Hakka. The results of centralized education and migrating populations contextualize the violence of rural reconstruction with respect to an ongoing state project to remake the countryside in Beijing’s image.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Part I/ Meizhou: The Violence of Rural (re)Construction

Part II/ Meizhou: Hoodlum Government

Part IV/ Meizhou: What Gets Preserved

Part V/ Meizhou: Lessons from Shenzhen

Meizhou VI/ Meizhou: Selected Translations

Occupy Hong Kong: A View from Shenzhen

Posted on by

This is a tale of two occupations–in Tin Sau Bazaar and Central, the former artistic and the later political, but both explicit calls for social justice.

On Saturday night, friends and I crossed the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border at Shenzhen Bay and took a local bus to the Tin Shui Wai (天水围) metro, where we jumped on the light rail to Tin Sau (天秀) and it’s underused bazaar.

The bazaar itself presented the symptoms of hyper planning. Isolated near the Chinese border, Tin Sau is home to low-income and chronically under employed Hong Kong residents. It is also inconveniently located with respect to the Tin Shui Wai town center. In short, visiting the market for anyone but local residents is a problem. Tin Sau hawkers and residents had set up an open and low-capital flee market in any empty lot. The flee market catered to the needs of its immediate community. However,the government decided to improve the situation by installing small stalls and kiosks that were too expensive for vendors to rent because the location only serves a low volume of local residents. Not unexpectedly the local response to hyper planning has been resentment and a lingering despair over the government’s failure not only to help the people of Tin Sau, but instead to have actively hurt them through ill considered policies.

This particular Saturday night culminated several months of community interventions with an Autumn Night’s Fair (天水秋凉祭) which had been organized by the Make a Difference program of the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture. MaD brings together young Hong Kongers aged 16-35 in order to provide fresh solutions to social problems. The Fair itself aimed to generate public interest in and support of local vendors. The Chinese name of the fair conveys the idea of autumn coolness, and indeed gentle breezes felt clean and fresh on bare arms and exposed faces. The tour of the bazaar, the art events, and karaoke area animated the area, bringing a sense of festivity to the area.

And yet. Although many people participated in the art events, fewer seemed to be shopping, which was the point of the Fair. It was clear that keeping the bazaar and this small community vibrant would require future interventions. Nevertheless, my Shenzhen friends were impressed by the social impulse behind the Fair, commenting that this was the work artists should be doing. They also expressed hope that such public benefit programs (公益) could be brought to Shenzhen in order to ameliorate injustice in the city.

Meanwhile in Central, tensions between unarmed student protestors and the police were escalating. The Occupy Central movement has embodied the social justice issue of Tin Sau–crudely, too much government high-handedness, not enough democracy–at a larger and more specifically political level. As I understand the protests, the justified complaint is that Beijing supervision of Hong Kong education and society will lead first to more restrictions on thought and action, and subsequently to a more complacent, less democratic populace.

Discussions I have seen on WeChat and Facebook indicate that Shenzheners who are talking about the issue sympathize with the students. They see a need for more openness and expressive freedom in Shenzhen. However, there have been no calls for support protests as in Taipei. Instead, the debate has reanimated questions from Tiananmen, namely: just how much opposition will the government allow before it takes punitive action? The terms of the conversation–allow, punitive action–chillingly illustrate how successful the Chinese state has been in creating fear and compliance even among people who do advocate artistic interventions like those in Tin Sau.

Indeed, my gut sense is that the vendors of Tin Sau share much in common with the Shenzhen middle class. These are people who have learned through visceral experiences that the government is no friend of ordinary citizens. I suspect this also partially explains why MaD’s efforts so moved my friends. This was hopeful action in the face of resignation to accumulated and embodied wrongs.

In contrast, the students’ actions seem more “international”, more distant from the Chinese juggernaut. These are the actions of people who do not yet act primarily out of fear, people who act in the belief that government officials will hear and respond to righteous calls. Moreover, the students’ actions remind contemporary Chinese of what was lost in 1989. These regrets permeate the Shenzhen voices I have heard. Here, there is anger that students haven’t left well enough alone and embarrassment that the students’ actions have revealed the violence of the Chinese state’s “One Government, Two Systems” policy. Clearly, if the Hong Kong police continue to harass and arrest unarmed, peaceful protestors, it is difficult to contend that the CCP can be trusted with democratic institutions and (future) protests in Taiwan. Importantly, I have also heard support for the students. The occasional voice that says, Yes! This what it means to be fully, ethically human!

All hope for the safe return of students to their families.

Below, pictures from the Tin Sau Autumn Night Fair.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

the violence of rural (re)construction (2): hoodlum government

Posted on by

In everyday conversation, forced evictions and demolitions are thought to be widespread.
However, except through site visits and conversations with local people it is difficult to ascertain which cities are most widely affected because there is a moratorium on reporting about actual cases. The Chinese media “reports happy things and not things that cause worry (报喜不报忧)”. In a situation like Meizhou this means that it is easy to find building plans and economic projections, but nearly impossible (except through more privatized forms of communication such as blogs and we chat) to find any reportage on actual events in real time.

The silence about the actual situation not only isolates vulnerable communities from larger social help, but also obfuscates the government’s role in the process. In a word, because there is no independent source of news, there is also no way of confidently reading a situation. Rumors fly, fear spreads, and the expression “hoodlum government (流氓政府)” is used when people know that they are being threatened in the name of a government program, but do not know if those threatening them are members of the police force, a particular government bureau, or actual thugs-for-hire.

Unfortunately, with respect to rural construction (乡建), hoodlum government is supposed to be the norm rather than the exception because we’ve stopped giving the government the benefit of the doubt.

Reported detained are: Gu Zhengqi (古正q奇) and Gu Wenchang (古文昌). Villagers barricaded the road into their village to prevent bulldozers from entering. The barricade stretched between Gu Zhengqi and Ge Wenchang’s neighboring houses.

Reports of hoodlum government in Meizhou include:

1. Threatening to have a student’s college acceptance revoked if the head of house doesn’t sign over property rights;

2. Allowing for the destruction or decay of houses because there is no compensation for unusable buildings;

3. At the same time, preventing villagers from repairing their homes;

4. Refusing to give fair compensation for property when villagers do negotiate;

5. Filling in waterways to create roads. This gives government officials and their proxies access to villages and makes it impossible to maintain rice paddies, which require regulated inundation and drainage;

6. Disrupting village elections and appointing grassroots level leaders who support government policy;

And 7. Destroying villagers’ cellphones, cameras and recorders to prevent documentation of the process, which in turn also makes reporting on the situation a “he said, she said situation”.

Below are images from our trip to Meizhou. Villagers hold pictures of detained family members and receipts for hospital care after a beating. They are standing in front of there houses or where their houses used to stand. The documents show a villager appraisal of his home and government response. The standard rebuttal, “too expensive”.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The other five entries in this series are:

Part I/ Meizhou: The Violence of Rural (re)Construction

Part III/ Meizhou: Living Genealogies

Part IV/ Meizhou: What Gets Preserved

Part V/ Meizhou: Lessons from Shenzhen

Meizhou VI/ Meizhou: Selected Translations

meizhou: the violence of rural (re)construction

Posted on by

This is the first part of a six-part essay, Meizhou: The Violence of Rural (Re)construction. Rural construction (乡建) is currently one of the most important debates in Shenzhen specifically and China more generally. As China’s “first city without villages”, Shenzhen has an important place in this debate. In fact, Shenzhen is held up by social progressives, real estate developers, and Party officials alike as a model of what rural construction should be. More locally, civic groups are beginning to organize around this issue in order to promote more just visions of the city.

Friday, September 19, 2014, we made the five-hour bus trip from Shenzhen to Meizhou. We were an assorted group of scholars, architects, and journalists, but we had joined documentary film maker Deng Shijie in common cause–to visit the Meizhou suburbs in order to bear witness to the human suffering that has resulted from current development policies. Shijie and his allies are central to a small, but meaningful citizenship movement in Shenzhen. Many of Shenzhen’s second-generation have become active in what we in the United States would call social justice issues, but which in Shenzhen operate under the glosses of philanthropy (公益) or social renewal (社会创新).

We arrived well past midnight, but were greeted warmly by villagers who are trying to voice their demands. Some want to maintain their current homes, others want more equitable compensation, and all want the government to bring out a viable and legal relocation and compensation plan. And that, of course, is the crux of the matter. The government’s plan to construct a new city notwithstanding there has been no release of a relocation plan. Instead, villagers are being bought and when that fails forced out of their residences. Two of the nastier strategies of displacement are (1) using the police and/or local thugs to harass and beat villagers until they sign off and (2) razing homes and then transferring money to villager escrow accounts. If the villagers use the money, the action is interpreted as acceptance of the government’s terms. If however the villagers do not use the money, after a five-year period the money will be returned to the Ministry of Land. There are also reports of villagers having been detained at local police stations in order to compel village heads of household to sign property transfer agreements. (For an introduction to China’s duel system of land ownership by way of Shenzhen, please see “Laying Siege to the Villages“).

The crude background to this travesty is the Chinese state’s commitment to making urbanization central to economic development and (more importantly) a criteria for promotion within the Party and government. In 2011, Meizhou began planning a new city on the rural land that was traditionally held by villages. However, urbanization directives accelerated in March this year when China released its National New Type Urbanization Plan. Subsequently, in September 2013, the Meizhou government released the Meizhou Jiangnan New City Detailed Plan (梅州江南新城详细规划) for public debate. The official discussion period was from September 24 to October 20, 2013. The plan was made available in three sites: the Meizhou Government Building, the plaza of the Jianying Park, and the municipal urban planning. However, according to villagers, the City continued to raze homesteads during this time. Additionally, the City also targeted traditional Hakka compounds and ancestral Halls. Architect Ye Yikun (叶益坤) has been the leading voice of opposition to demolishing historic architecture.

Below are images from our trip to several villages in the Meizhou suburbs.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The other five entries in this series are:

Part II/ Meizhou: Hoodlum Government

Part III/ Meizhou: Living Genealogies

Part IV/ Meizhou: What Gets Preserved

Part V/ Meizhou: Lessons from Shenzhen

Meizhou VI/ Meizhou: Selected Translations