Category Archives: shenzhen fieldnotes

Fat Bird Rehearsal, August 25, 2006

Posted on by


first rehearsal dinner, waiting for godot

fat bird took the summer off, but reconvened to begin rehearsals for “waiting for godot”. it marks a move from the workshop format that we had been pursuing the past two years. however, it continues the fat bird tradition of adapting our performances to participants’ strengths; this time, we are taking our direction from judi moriarty. we hope to stage godot in mid november.

judi decided to work with fat bird in order to deepen her understanding of chinese people and culture. she believes that this happens through collaborative effort, specifically through the development of trust between all members of the group. accordingly, in addition to going over lines and blocking, rehearsals consist of exercises designed to increase trust. these exercises range from falling backward into someone’s arms and using two fingers to lift someone, to sitting on the truth chair and having to answer any question honestly. at the core of these techniques is the belief that what is true in a performance is the actors’ emotions and relationships; the performance builds out of and upon that base. it remains to be seen what each of us connects to in godot.

i have uploaded images of that emotional work.

玩: Hong Kong Disneyland and Ocean Park

Posted on by

玩(wan)means to play, to goof around, sometimes just to hang out. Wan is allied to 放松(to relax)and opposed to 工作(to work). Children are said to crave wan (贪玩), which is not a good thing, but nevertheless natural. Youngsters who can overcome (克服) their impulse to wan have reached the age of understanding (懂事). In contrast, adults who crave wan are childish (幼稚) and unreliable (不可靠); rumor has it these party animals make lame (赖) spouses.

Most importantly wan connects people to each other; playing, goofing around, and hanging out are not solitary activities, but group events, which often require planning and time in order to bring everybody together. Here, wan becomes an important element of friendship. People think about activities that others might enjoy and invite them along. They also invite others along on activities that they want to do. Be warned, however. Playing together sometimes slips into forms of 陪 (pei), where the pleasure of one person becomes the point of the entire trip. I believe this to be true not only of business outings, but also family vactions. What’s more, there are moments when nobody is having a good time, but everyone thinks everyone else is, and so everyone plays until they exhaust themselves (玩累自己).

This summer, friends invited me to join them in a trip to wan Hong Kong Disneyland and Ocean Park. And I went. There were about 20 of us, from seven different families. In the morning, we all met at the restaurant, took pictures with Mickey and Pluto, and then went to the Magic Kingdom, where we broke up into smaller groups based on the age of the children.

Hong Kong Disneyland is small. Indeed you can walk around it in a day. It does, however, offer four fantasies: shopping (on Main Street, USA), romance and shopping (in Fantasyland), exploration and shopping (in Adventureland), and science fiction and shopping (in Tommorowland). There are also many famous characters walking around for photo-ops.

Given the crowds, we spent our time waiting to get into rides or attractions, and then meeting up with the group for lunch.

I returned to Shenzhen and spent the next few days doing yoga and sleeping, necessary antidotes to too much of a good thing.

大芬村：souvenir update

Posted on by

i went back to dafen with a friend and bought several souvenirs. i met a husband and wife who have a shop selling old ceramics, including mao busts and plates from the cultural revolution. unable to resist the irony i bought a plate of mao and lin biao. the quotation (published in the p.l.a. news on august 3, 1967) reads, “revolution is the liberation of productive forces, revolution is advancing the development of productive forces (革命就是解放生产力，革命就是促进生产力的发展)”。i then flipped through their collection of cultural revolution posters, all the while wondering, “what if they’re fake?!” however, authenticity wasn’t what stopped me from buying a poster; i didn’t purchase a poster because i wanted brighter colors. the vendor explained the black and white prints in terms of development: apparently china didn’t have color printing in the 1960s.

i also met a husband and wife who sell contemporary vases, as well as remnants from their former business importing russian folk art (by way of harbin). so i bought a small vase and am using it to hold pens and pencils. the folk art had me thinking again about the aesthetic politics of copying. i don’t look for unique folk art, but authentic, which is defined by continuing a tradition, usually through emulation–the big latin word for copying. in a nearby shop, a woman selling miao folk art, all guaranteed to be hand embroidered, reiterated this truth. repetition authorizes tradition. but repetition by whom? could i make a vase, or only appropriate the technique, no matter how accurate my interpretation?

so three examples of reproductions that aren’t forgeries–cultural revolution stuff, russian folk art, and miao embroidery, all sold in dafen. meanwhile, the shenzhen daily reports that huang ye (黄野), one of the most successful entrepreneurs in dafen, has a factory of over 200 employees, with 10 designers making “original” works within a particular tradition for sale in europe and the united states.huang ye has contextualized artistic reproduction in terms of italian tradition and global economics. in mandarin, these oil reproductions are called 行画 (hanghua). according to huang ye, the reproduction of classic works used to be based in italy. however, given economic development, this production moved to korea in the 1930s and 40s, with the orders and models coming from italy. in the 1960s and 1970s production moved from korea to hong kong, where the reproductions were called 韩画 (hanhua), eventually moving to china in the 1980s.

a final irony. the vendors of russian folk art also like indian religious iconography. behind their desk, they have placed a russian mary and guan yu, the god of wealth beneath two indian gods. when i asked, they said that guan yu was important in guangdong; all businessmen had a guanyu in their shop. the other gods were just aesthetically pleasing.

dafen office space

who’s to say that dafen hasn’t been revolutionized?

大芬村: when is a copy not a forgery?

Posted on by

located in buji town, dafen village is (in)famous for the assembly line production of copies of famous works of art, usually western masters. dafen artists pride themselves on making authentic copies, giving attention brush struck, style, and feeling. all for as little as US$ 10.

i have visited dafen village several times this summer and have yet to persuade myself to buy a souvenir painting. not that i need to. i already have a dafen souvenir, which a friend gave me after her hong kong shop went under. (she tried to cash in on the hong kong passion for interior make-overs by selling dafen copies in hong kong.) as it stands, my reluctance to purchase a dafen painting intrigues me. after all, living in shenzhen i regularly buy pirated dvds and cds; i also buy “improved upon” copies at luohu mall at the hong kong-shenzhen border. my l.v. billfold, for example, has giant flower smiley faces, which i haven’t seen on any authentic l.v. i wear knock-offs when i can’t find what i’m looking for in outlets. moreover, i live in a housing development that looks like housing developments all over the city; my apartment is itself a reproducible unit in a mass produced building. and even on superficial reflection, i remember buying posters of great works of art to hang on my college dorm wall.

the only other area of my life as a consumer, where i seem as resolutely committed to originality seems culinary. yet here again, the question is not so much one of whether or not a dish can be reproduced (after all the sign of a top chef is the ability to reproduce the same taste day in and out), but rather one of freshness; i enjoy fresh vegetables, unfrozen meets, and innovative tastes. i want the same on my walls. or so i tell myself as i look at the mass produced spring festival couplet i have hung on my door (年年如意新春乐；岁岁平安合家欢) with glittered chicken.

my reluctance to purchase a copy found its counterpart in the pictures i took while there; i again found myself looking sideways at what was happening. i ended up photographing an unintentional street performance. however, yu haibo of the shenzhen economic daily won at the 2006 world press press photo of the year contest for his photos of dafen village. eastsouthwestnorth provides a translation of 天方乱谭‘s analysis of yu’s photos and how representative they are of china.

those interested in purchasing a dafen oil painting can order directly from various websites (dafen village dot com and dafen dot net).　the people’s daily provides a brief history of dafen.

开平碉楼: fortified homes

Posted on by

the other day, i went to zili village (自立村), li yuan (立园), and chikan town (赤坎镇) in kaiping city (开平市), one of guangdong’s famous 侨乡 (overseas chinese homeland). as a tourist destination, kaiping is famous for its towers, known as 碉楼, which were fortified structures designed to protect families from local bandits. according to anthropologist zhang guoxiong (张国雄):

“Before the Ming Dynasty, presentday Kaiping lay at the administrative intersection of three
counties, Enping, Xinhui and Xinxing. This situation enabled local bandits (土匪) to flourish
and hide out there. Public security was a mess. Liangjin Mountain in Kaiping was just such a
nest for local bandits, whose activities reached the towns of Chikan and Tangkou. Kaiping’s
predecessor was Kaiping Dun. During the Ming, the character “dun” refered to a military
installation. We can imagine that the central government had dispatched a garrison to Kaiping to
manage the problem of public security. They hoped this would be a place of unhindered traffic,
and that peace would be restored. Kaiping became a county during the first year of the Shunzhi
reign (1643). It was precisely to counter these social problems that the are was called Kaiping
(开平), which meant “restore peace (开同敉平)”. From this we can see, public
security problems were endemic to the area (loose translation from his book 开平碉楼)”.

these problems continued through the late qing and into the nationalist period. local architecture reflected the need to build for safety from bandits. however, the infusion of money from overseas chinese changed and intensified this kind of protective building. from the mid nineteenth century on, men from kaiping began immigrating to the united states and canada. significantly, because exclusion acts prevented them from bringing their families with them, they sent remittances home, often with the specific intent to build a safe tower, where their families could live. it is estimated that from the mid-nineteenth century over 3,000 towers were built, with intensive construction happening from 1912 until 1937, when nearly half the towers were built (1,490).

in fact, the remittances themselves became the cause of increased piracy. from 1912 until 1930, roughly the same period as the most intensive episode of tower building, there were 71 reported instances of bandit attacks in kaiping, including three attacks on the county seat and kidnapping the county magistrate.

early chinese immigrants to the united states worked for low wages in dehumanizing conditions. indeed, chinese migration satisfied american needs for low wage workers without attempting to give workers the benefits of american citizenship; in chinese, the remitances were called “血汗钱 (blood and sweat money)”. all this to say, kaiping people found themselves quite literally in a global crossfire between local bandits and north american immigration policy; there was no safe place for them and their families, together.

indeed, global politics continued to shape the possibilities of kaiping family life. the cold war brought with it u.s. attempts to undermine asian communist leaders, especially mao zedong. beginning in the early 1950s immigration restraints loosened, culminating with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. these changes allowed for the migration of kaiping family members, most of whom abandoned their towers for chinatowns and suburbs overseas, despite the fact that the communist party had actually succeeded in pacifying local bandits.

today, kaiping’s fortified homes seem disconcerting monuments. to departure. to social unrest. to history’s ironies. to ostensive luxury. the towers, the tiled floors, the defensive infrastructure, including weapons, the intricate wood carvings, the marble tables, the obvious wealth boarded up and hidden behind concrete walls and rusting metal shutters distressed me; a fortress can’t protect a dream.

on jan 31, 2002, the state administration of cultural heritage of the people’s republic of china (the awkward and official translation of 中华人民共和国国家文物局) nominated the kaiping towers for inclusion in UNESCO’s world heritage project. they have also uploaded a website that brings together tourist information, annecdotes, and historic analysis about the towers and the overseas chinese who built them. please visit.

objectified space

Posted on by

two questions have prompted me to specify what i want to achieve through the found objects project.

lesley sanderson posed the first question at the cruel/loving bodies exhibition, “look at you work critically and decide what you are trying to do.”

sasha welland then asked me, “why do you pick up the objects and photograph them elsewhere? why not just photograph them in place?”

a preliminary answer to these questions. in the found objects series, i map shenzhen from the perspective of the object. in constrast, i have tended to photograph large objects in place, calling attention to the construction of shenzhen through specific objects. how might this latter project be different from simply photographing places, which i’ve done all along?

while trying to get onto the houhai land reclamation project in shekou, i took pictures of discarded objects on that walk. i also photographed baskets left on a street.

赤湾: selective naturalizations

Posted on by

relatively isolated from the rest of shekou, the geography of chiwan has recently undergone massive restructuring as outgrowths of containers replace mountains as the defining feature of the landscape.

shenzhen port consists of nine terminals: shekou, chiwan, mawan, yantian, dongjiaotou, fuyong, xiadong, shayuchong and neihe.

more houhai

Posted on by

today i started exploring the houhai land reclamation project further west, walking from shekou industrial road #8 toward dongjiaotou port.

at first, i had no specific goal other than getting onto reclaimed land and snapping a few photos. however, at the end of i.r. #8, i was stopped by a soldier, whose youth distressed me. i would say he was no older than 16, but when asked, he claimed to be 18 and meet all the requirements for joining the army and carrying a gun, which rested prominantly on his boney hip. he told me that access to the area was restricted because it was the new national border (边界). suddenly, i needed a reason to be on the reclaimed land. i pointed to the western corridor suspension bridge and said that i wanted to take some pictures of the bridge. he politely asked me to leave. i stared pointedly at the people walking on and off the area and he finally went over to a couple and asked to see their passes.

now determined to get onto the landfill, i walked to i.r. #7, where a brick wall blocked my way. i tried walking around it, but a deep gully prevented me from successfully getting on. however, neither soldiers nor security guards prevented access. at the yucai-schumann art school, which is located right at the boundary between public and filled land, i tried to talk the security guard into letting me walk to the back of their school to take a picture. he refused, but helpfully directed me back to the end of the road, when i said it was impossible to get onto the landfill, he seemed doubtful because, he saw workers (打工的) heading that way every day.

nevertheless, one of the parents from the school started talking with me and offered to take me into his new housing development to go to the top of a building to take pictures. it turns out, the gentleman from hebei works for the oil industry and had just completed overseeing the construction of a refinery in zhuhai. he mentioned that he had taken photographs of the entire construction process, “from nothing to a beautiful refinery.” he agreed that it was important to document this process, otherwise we would forget where we had come from. “where are the pictures now?” i asked. in zhuhai.

i then walked to the street immediately west of i.r. #7 and there was direct access onto the reclaimed area. i stepped onto the landfill and headed toward the bridge, my confidence growing with every step; no one here would stop me. i inhaled the fishy smell of rotting shells and stepped through air thick with flies. as i headed further out, i stumbled upon a shantytown and watched several children playing. i watched the dust a pair of once-red flip flops kicked up as a woman pushed an old bike past me. i looked again toward the bridge, but decided i had accomplished my task. i believe an old man watched me leave.

the tour ends with a view of new coastal real estate.

莲花山：lianhua mountain park

Posted on by

with friends, i climbed to the top of lianhua mountain park, where deng xiaoping strides purposely into the future.

well, perhaps not toward the future. he is afterall standing in place. nevertheless it is fair to say that because the land beneath him continues to shift, he’s no longer where he started. deng now both overlooks and synthesizes the meaning of the environmentally conscious central axis, as well as the ever more expensive real estate of futian, including huaqiangbei, the rainbow glass buildings of the financial district, the huanggang checkpoint, and numerous gated communities.

it’s hard to know if this exactly is what he intendend when he approved the construction of shenzhen. it’s pretty obvious, however, that this is what current leaders say he meant. accordingly, lianhua park commermorates deng’s 1984 southern tour, when he proclaimed that shenzhen demonstrated the correctness of reform and opening. the next political step, of course, was not toward city hall, but toward the fourteen coastal cities, which began learning from shenzhen. importantly, the practices associated with learning (学习) in china include emulation. so that “learning from shenzhen (学习深圳)”　directed leaders in other chinese cities to do what shenzhen had done: dismantle work units, bring in foreign capital, set up labor and housing markets, and build an international city.

sweating in the heat and humidity, we climbed past a kite flying field through the remnants of a lychee orchard and into a palm tree grove to arrive at deng’s monument. there, banyan trees and unbrellas protected most visitors from the sun, while a few others posed in front of deng and the engraved mural of deng xiaoping’s words, “the development and experiences of Shenzhen have proved the correctness of our policy on the establishment of special economic zones (深圳的发展和经验证明，我们建立经济特区的政策是正确的).” deng wrote and presented this inscription on January 26, 1984. at the pinnacle, the decision feels correct. it saturates my senses and suddenly the park, the views, and the easy pleasures of kite flying justify deepening reform. “everyone should have a nice park,” i think unreflexively.

as an early reform joke had it: deng xiaoping comes to a fork in the road. his driver asks, “what should we do.” deng answers, “signal left (toward socialism), but turn right (toward capitalism).”

and that’s the rub. i don’t know how seriously people take the deng statue and plaque, which celebrate a rather banal political message: brought to you by deng xiaoping and the ccp, reform and opening good! instead i worry that propaganda may be as sweet as an afternoon in the park. for the curious, a people’s daily article on the 1992 southern tour sketches the ideological importance of the 1984 southern tour with politically correct reverence.

沙尾村：the banality of progress

Posted on by

the three r’s of a successful boomtown: raze, replace, repeat (every ten years, sooner if possible).