Category Archives: shenzhen elsewhere

Mother’s Day Peace Vigil

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In 1870 after the Civil War, Julia Ward Howe called for a Mother’s Peace Day. Here are the words to her original Mother’s Day Proclamation:

Arise then…women of this day!
 Arise, all women who have hearts!
 Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
 Say firmly:
 “We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
 for caresses and applause. 
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
 all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
will be too tender of those of another country
 to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosum of a devastated earth a voice goes up with
 our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm! 
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
 nor violence indicate possession.
 As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. 
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
 but of God -
 in the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
 that a general congress of women without limit of nationality, 
may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
 and the earliest period consistent with its objects,
 to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

As the United States celebrates the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, may we remember that every war is a civil war and reach beyond our anger and grief to find a place of healing. On Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 8, 2011, please join me in dedicating half an hour of your spiritual practice for peace. I will chant the heart sutra.

conversation

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Woody Watson’s forty years on the other side of the border

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I’ve just finished reading James Watson’s piece “Forty Years on the Border: Hong Kong / China” and am struck by the ongoing creation of national culture throughout the area, even before the establishment of the SEZ and concomitant migration deepened this trend. Consider Watson’s description of the Lok Ma Chau Lookout:

Stretched out in front of us is a meandering, muddy creek that constitutes the border, or what the British called “the Frontier.” On the south side, in the British zone, is a set of three, steel-link fences, topped with barbed wire. One hundred yards back from the fence are gun emplacements for Gurkha troops. Land Rovers filled with Scots Guards and the Black Watch drive by, along single-lane roads. British regiments are in full battle garb; weapons are on loaded and ready. 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 →

unethical sourcing

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Yesterday at the Shenzhen + China / Utopia + Dystopia Conference, the phrase “anxieties about unethical sourcing” abruptly organized the links between all sorts of personal obsessions, ranging from contaminated food through counterfeit goods to cheap Wallmart chochies. I do worry about how oysters end up on a SZ table of seafood because I have seen the contamination flowing into the sea (here and elsewhere). Likewise, I understand the economic environment in which desires for profit might override a more general altruism such that multinational executives moves factories to places like Shenzhen (taking away the livelihood of previous industrialized areas  like Wisconsin).

This has me thinking about the original use of fetishes in trade to guarantee that traders would conform to accepted rules. A classical anthropological conundrum: how do we deal with the unknown?

Bill Aichison in and around Xiamen

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Friend Bill Aichison is preparing “The Customer is Always Wrong,” a performance piece based on his exploration of things Chinese in Xiamen. Teaser video and project blog worth a look.

viewpoints

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Just saw Ajax at the American Repertory Theater, Boston and am thinking about reasons we go to war or refuse to bury a fallen enemy; the imperative to honor the dead precisely because once we have fallen what else remains but acknowledgement of a fundamental something that could not otherwise be named? So while I wait on a friend, I sit in a bar listening to people scream at each other, but they aren’t angry, it’s just that their voices raise when their interlocutor disagrees, as if persuasion might make it — whatever it is — true.

Sometimes, when thinking about cultural difference, I forget that it is painfully difficult within cultural similarity to accept incommensurable ways of being. In Shenzhen, I often suffer from a fundamental disconnection, floating lightly. But here, home, suddenly this homegrown feeling tricks me into feeling that the world is as I think; a mistake I rarely make in Shenzhen because I still have difficulty controlling my tones, let alone a tight philosophical argument in Chinese.

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 →

Good food — Love!

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I have 口福 (kǒu fú), which might literally be translated as “mouth happiness” and means something like “the destiny to eat delicious food” – and what good fate this is.

I didn’t realize the blessed state of my culinary fate until I moved to Shenzhen, where I have truly enjoyed eating. Apparently, my joy at the table and mad chopstick skills have convinced many Chinese people that I am good friend material. Early on, when friends invited me to eat larvae or dog hotpot, I said, “Sure!” When Yang Qian and I started dating, we made a point of trying a different restaurant several times a week. Moreover, when I had a cold or minor physical discomfort, I went to the local market, bought herbs from a former barefoot doctor, and on her instructions, concocted delicious and healthy Cantonese soups in an ordinary clay pot. The unadulterated pleasure I felt when eating and the joy of sharing good food were critical to how I settled into an ex-patriot life in Shenzhen. Continue reading →

Sunlit Pines

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Early Spring, North Carolina: long needle pines and dogwood.

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