Category Archives: shenzhen fieldnotes

cell phones, again

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in addition to jokes, advertisements all circulate on cell phones. i suppose it was only a matter of time before i ended up on the phone sex circuits.

two recent examples from the enterprising Little Li:

我是小李，今天失恋了，是我最失落的日子，想找个人倾诉，回复１１陪我号码？回复０５看我的照片。
This is Little Li. Today I lost my love. It’s the worst day of my life. I’d like to share with someone. Will you reply to 11 and accompany me? Reply to 05 and see my photo.

我是小李，大一新生，想认识更多朋友，希望大胆性感的我能给你惊喜，回复１５和我聊聊，回复１６看照片吧！
This is Little Li, a first year college student. I’d like to meet more friends. I hope that fearlessly sexy me can give you a surprise. Reply to 15 to chat with me. Reply to 16 to see my photo!

i am the role

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front row (left to right): judi moriarty, yang qian, and shi xiaomei. i am in the back.

yesterday, judi, yang qian, and i went to hong kong to see the mabou mimes’ production of a dollhouse. because none of us had ever been there before, we met with a friend for afternoon tea at the penninsula hotel. it turns out that tian qinxin’s godmother, shi xiaomei was also in hong kong as an advisor on a production of 挑滑车. she joined us in the early afternoon.

talking about the beauty of kunqu, shi xiaomei said, “it doesn’t matter how old i am or what’s underneath. when i paint my face, i am only the role.”

shi xiaomei then laughed and said she was always stealing scenes, but that she couldn’t help it. she knows how to breathe in such a way that the audience only followed her movements. judi, who studied acting at nyu and then went to the north carolina school of the arts, commented that scene-stealing was the sign of a natural performer. judi joked that she couldn’t steal scenes from shi xiaomei, who laughed happily.

i was struck by the strength of her personality. even in a cotton golf shirt, she controled the conversation at tea. shi xiaomei specializes in male roles:

旧村改新：initial observations

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this is another thoughts-in-progress entry. these past few days, i have been trying to organize thoughts about the 旧村改新 (old village make-overs), a recent government initiative to clean-up shenzhen’s new villages (now understood as “old”). this was part of the reason for posting on luohu; i actually took that series of pictures last december, but the juxtaposition of new luohu village, the era of two cities building, the new housing development, and the renovated train station point to issues that come together in the make-over initiative. so if you haven’t yet, you may want to first take a walk about luohu.

the point, of course, is simple: there are many shenzhens and they all abut one another. indeed, it’s as difficult to miss new villages, which have a distinctive layout and architecture, as it is to overlook a high-end housing development. these different urban forms actualize the different development trajectories that shenzhen’s villagers and white-collar migrants have pursued. that is to say, even if we bracket for the moment the question of whether or not shenzhen has deep, imperial history, nevertheless, it has been over 25 years since deng xiaoping began reform and opening just north of hong kong. architecture styles and urban plans actualize different moments in this process, providing a material history of the city. with the village make-over initiative, the government seems determined to remove traces of historic difference, even as cultural officials continue to moan about shenzhen’s lack of history. below is a picture of the arch at the entrance to huanggang new village.

the old village make-over initiative first came to my attention over dinner last year, when friends were discussing the government’s decision to raze 18 mid-rise buildings), right at the huanggang cross-border checkpoint. the topic came up not because those at the table disagreed with the make-over process, but because this was the first time china was simultaneously imploding 18 buildings. the event was know as “china’s first blast (全国第一爆).the buildings belonged to yunong village (渔农村). if memory holds, the conversation focused on the technology involved, the need for a modern area to face hong kong, and the avarious fearlessness of villagers, who continued to errect illegal, rental properties.

this past year, i have watched construction teams lay the foundations for a new yunong with something of a jaded eye. this is not the first time that the municipal government had directed a movement specifically at shenzhen’s urban villages. and in a certain sense, it often feels like a more of the same kind of project.

in 1991, the government initiated the rural urbanization movement (农村城市化运动) with the goal of integrating all villages into the municipal government and giving all shenzhen peasants, citizen status. this was called the double transformation. this movement finally ended in august 2004, when baoan and longgang districts announced that all villages had been redistricted and all villagers had been given a new hukou. shenzhen was thereby the first city in china to have neither villages nor villagers within its borders.

for officials determined to turn their city into a global, international city, the end of rural shenzhen was a major milestone. indeed, in this area shenzhen has been heralded as a national leader. these administrative changes, however, did not irradicate the visceral spatial differences between shenzhen villages and the surrounding city.

in order to deepen the integration of the villages into the fabric of the city, shenzhen officials turned their gaze to the built environment as a sign of rural-urban difference. consequently, the following year, in 2005, the government decided to start the old village make-over initiative. crudely, this entails razing what are known as “handshake buildings” and replacing them with modern residential developments. handshake buildings are so-called because they are so close to each other that neighbors can reach out their windows or across their balconies and shake hands. the initiative includes building plazas and public areas, as well as different kinds of housing developments. i include a picture of a row of handshake buildings, huanggang new village.

compare with an image of the new urban dreams currently under construction in huanggang:

the old village make-over initiative was formally approved on october 28, 2005. it is a special five-year plan to improve the urban villages (城中村), speed up urbanization, promote the unification of infrastructure within and outside the sez, realize the joint planning and harmonious development of urban villages and other areas in the city, and to advance the architecture of a global, modern, and key city, errect a harmonious and efficient shenzhen. the curious can check out the full old village make-over plan online.

nevertheless, the question of make-overs and everyday life only became interesting the other day, when i was in shuiwei and huanggang, two of the futian villages that abut the hong kong border. frankly, i was impressed with the layout of shuiwei’s culture plaza, which boasts a funky (if derivative) outdoor stage, a curious rocks museum (the rocks are mainly from guangxi), and a library. i also had tea at a colorful hong kong style teashop, where the milk tea was strong and rich. suddenly, i wanted to move from tianmian, which is conveniant but not like shuiwei. (the lack of tasty but reasonable restaurants in tianmian is a bone of ongoing contention. after all, one of the defining features of the urban villages has been the quality and price of the restaurants.)

my desire to move to shuiwei points to an underlying fact about new village life; the primary source of income for most villagers is rental property. this has meant that villagers have built as densely and as highly as possible, with little concern for the overall environment. it also has meant a density of cheap beauty and massage parlors, restaurants, places to play mah johng, food markets. indeed, since the mid-1990s, as most of shenzhen’s factories have been pushed outside city limits, the importance of rental property and services to village economies has grown. the main residents of the villages are low income migrants, usually from the countryside.

it seems that the ratio of villagers to migrants in the villages concerns the government. the villages maintain their own militias (民兵) that act as a police force within village borders, shifting social regulation from the state to these quasi-governmental organizations. according to futian government statistics, for example, there were 19,353 villagers registrared in 15 administrative villages (there are 20 natural villages in futian.) those villagers provided housing for 572,143 migrants. a ratio of 1 villager for every 29.5 migrants. (these figures do not include unregistered migrants, some of whom live in illegal housing, but others who live in the underground walkways that connect villages to the city proper.) these migrant laborers are precisely the persons regularly identified in the press and popular opinion as causing social unrest. outside the sez in baoan and longgang districts, the villager to migrant ratio is even higher. thus, this research suggests that the greatest challenge facing the make-over movement is a contradiction between the villagers’ economic interest (as landlords) and the state’s interest in maintaining social discipline.

i conclude with a picture of the home of the shuiwei militia (水围民兵之家).

罗湖：a tale of two cities

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sometimes, the ethnography is already there, simply waiting to be recorded. above is a picture of the era of two cities building, located just next to the luohu train station. shenzhen and hong kong are the two cities implied and celebrated by the building. yet, just a quick walk through the bus station, past the two cities building, and next to the bus station parking lot, one enters an alleyway, where other folks live. a third city. one then moves onto luohu new village, where a poster encourages shenzheners to build a civilized city. below is a map that locates you while on your walk about luohu.

key players and their dependents/supporters

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a story that recontextualizes the question of charisma and the relationships between a key player and their dependents/supporters.

yesterday, i took a cab from tianmian to shuiwei new village. as usual i sat in the front seat and chatted with the driver, who had come from wuhan a little over a year ago.

i asked why he had come.

for the opportunities, he replied.

i commented that hankou had a long history of commerce. he agreed, but pointed out that was in the past. today, he finds wuhan to be dirty, crowded, and not improving as quickly as the rest of the country.

but isn’t wuhan reforming, i asked.

the cabbie then explained that the quality of reform depended on the abilities of a specific leader. so far i was following; i had heard this argument before. but then the conversation swerved.

what i hate most, he said, was when corrupt officials took money even when the people were poor.

i agreed they were lacking a conscious.

he continued, if everyone’s rich, then those officials should have something extra.

i laughed. he laughed with me and added, commoners aren’t going to quibble over a few bribes if everyone is living well. that’s what we want; a home, a job, a chance to send our kids to school. chinese people simply want to live their lives (过日子), but these officials, they only care about living well. it’s when the situation gets like that that i become angry.

by this time, we had arrived a my destination and i got out of the cab. i wished him a happy dragon boat day. he waved and drove off.

i am not sure if he was referring to any particular official, or if some recent incident had annoyed him because our conversation had remained at the level of generalities. what interested me was his conviction, shared with a group of beijing thespians, that for historic transformation to take place a synergy had to develop between a key player and their dependents/supporters. the difference between the two positions was how the relationship between the key player and the dependents/supports was to be cultivated. for the cabbie, this relationship went unquestioned. he did not seem to question the need for and existance of the government. the quality of the commoners’ everyday lives provided the standard for determining an official’s legitimacy. this begs the question, how much anger before an official falls? in contrast, the beijing thespians assumed that charisma determined pride of place in a group. when the ability to maintain an audience waned, so did the key player’s legitimacy; s/he had proven to be “incompetant”.

个人魅力：thoughts in progress

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it has been a weekend of meetings and rain, which means few pictures, but many words. it was also a time of unexpected insight into the importance of charisma. i’m not sure yet where this might lead me theoretically. nevertheless, it seems worth writing down how i came to this insight because that may allow me to track which of my assumptions are blinding me to something everyone around me is taking for granted.

the school i work for is changing its name and leadership. previously, the school was a branch of a famous beijing school. on sunday may 28, the school announced that it will be working with one of shenzhen’s most famous and successful principals to develop an elite program. throughout the speeches given both during the meeting and afterwards at lunch, it became clear that the school board understood previous failures to be failures of leadership. one of the board members summarized the situation as, “we didn’t have a shepherd, but we’ve always had high quality sheep. now that we’ve got a shepherd, everyone can relax” this sentence suddenly clarified for me what actually took place the day before, when yang qian and i met with tian qinxin, wang hanyi, and dai yu for lunch and three hours of conversation.

tian, wang, dai, yang, and i are not only involved in theatre production, but also friends of long standing. these friendships provide both companionship and the social matrix in which fat bird nests. this is important. the kind of charisma that seemed stressed this weekend was the ability to both nourish these relationships and use them to create theatre.

in the early 90s, tian qinxin worked in a shenzhen advertising agency and yang qian was a new functionary in the recently established nanshan district ministry of culture. both had escaped from beijing to shenzhen. yang qian had just given up on his first marriage and the possibility of doing journalism; he turned to playwriting to express through fiction truths that just-the-facts often missed. in 1994, tian qinxin’s ex directed yang qian’s play “intentional injury” for the chinese national experimental theatre. she was in shenzhen recovering from that break-up. for half a year, tian qinxin and yang qian got together to drink, smoke, and talk about theatre and lost opportunities. the two also worked with xiong yuanwei on one of shenzhen’s first theatrical productions, “i love mozart”. xiong yuanwei produced, tian qinxin directed, and yang qian played a “fat white hooligan”. (the expression “fat and white” refers to corrupt officials who do nothing but stay out of the sun and eat.) yang qian finally encouraged tian qinxin to quit her job and return to beijing. he decided to stay in shenzhen, however. tian qinxin is now the only woman director at the chinese national theatre and has won all of china’s top theatrical awards.

yang qian and i met dai yu in 1997, when zero sun moon produced “eternal return” as part of the hong kong handover celebrations organized by nanshan district. (i wrote about the szm years and “eternal return” in “Zero Sun Moon: The Cultural Politics of Seeing Performance,” Theatre InSight 10:1 (Spring 1999), 27-32.) that fall, dai yu left shenzhen to study playwriting at the chinese theatre academy, where tian qinxin has taught. today, dai yu is a functionary in the shenzhen ministry of culture. she was the one who helped yang qian register fat bird with the municipal government. most recently, she arranged for fat bird’s inclusion in the 2006 cultural industries fair.

wang hanyi is tian’s partner and collaborator. the two came to shenzhen because as part of the cultural industry fair, shenzhen municipality invited tian to stage her play 生死场 (place of life and death) at the shenzhen grand theatre.

so on the day that life and death premiered in shenzhen, the five of us gathered to discuss the possibility of making theatre in china. the conversation circled around the question of how to make theatre in an environment where “reforming” china’s main theatre troupes means “no longer providing financial support”. although she has not publically commented on the reforms, tian qinxin has an interesting position in this debate because her recent (very influential) kunqu production of “peach blossom fan (桃花扇) with the jiansu performance company (江苏省演艺集团) has been heralded as an examplar of why reform works. in this case, the head of the company invited her and other outside artists to nanjing to create a financially viable piece. and they did. so whatever she thinks about reform, her work is now offered as an example of the benefits of reforming state subsidized art institutions, specfically theatre troupes.

tian qinxin emphasized that by establishing fat bird, yang qian had opened a possible site for making theatre in this new environment. indeed, it was early in the reforms and so he had a chance to take advantage of new conditions in ways that other people didn’t. dai yu commented that for this to happen, yang qian would have to become more active. he couldn’t continue to keep himself aloof from society and pursue “pure art”. tian qinxin agreed, that in order to have the opportunity to do art, it was necessary for yang qian to pay his dues and create popular works.

just a few notes on what “paying one’s dues” might mean in practice. in part it means doing things you don’t want to do, like creating popular pieces that don’t actually inspire you. it means garnering awards so that you can convince officials you are in fact legitimate. it also means, going from friend to friend and asking them to contribute some money for the production. wining and dining all the folks that you need to in order to get it up. going door to door to door in order to sell tickets (and tickets must be sold so that you can pay back your friends, otherwise you’re incompetant). going university to university arranging to have the play performed for students, who are the biggest and most receptive audience to new works. implicit in all this is that one pays dues in order to become big because only these people have the influence to make the kinds of work they want to make.

wang hanyi then pointed to the traditional model of chinese opera troupes, where all the members supported one main performer. that main performer was the star of any production by the troupe. she pointed to mei lanfang as an important example of that kind of star. when it was time to stage a large production, which had several main roles, several troupes would collaborate and then break up afterwards. it was the 个人魅力 (charisma) of the central character that enabled a particular troupe to both attract an audience and to keep the troupe together. tian qinxin agreed that individual charisma was fundamental to accomplishing anything in china, not just theatre. “after all,” she said, “we have idolized emperors for 5,000 years. the point is to use this to make theatre.”

at first, i didn’t follow the logic that jumped from making theatre through a critique of yang qian, who was called a little master, aloof, and lazy to a discussion of traditional chinese opera troupes. no one else seem lost, however. indeed, yang qian thanked them for their advise. but in retrospect, it now seems that for tian, wang, and dai, yang qian had a responsibility not simply to lead the troupe, but to make it happen. they believed that the troupe was yang qian, and his decisions would shape whether or not all other fat bird members could make theatre. in this context, each of their comments became reminders that if yang qian was to make theatre, he needed to take charge of the troupe in a direct and personal way; he needed to become a shepherd, so to speak.

perhaps i am working with a different folk conception of “individual” than are my friends and husband. for me, the individual is expressed through doing what he or she wants; cooperation is the practice that links individuals in creative activity. however, at lunch yesterday, there were two understandings of cooperation in play–one between friends and one between leaders and troupe members. both forms of cooperation were important. my idea of the individual tends to preclude consideration of groups, but dai yu reiterated several times that yang qian needed others to accomplish his goals; he was too “independent” or perhaps too willing to maintain his independence vis-a-vis others. i also tend to downplay the importance of charisma in these forms of cooperation. yet, according to tian qinxin 个人魅力 (geren meili) was fundamental to the success or failure of theatre specifically, and social projects more generally.

it now occurs to me that “force of one’s personality” might be a more colloquial translation of what was at stake in her comments. she assumed that collective activity could only be achieved through the force of an individual’s personality, including the ability to pay dues, endure, and inspire others to follow one. she also assumed it was desirable to become this kind of a person. is that the difference between how i was hearing and they were speaking? not so much a cultural difference as individual preference? i don’t want all the responsibility that such a position would entail.

another discription of what makes a good core person/leader: 三个硬 (the three hards). a leader should have hard earlobes, so they know when to listen and when not to; a leader should have hard shoulders to shoulder responsibility; and a leader should have hard hands, so they can take charge and not let go.

yet another example: a friend told me that if there was a fire, leaders would leave first and then everyone else. if the leaders didn’t escape, no one else would. i asked if this was policy. no, my friend replied, it would just happen naturally. we chinese would wait for the leaders to go and then follow.

questions to think about: how might these descriptions fit into the category of “natural leader” that americans throw around? and should i go back to my weber?

an after-the-fact update. sunday night, tian, yang, and i had dinner with wei ping, a functionary still working in the nanshan district ministry of culture. wei ping lived in the same dormitory as yang qian in the early 1990s. she also participated in the “i love mozart” production. during dinner, tian qinxin reiterated many of the points she had made before. wei ping echoed these thoughts and than added it would be relatively easy for yang qian to make fat bird fly because he had “人缘 (renyuan)”. renyuan also belongs to the set of ideas/words/assumptions that make up a good leader. basically, i understand it to mean that if you have 人缘 your life is smoother because people like you and therefore are willing to help you. tian qinxin concurred and then told us about how many dinners she had to host in order to coax the jiangsu artists to work with her. yang qian, she concluded, shouldn’t be so aloof from other people. he wasn’t willing to pay his dues. if you did this work with sincerity, she emphasized, even relationships that start out with instrumental intentions might become happy collaborations. renyuan could transform awkward situations into opportunities; this capacity was in fact a pre-equisite for doing collaborative art like theatre.

mystery

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yesterday morning, I walked along nanyou road from the west gate of shenzhen university over the binhai expressway access ramp pedestrian overpass to the k204 bus stop, where my 25 minute trip to tianmian would begin. exhaust fumes, irritated honking, and instinctive jostling usually characterize this short trip. consequently, i normally rush from the university gate to the bus stop with little sense of how i arrived, or rather, without actually experiencing where i am. however, yesterday, i started out at 6:30 a.m. only a few cars and busses grumbled past and the pedestrian overpass itself suddenly opened. i sensed more than met the eye, and thus compelled, looked and saw otherwise. that vision now (and until the firewall envelops us all) shimmers online.

footnotes to previous entries (can be accessed either under recent entries by title or under archive by date).

(1) an answer to the question, where have all the qilou (骑楼) gone? the hong kong government mandated that all buildings downtown needed to be linked in such a way that pedestrians stay dry in the rain and cool in the sun. a laudable reinvention of local knowledge to contemporary architectural norms (see reflections, may 16, 2006).

(2) two examples of 陪 (pei):

yesterday, i bought tickets to see the mabou mimes production of “a doll house” in hong kong. i invited a friend to go, and another said, “don’t force her to pei you, she’s too busy right now.”

at dinner later that same day, we were talking about how much wait some of us had gained since college (roughly 20 years ago). one of the officials at the table said, “well it depends on whether or not your boss/department head (头头) likes to drink or not. if he’s drinking, then everyone at the table will pei him to drink. and of course, if you’re drinking you’re eating lots of small dishes that just happen to be fatty and unhealthy.”

from this it can be surmised that people like to be pei-ed, but don’t necessarily like to pei. why then would anyone voluntarily pei someone? because pei-ing is usually characterized as something 无奈: it can’t be helped. individuals have socially defined obligations to pei certain kinds of people: guests, parents, friends, but also bosses, visiting dignitaries, ranking officials, relatives of friends, classmates and their relatives… i’m starting to make a list to see if in fact pei obligations can be exhausted. (see there are also good people in hunan, may 8, 2006).

第二届中国（深圳）国际文化产业博览交易会: Fat Bird in Shenzhen

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fat bird theatre logo
Originally uploaded by mary ann odonnell.

This weekend (May 20, 21), Fat Bird participated in the second China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industry Fair (May 18-21). Fat Bird’s inclusion mediated at least two of the paradoxes structuring cultural production in Shenzhen specifically and the PRC more generally. Fat Bird’s inclusion prompted members to design a logo for the troupe’s first official exposure in Shenzhen (see image left).

On the one hand, the Fair staged the tension between economic and political interests in cultural production. This was particularly the case in terms of regional and minority cultural forms. Ministries in the Guizhou Government, for example, negotiated contracts for performance troupes of local minorities. Likewise, Ministries from the Zhengzhou Government sold traditional Chinese culture from pre-historic times through the Song Dynasty. In a city like Shenzhen, where there is no recognized “local” culture, Fat Bird’s presence demonstrated the possibility that a new city could produce new culture.

On the other hand,the structured contradiction between high and commercial art continues to embarrass Shenzhen officials and residents, who believe it is not enough for the city to make money on culture. Instead, they advocate for Shenzhen investment in non-productive arts like the ballet or theatre. Only then, they say, will the city fulfill its duel task to build both material and spiritual civilization. Fat Bird’s presence at the Fair was evidence that high (non-commercial) art is possible in Shenzhen.

Below, I take the reader on a selective tour of the Cultural Industry Fair, introducing the meaning of Fat Bird’s unexpected, but in retrospect overdetermined inclusion. This entry is actually part of the process of digesting what happened at the Fair. I will add more as it comes to me.

The first thing to take note of is the fuzzy line separating politics from economics at the Fair. The Ministry of Culture of the PRC, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the General Administration of Press and Publication of the PRC, the Guangdong Provincial Government, and the Shenzhen Municipal Government host the Fair. The Shenzhen Press Group, Shenzhen Media Group, Shenzhen Circulation Group, and the Shenzhen International Cultural Industry Fair Company, Ltd. sponsor the Fair. This division of labor reproduces the division between politics (hosts) and economics (sponsors). The hosts use the Fair to promote particular goals, while the sponsors provide the financial management necessary to stage the Fair.

This division of labor points to an ideology and practice in which the economic is understood as an expression of political will. In this sense, in producing the Cultural Fair, the Shenzhen International Cultural Industry Fair Company, Ltd. is not only doing business, but also (and more importantly) helping the central government achieve the goal of developing the national economy. The organization of displays at the Fair reiterated this logic, wherein the themes for each hall express goals that have been set by the government, and individual exhibitors pursue this goal.

Thus, the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center has 9 halls. During the Culture Fair, each hall was used to display those sectors of the culture industry that the government currently promotes. Successes of Chinese Cultural Industry were displayed in Hall 1; Education institutions had stalls in Hall 1A; Hall 2 was dedicated to Conceptual Design; Media Technologies and Digital Imaging was located in Hall 3, while Media Technologies and Printing were in Hall 4; Visual Arts were displayed in Hall 5; International Performance Arts were located in Hall 6; Chinese Language Publishing occupied Hall 7; the most popular exhibition, Comics and Games were located in Hall 8; and in Hall 9 were the Industrial Arts.

A second effect of this fuzzy division is that within the Fair, provincial and municipal governments also operated as cultural companies. That is, in addition to hosting the Fair, Guangdong Province had its own display, as did Tibet, Zhengzhou, Guizhou, Hong Kong, and Macau. This equation of regional governments operating as cultural businesses explains Guangdong’s governor, Huang Huahua’s emphasis on tourism as the motor (spirit) of cultural industries; the Fair modeled a tour of potential cultural tours. Indeed, while being shown the fair, the governor asserted that, “Culture is the spirt of tourism. The success of the Culture Fair will stimulate the development of tourism and other third sector industries, improve the distribution of regional industries, and help strengthen production.”

In fact, regional government/culture businesses made out quite well. (I’m not sure what to call these amalgams of political and economic interest. If anyone out there knows of or might suggest a name, I’d appreciate it.) In a column titled “the sellers won, the buyers smiled”, the May 20, 2006 edition of the Special Zone Daily reported that the following contracts were signed at the Fair: The French “Disney” (as Futuroscope Theme Park is known in the Chinese papers) signed contracts with Guangdong Province for roughly 4 billion rmb (500 million US$); Guizhou signed contracts to attract and develop cultural industries totalling 7 billion rmb (875 million US$); Guangxi signed contracts totalling 3.7 billion (462.5 million US$), Henan signed contracts totalling 1.1 billion RMB (130 million US$). Located in western Shenzhen, Overseas Chinese Town, itself a place/government/enterprise also signed contracts for 600 million RMB (48 million US$).

This leads to a third point about the fuzzy line between politics and economics at the Culture Fair. The Fair itself provided the stage for all this contract signing. This suggests that the real business took place elsewhere between representatives from Chinese governments and foreign businesses. The cooperation between multi-national firms and bureaus within the Chinese Government is a pattern of development that we have seen before, as when Chinese President, Hu Jintao visited Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates in Seattle this spring. The Fair itself, therefore, seemed more a display of the success of the government in promoting cultural industries, rather than a place where commerce might grow. In fact, during the weekend, many parents bought tickets to bring children to see the various cultural exhibitions, especially the Comic and Games exhibit. If there was any business going on at the Fair, it seemed more a case of businesses building a network of face-to-face contacts that might grow into a contract signing ceremony at next year’s fair.

This emphasis on display took several forms. First, exhibitors called attention to their displays through the use of bright colors and loud music. Second, exhibitors made their displays mobile with handouts and costumed players, who moved throughout an assigned hall, directing visitors to a particular display. Third, a television or screen was the focus point of each display, so that visitors could see the cultural product, whether it was a performance or a new technology. Forth, each display became an enclosed space, reproducing some kind of idealized space. Walking through these spaces, I felt disoriented and unable to focus on any one display. And I rarely saw people stopping, unless they were playing computer games or resting and not looking at anything in particular.

Below are pictures of Hall 6 (left) and the Shanxi Exhibit (right).

So Shenzhen provided the space for the Fair. Shenzhen companies produced the Fair. Shenzhen digital art companies displayed their wares at the Fair. Shenzhen advertizing companies produced many of the exhibits at the Fair. And Shenzheners bought tickets to attend the Fair. Yet Shenzhen did not have any recognizably “cultural” displays–no traditional theatre troupes, no local minorities, no ancient ruins to sell. Instead, Shenzhen had a series of poster boards, which displayed examples of cultural events that had been held in Shenzhen. Here, the government focused on international and domestic troupes that had performed on Shenzhen stages, including the Bolshoi and the National People’s Theatre.

The Ministry of Culture also printed a Shenzhen Art map, which directed people to cultural sites in the city, including the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, various museums, and District level cultural centers. The map also references several “folk” sites, such as the Tianhou Temple in Chiwan, the Hakka compound in Longgang, and the Pengcheng city in Longgang. These signs of pre-reform culture have all been turned into museums. However, none of these sites appeared in the in the Cultural Fair.

Shenzhen thus found itself facing an interesting and from the outside seemingly unnecessary cultural “lack”. The kind of cultural industry that went into producing the Fair thrives in Shenzhen, but it still doesn’t count as “culture”. Instead, older, high modernist ideas of an opposition between mass (commercial) and high art continue to define the cultural sphere in which the Municipality competes for national recognition. At the same time, government officials don’t recognize local history as cultural heritage. Instead, they continue to assert that there was “nothing” here before the reforms of 1980. This double denial of cultural resources in Shenzhen created a crack through which Fat Bird could not only enter, but also be invited to attend the Cultural Industry Fair.

Importantly, Fat Bird’s status as a legal entity points to the fact that troupe members have support in the government. Moreover, Fat Bird’s friends are precisely the people who bemoan the City’s lack of high culture. Not that this translates into specifically economic support for the arts, but it does mean that at moments in which culture is featured, these friends find ways to help Fat Bird. Accordingly, we were given the use of the rest area in Hall 6. We were also allowed to perform “This Body, These Movements” on the Hall 6 stage. All other participants had to pay for exhibition space and for time onstage. So even though no money changed hands, we looked at this as a chance in which Fat Bird actually “earned” a commission for our work.

Below are pictures of Fat Bird founder, Yang Qian standing at the Fat Bird site (left) and Fat Bird members performing (right).

Fat Bird used this opportunity in two ways. On Saturday, May 20, we held a workshop in our space. The space was created through four points: a sign that said Fat Bird Theatre, a sign that announced workshop times, a ladder where we hung the backdrop for “This Body, These Movements”, and a display of photographs. The workshop format was modeled on previous workshops. However, we asked members of the audience to write two character (one word) evaluations of the performance on a sheet of paper. Journalists mentioned that it was one of the few sites in the Convention Center where it was possible to focus on what was happening. On Sunday, May 21, we walked around the Fair and looked for ideas for new pieces. Next weekend, each participant will show a piece created out of the their tour and understanding of the Fair. The working title of this piece is the same as the title of the May 20th workshop: Cultural Expression.

Given the ideology structuring the layout of the Fair, the title “Cultural Expression” is more than a little ironic. To the extent that all exhibitors could be understood as expressing political will in economic terms, Fat Bird’s presence staged one of the fundamental contradictions of post-Mao reforms. On the one hand, we did not disrupt the Fair. On the contrary, our display was sponsored by the government. The government could be seen as sanctioning our work, even as our presence legitimated particular claims about cultural production in Shenzhen. On the other hand, Fat Bird’s was the one non-economic display at the Fair. This was the moment in the performance that most of the audience appreciated (especially because most complained they didn’t understand the performances themselves). Many thanked us for demonstrating the possibility of non-commercial art. They also lauded our efforts to follow our dreams.

“This is how I want my daughter to live,” one mother told us.

Now, I don’t know if she really wants her daughter to stop studying for the college entrance exams to perform with us. I suspect she was voicing a desire for a society in which her daughter could pursue artistic dreams without incurring serious social repercussions. Right now, she lives in a world where last year 8 to 9 million people took the college entrance exams and only 1.4 million were placed. More often than not, that level of competition precludes following one’s artistic bliss, as students study the arts to improve their transcripts rather than their lives. So, I think this exchange called attention to a desire to re-interpret the current political will in non-instrumental ways, which would place human creativity at the center of society.

As I look at the four pictures added to this entry, I realize again how difficult it was to see at the Fair. Neon flattened to grey. That has to be where my experience started. In fact, by the second day, I noticed that participating in the Fair not only exhausted me, but also made me irritable. In part, I have placed these photos together to draw out the differences between Fair space and Fat Bird space. However, I also think I have placed these images here, rather than setting them off in a gallery, because they don’t look interesting to me. I think I took these pictures while looking away, rather than trying to see what was there, what might inspire creativity, what might be otherwise.

Six images from found objects were shown at the Culture Fair.

The official site of the 文博会 provides both Chinese and English language news coverage of the Culture Fair. For those looking for equally, but otherwise biased images and information, it’s a good place to start.

此身此行：fat bird in guangzhou

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this body
Originally uploaded by mary ann odonnell.

over the may day long holiday, fat bird went to guangzhou to participate in the guangdong modern dance festival. the festival was divided into roughly three events: performances by established troupes, performances by young chinese artists, and workshops with established dancers. the performances by young chinese artists were short, roughly 5 to 10 minutes in length. fat bird performed “此身此行 (this body, these movements)”, which was developed over the course of the winter workshops. at the festival, this piece unexpectedly won a gold medal. unexpected because only one fat bird member was trained as a dancer. however, it seems that a willingness to put amateurs onstage was one of the defining features of experimentation at this year’s festival, where the technical quality of the dancers often overwhelmed the dance itself.

to the right is a copy of the poster for the performance that i designed. it is a reinterpretation of the photos that dominate official funerals. during the performance a larger version of this image (without writing) hung onstage. fat bird members yang qian, yang qie, and hou junmou walked across stage and bowed to this photo, while dancer liu hongming performed a series of intentionally discordant movements. yang jie created the music mash “此地此时 (this place, this time)” for the piece. as promised, “此身此行 (this body, these movements)” is now online.

reflections

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the past few days, the sun has radiated a white haze that makes it difficult to look directly at any building or person. even with sun glasses, i find the environment strangely flattened as contrasts are both more extreme and less subtle than usual. an abrupt reminder that all that is surface is in fact superficial, although not necessarily postmodern.

i also find myself wondering about the history of glass siding that shoots up to heaven and how that artificial sky gets appropriated in sites where we don’t need more sun, but less. i feel suddenly nostalgic for an annotated everly brothers: where have all the 骑楼–old style cantonese buildings with shaded walkways (nice also in the rain)–gone? revolution passing. where have all the qilou gone, short time ago. where have all the qilou gone, become outdoor shopping malls, every one–like dongmen （东门）in shenzhen and the beijing pedestrian road (北京步行街）in guangzhou. what have we really learned, what do we know?

anyway, i’ve put up several views of reflected sky. when in doubt, bear witness.