Category Archives: shenzhen fieldnotes

sustainable livelihood

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A week into my residency and Shenzhen and Sitka begin to speak to each other.

Yesterday, I walked along the banks of Salmon River. Kim provided snowpants and Jalene lent me a pair of boots, so I trudged happily through the muck, where the grass, barnacles, some kind of seaweed, and spiraling sands enabled a silence that I have previously only experienced in meditation. The natural beauty of Cascade Head gentles me, helping me to feel where I am.

Feeling space, as opposed to resisting space is new to me. In Shenzhen, I devote much of my time to documenting spaces that shock or outrage me. This means that I rarely allow myself to experience the agony of how the environment has been transformed in Shenzhen. Instead, I back away at critical moments and sink into abstractions about place and space. This abstracting is both defensive (Houhai truly depresses me) and part of a struggle to engage others in dialogue about what is happening in Shenzhen because I’m not sure how much others know about what is going on here (and here even in Sitka is Shenzhen…)

What strikes me in Sitka is how Shenzhen allows Sitka and other beautiful places to exist without questioning the conditions that make them possible–contamination out of sight/site, out of mind. Specifically, In Lincoln City, I haven’t seen any manufacturing. Most of the stuff around me was made in or near Shenzhen, including parts for the eMac that I’m using to type this entry (FoxConn is in Longhua, just past the Meilin Checkpoint.) Everyone at the center is involved in consumption, including consumption of this amazing environment. The rub of course is that this kind of consumption (in house with central heating and internet hook-up) is predicated on the existence of places like Shenzhen…

Together, Sitka and Shenzhen make visceral for me the question of sustainable livelihood. It is not just that we need to preserve places like Cascade Head, but also that we need to come up with ways of living that do not lead to the level of destruction that go into creating Shenzhen. The point, of course, is that these worlds co-evolve; FoxComm is where it is for real reasons, including poverty throughout neidi.

Sitka Center for Art and Ecology

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i am ready to leap, picture from first walk along estuary

i am presently at the sitka center for art and ecology for a month long artist residency. i have the pleasure of being here with Matthew Bower, Kim R Stafford, and Dawn Stetzel.

i am enjoying the feeling of being overwhelmed, both by the beauty of this environment and the gratitude i feel for this opportunity. my initial forays into this new and radically different environment have helped me to begin thinking holistically again. i am struck by how these sweeping landscapes open the mind to interconnections and windswept meetings. thinking about the deathly perfection of gold, i folded an ingot and photographed it along the coastline. paper boats, paper tigers, golden paper for the dead…


paper ingot

also, this is my first attempt at engaging shenzhen without academic scaffolding and presenting myself as an artist (with admittedly ethnographic inclinations). i am here to work on a series of image poems that interpret the transformation of shenzhen at the nexus of two discourses – the chinese discourse of the five elements and the western medical discourse of prosthetic construction. specifically, i am interested in mapping the cosmological implications of the transvaluation of chinese cartographies brought on by the ongoing construction of shenzhen. will post images.

fat bird in hong kong!

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On January 10-11, 2009 Fat Bird will perform “FBI: 2009 Shennong Plan” at the Fringe Club City Festival 2009. FBI is, of course, the acronym for Fat Bird Institution.

FBI: 2009 Shennong Project is organized as a series of public announcements, propaganda events, and onstage performances that are adapted to local audience concerns.

Organization of Public Announcement. During a pre-show press conference, FBI Chair Yang Qian explains how recent Chinese food crises are in fact signs that human evolution is entering a new stage. Specifically, toxic food allows the earth to weed out food dependent people, revealing the new human as the ones who directly ingest elements. All human beings are welcome to join FBI’s pursuit of a new and glorious future humanity.

Organization of Propaganda Events. At each of the onstage performance, FBI sets up an information table, where an FBI believer challenges passersby and audience members with the questions: “Are you afraid of China food?” and “If so, would you consider joining FBI?”

Organization of Onstage Scenes (for Hong Kong performance, January 10-11, 2009; time 30 minutes; 7 participants). Each scene is comprised of: multi-media and performance. FBI handouts and propaganda materials will also be available at each performance.

Images of the first FBI handouts from the December 4, 2008 press conference in Hong Kong:


fat bird red and blue

English translation of the handout:

FBI Report to Hong Kong Citizens: The Chinese Food Problem and a New Stage in Human Evolution

People of Hong Kong:

Greetings! Recently, under the pressure of population, environmental, rapid urbanization, and globalization, the quality of Chinese food has become increasingly questionable. Chemical residues in food and chemical additives with no nutritional value are now common. In addition, there are constant reports of industrially processed foods. This year, the “Three Deer Milk Powder Incident” transformed the question of food safety into a focus of social concern. “Three Deer” milk products carried the prestigious “No National Food Inspection” label because in previous years their products had all passed inspection. The contamination of Three Deer” milk products resulted in the collapse of confidence in national food safety regulation. This crisis and the high level of distrust of all food was the background for the appearance of a new illness—comephobia. Comephobics display high levels of anxiety, suffer from hallucinations, and are frequently aggressive. There is a danger of comephobic outbreaks in the richest of China’s eating regions. According to our information, health departments throughout the country are as yet unable to cure or control this disease.

However, the crisis in Chinese food safety is actually a signal that humanity has entered a new stage in evolution. Accordingly, FBI has a special announcement: the results of our research show that there is a special class of human being that does not depend on ordinary food in order to live. They are among us. We call the “elementals” because they are able to secure nutrition from other sources. Elementals are uniquely adapted to the current environment and do not suffer from comephobia. Given ongoing environmental degradation, they embody the hope of human survival and evolution.

FBI is the acronym of Fat Bird Institution, the department of the Global New Life Diversification Federation that is responsible for researching and optimizing the opportunities for human evolution caused by the pressure of the Chinese food environment. We have been secretly tracking the existence of elementals for a long time. However, we were unable to develop an easy method for distinguishing elementals from the rest of the population. The Three Deer Milk Powder Incident enabled a breakthrough in FBI’s work on identifying elementals. Our research shows that children who drink melamine contaminated milk powder and develop kidney stones are in fact elementals. When this research was extended to the adult population, our identifications were 99.46% accurate. FBI decided to announce our presence and research to offer an invitation to all people. Come to an FBI identification station and take the melamine milk test and determine your true nature. The mass distinguishing of human natures is the second core mission of the “2009 Shennong Plan”.

During the January 2009 Hong Kong Fringe Festival, FBI will set up an identification station in the basement of the Fringe Club. We welcome every Hong Kong citizen to begin self-identification. We will also provide entertainment.

recognition for shenzhen fieldnotes!

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Online Universities dot com has published a list of the top 100 anthropology blogs and Shenzhen Fieldnotes was included in the category of fieldwork. Other categories include general, biological, social and cultural anthropology blogs, and archeology. Worth checking out for virtual entries into the discipline.

fusion food-scapes

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This weekend a group of Swiss writers visited as part of the food-scape / 食事风景 project. Representing the four Swiss languages, the writers were: Vanni Bianconi (Italian), Arno Camenisch (Romanch), Odile Cornuz (French), Peter Weber (German), and Martin Zeller (German). Margrit Manz organized the project. Three film-makers also came: Xia Tian from Tianjin by way of Basel, Janos Tedeschi, and Milo.

The importance of food in creating and nourishing human relationships is a truism in both anthropological theory and Chinese culture. We don’t just eat with intimates, we also create intimacy by sharing food. Moreover, when a group lacks common topics of conversation, talking about food easily segues into childhood memories, strangest food I ever tasted bravado, journeys through cultural landscapes, and perils of world domination by American fast food chains.

Saturday afternoon, day one, started awkwardly but ended with the sensual pleasures of a Hunan restaurant,where I was most struck by how good food facilitated conversations that had previously been stilted and dry. Pre-food, we approached conversation intellectually, each of us rehearsing arguments and theses we had clearly developed in other contexts. However, the flavors, the baijiu, the chewing, the swallowing, and the communal digesting of Hunan food gave us a world in common. We talked about tastes, what was special about Hunan food, the different types of chili peppers in China. We enjoyed Peter and Vanni’s enthusiasm for new dishes and suddenly the distance between people dissolved into laughter, stories, and arranging another workshop, which would be held after visiting Dongmen and City Hall the next day.

Sunday morning, day two, Winnie Wong joined us for morning tea at the revolving restaurant at the top of the National Commerce Building (国贸). This building is a particular favorite of mine because the inexpensive morning tea (48 per person on weekdays, 58 on weekends) is not only tasty, but also an easy opening to talk about Shenzhen history (the National Commerce Building was the first skyscraper built in reform China) and view Shenzhen (at 49 stories the building is tall enough for great views but low enough to be able to see and identify other buildings). Again, food, its presentation, and the dim sum fun of selecting baskets of dumplings, braised chicken claws, and cow stomach created commonality, so that presence in the present could anchor conversations that might otherwise have drifted into the tenuous connections of abstract thoughts.

We then visited the street markets of the remains of old Hubei Village (湖贝村), an urban village that occupies downtown land as yet to expensive to appropriated. Rows of and two-story traditional houses create narrow lanes, which are wide enough for a person to walk through open onto wider main lanes, which are wide enough to accommodate small carts, bicycles, motor scooters, and tables of fresh meat, vegetables, seafood, fried breads, imported fruits, tofu products, and displays of preserved eggs. Most of Shenzhen’s migrant workers live with their families in inner city villages like Hubei Village and these street markets both reproduce the feel of local markets elsewhere and provide convenient access to food. More importantly, the street markets create food-scapes, where migrants can inhabit Shenzhen by making neighborhoods out of grocery shopping, haggling over prices, sharing recipes, or simply walking around and noticing what’s available.

These three very different food-scapes provided the backdrop to our short visit to experience the monumentality of the central axis, where Martin bought pastries for our afternoon workshop, which itself was a food-scape of another kind. Martin arranged the pastries in the center of the table, I added the box of Swiss chocolates that Xia Tian had given me as a meeting gift, and the hostel workers served cups of hot coffee and tea. The group was now ready to talk about art. And we did. The conversation touched upon individualism, Chinese familialism, the materiality of language, and the performance of written works. Odile and Janos provided an impromtu reading of my translation of Yang Qian’s “Neither Type Nor Category”, and then Peter read his poems in German and Yang Qian their Chinese translations.

I left the table thinking about the importance of shared intimacy through eating to nourishing mutual understanding. Indeed, eating together made spaces in which conversation was meaningful and viscerally pleasurable, allowing real cultural differences to explored, rather than skipped over. During the food-scape exchange, for example, two of the most obvious moments of cultural ignorance appeared as lack of knowledge about Shenzhen (among Western artists) and indifference to Dada (among Chinese students).

On the one hand, over the past thirty years, Shenzhen has touched the lives of every single Mainland person. To have lived through Reform and Opening is to have seen its possibilities tried out, tinkered with, and transformed in Shenzhen. Indeed, migrating to Shenzhen, especially before 1997, defined a particular kind of courage and ambition that all Chinese people recognize. Thus, in the context of the contemporary PRC, ignorance about Shenzhen is unimaginable because it would mean having missed an entire historical era.

On the other hand, modern art movements like Dada have impacted and made possible all kinds of Western lives, ranging from aesthetic experimentation to philosophical interrogation of the limits to objective truth. Many of us, including myself, have created lives out of these possibilities. Thus, in the context of Western individualism, indifference to Dada is puzzling because to learn about Dada is to deepen one’s understanding of the self.

Definite food for thought.

film maker liu gaoming

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On Tuesday, December 2, 2008 SACS hosted the Shenzhen premiere of Shenzhen filmmaker, Liu Gaoming’s film, “A Song.” Mary Ann O’Donnell interpreted the after film discussion. QSI Shekou provided the venue.

Ostensively straightforward, “A Song” tells the story of the anti-Shenzhen Dream; a young guitar player migrates to Shenzhen, looses his job, lives off his friends, and falls in love with the possibly drug-addicted hostess who lives in the apartment across the alley. When not hanging out or trying to sell commercial yellow pages over the phone, A Song spies on his pretty neighbor. One day he vanishes.

However, unlike traditional films, “A Song” challenges genre conventions by documenting the filmmaker Liu Gaoming’s memory of A Song, rather than presenting a cinema verité of A Song’s life. In 1996, Liu also migrated to Shenzhen. For three months, he and A Song lived together in a crowded apartment in one of Shenzhen’s urban villages. Then Liu changed jobs, moving to another part of the city. He and A Song lost contact with one another. Later, through a mutual friend, Liu heard that “Maybe A Song made a mistake, so maybe he’s hiding from the police.” Liu has repeatedly wondered what could have turned his first Shenzhen friend, the friend who cooked him dinner and cared for him, what could have turned this basically decent human being into a swindler? What actually happened while Liu was at work and A Song hung out at the apartment?

“A Song” is Liu’s painfully intimate exploration of that fundamental time, when both men faced the existential challenge of making a new life in an alien city, alone. According to Liu, “The only difference between me and A Song is that I persevered and stayed, while he left.”

In fact, unlike A Song, Liu Gaoming has achieved the Shenzhen Dream. He is now the creative director of his own design company, has a beautiful condo in one of Shenzhen’s upscale neighborhoods, and drives an imported car. His wife is an equally talented and successful fashion designer and their four-year old daughter laughs easily.

Liu came to Shenzhen after receiving a teaching degree in painting from a teacher’s college in Ganzhou, Jiangxi. After graduating from college he taught middle school art class for half a year before deciding to pursue his dreams in Shenzhen. During his first year in Shenzhen, Liu did odd jobs in art related businesses. However, the following year, he was hired to work in a design studio and his life became more stable. He settled into his job, learned the trade, and then in 2001 opened his own design company, Brothers Design.

However, the more materially successful Liu has become, the more he has felt disconnected from the city that enabled his rags-to-riches transformation. This is one of the paradoxes of the Shenzhen Dream. Once a migrant achieves the dream and becomes a Shenzhener, it becomes apparent that although everything is different, nothing essential has changed. The desires and dissatisfactions that compel one to migrate to China’s most important post-Mao experiments don’t dissipate simply because one makes good. If anything, existential questions become more acute. Indeed, thirty years after the Reform and Opening era began, many of the beneficiaries of Deng Xiaoping’s policy to transform Maoism are actively asking themselves if there is a spiritual dimension to all this economic booming.

For Liu, the question, “How did I get here?” became salient in 2003, when his parents visited him. He was shocked to realize that they really were already old and that time really was that relentless. Liu Gaoming suddenly wanted to know: how did I get here?

In order to understand both his alienation from the Shenzhen dream and the actual city, Liu Gaoming began making films. However, when he picked up a Sony 790 and turned his gaze on Shenzhen and its residents, Liu had no previous film making experience. In fact, no one on the production team of “A Song” had any film making experience and Liu himself still doesn’t know what kind of sound system was used during film. He does remember that they used two hanging and two body mikes. Consequently, Liu has humorously named his film company “Amateur Productions”.

To date, Liu has completed two films, “Rib” and “A Song,” is editing a third, “Beijing” and is planning his fourth. Each film focuses on a Shenzhen anti-hero, someone whose life never quite takes root in the city. Instead, like the pirated DVD hawker of the eponymous documentary “Rib,” the Shenzhen anti-heroes who populate Liu’s films start off at society’s edge, begin a downward spiral into its uncharted depths, and then vanish without a trace.

Filmed in 2004 and edited in 2007, “A Song” was Liu’s first interrogation of the anti-Shenzhen Dream. The film implicitly asks: If the only difference between a Liu Gaoming and an A Song is that Liu stays and A Song leaves, what does it mean to inhabit Shenzhen? Is there any point to staying in the city?

Liu takes a non-judgmental view of A Song’s inability to pursue the Shenzhen Dream. Instead, he matter-of-factly shows the sparse conditions of A Song’s life. The apartment is not only cramped, but also presses up against other apartments that are so close that if A Song were to reach out through the barred window, he and the neighbor could shake hands. The incessant noise compounds the visceral lack of privacy. At the same time, A Song doesn’t speak with anyone; he practices speaking Cantonese with a book, he pretends to call customers on the phone, and he grunts instead of answering the pretty girl who washes his hair and cajoles him into joining her for a “chat”.

A Song’s silent implosion is painful to watch, but Liu holds the camera unwaveringly on the memory of his friend. A Song stands on bench. A Song smokes a cigarette. A Song rides a bicycle in the apartment living room, first circling then crashing into the long sofa. A Song becomes nothing more than a body occupying space. A Song vanishes. Liu admits that he originally filmed in color and then converted the files to black and white because, “That’s what I felt like when I was making the film.”

“A Song” ends with a fantasy sequence in which Liu imagines that A Song has returned to his hometown and resumed his career as a music teacher. This image poignantly speaks to how migrating to Shenzhen has changed individuals like A Song and Liu Gaoming, begging the question: is going home the last, unrealizable Shenzhen Dream?

more graffiti

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walking from coastal city, one of the large malls on the houhai landfill toward haiya, a mall built about ten years ago, i past this bit of graffiti. it does say it all.

Shekou 30th anniversary

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This year marks the 30th anniversary of the China Merchants (招商局) Shekou Industrial Zone (possibly park). Shekou was established one year before Shenzhen, which celebrates the city’s thirtieth next year or the following year, depending on whether one counts from the year Guangdong approved the decision to establish Shenzhen (1979), or the Central government (1980). The SEZ border with the rest of the country wasn’t fully in place until 1986… Anyway, all sorts of commemorative events have already begun, including randomly posted pictures of Old Shenzhen, here, here and here, which are worth checking out to get a sense of the scale of change.

(Although the first set are actually from the 25th anniversary. I really do have to write about the ongoing and seemingly compulsive revisions of Shenzhen history. In a city that is constantly referred to as having no history, the historic compulsion is not only alive and well, it also shows up in advertising as “11 years of experience” as if 11 years was a long time, and of course, it is, but only in the context of thirty years, which are considered nothing in the history of 5,000 years of civilization… contradictions, contradictions…)

One of the more famous pictures from the early years is of Deng Xiaoping writing the characters for Seaworld (海上世界), here. His daughter stands to his right and, looking over his shoulder is Yuan Geng, the man who initiated many of the reforms that are today considered central to reform and opening, including: the first industrial park open to foreign investment, directly hiring and firing employees (rather than using centralized work assignments), and introducing market driven management principles (time is money, efficiency is life.

This picture is interesting for what it tells us about the political culture in which Shekou came into being as well as the kind of political and social change that Shekou once symbolized.

1. 1984 was the first time that Deng Xiaoping came to Shenzhen. He visited many places, but the two symbolically most important were Guomao (in Luohu, near the train station) and the Minghua cruise ship in Shekou. He inscribed characters for both the Shenzhen and Shekou governments. Shenzhen received the famous lines: 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 (the development and experience of shenzhen proves that the policy to establish an economic special zone was correct, picture of Deng Xiaoping writing inscription.) In contrast, Shekou received four characters: 海上世界 (seaworld).

2. The actual content of the inscriptions points to the differences between the early eighties Shenzhen and Shekou models of reform. Shenzhen was explicitly linked with politics. This is confirmed by the importance of Guomao, which was built as both a shopping center and an office building to house representatives from Chinese provinces, cities, and ministries. In contrast, Shekou was explicitly linked re-orienting everyday life from models of third world mutual support and mass production to capitalist trade and individualized consumption as a brief history of the Minghua and the four characters “Seaworld” shows.

The Minghua was a French cruise ship christened by DeGalle (1962). The Chinese bought it to transport engineering support to Tanzania in 1973 to build railroad in support of villigization—a form of African socialism based on the Chinese model. In 1979, then used as part of relinking Sino-Japanese relations. In 1983, the Minghua was moved to Shekou and refurnished as a floating restaurant and nightclub, where it anchored a westernized club scene.

3. When Deng Xiaoping inscribed the characters for Seaworld, he not only signaled his support of the Shekou model, he made the kinds of reforms that were taking place in Shekou a model for national development. Chinese leaders inscribe (题词) calligraphy to support organizations and policies. As of 1984, reform and opening did not only refer to administrative reorganization (as signaled by the Shenzhen inscription), but also to social and cultural reform. This is important because before 6.4 individual desires and political reform had not yet been brutally separated, so that in pursuing their dreams, young people in Shenzhen also represented a new kind of Chinese future.

4. The fascinating and ongoing politics of the smiling face. Smiling continues to be, like inscribing phrases and words, a way that Chinese leaders publicly express political support. This picture of happy leaders was a metonym for reform society: following this path will lead to a happy future. It ties into traditional paternalism, in which strict fathers only smiled when their children truly did something well.

Sanlu: more text messages

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More text messages, this time on the Sanlu (三鹿集团) scandal. I am not sure if the link will work. It presently doesn’t work in Shenzhen, but may still function elsewhere. The New Zealand dairy company Fonterra owns 43% of Sanlu. (A brief reminder: Sanlu added melamine, an industrial additive to powdered milk formula. Melamine causes kidney stones in children. According to a NY Times report, three babies have died and over 53,000 have been hospitalized due to complications caused by consuming contaminated milk powder.)

In the follow translations, the Chinese comes first and the English second. Black humor indeed.

河南省委书记发来贺电：热烈祝贺河北三鹿给河北人民带来骗子金牌，从此河南人民的骗子称号将拱手相让。

Congratulatory telegram from the Henan Province Party Secretary: Warm congratulations to Sanlu for bringing home to Hebei the gold medal in swindling, from now on the people of Henan yield their title as the People’s swindlers. (note: Henan people are considered the worst swindlers in China.)

安慰省委书记发来贺电：热烈祝贺河北制作毒奶粉，肾结石可比大头娃娃厉害，安慰人民甘败下风。

Congratulatory telegram from the Anhui Province Party Secretary: Warm congratulations to Hebei for producing poisoned milk powder, kidney stones are definitely more lethal than “big headed babies”. The people of Anhui happily concede to Hebei. (note: In March this year, the Fuyang People’s Hospital admitted babies with large, droopy cheeks. Some of these babies weighed less than when they were born. At the time, it was estimated that at least eight babies had died and over seventy babies had been contaminated by fake milk powder, which had been sold at Fuyang wet markets. News reports suggested that many children were not drinking healthy, mother’s milk. Instead, grandparents took care of these children because their mothers were migrant workers. This analysis is worrisome for several reasons: (1) it points to class-based health risks; (2) blames mothers for working when they “should” be at home; (3) exculpates the swindlers by blaming caretakers for not being able to distinguish between fake and real products; and (4) lets the provincial Ministry of Health off the hook for clear regulatory lapses. Anhui officials should thank God for Sanlu. And for the poverty that compels mothers to become migrant workers even before their children are weaned.)

山西省委书记发来贺电：非常感谢河北三鹿，转移了新闻热点，否则，我们的溃堤事故就要由省委书记来辞职了，现在只省长辞职了。谢谢啊。

Congratulatory telegram from the Shanxi Province Party Secretary: Sincere thanks to Sanlu for redirecting media attention, otherwise, our Party Secretary would have had to resign because of the mud slide. Now, only the Governor has to resign. Thank you. (note: On September 8, a mud slide in Xiangfen County, Shanxi buried Yunhe Village. See EastSouthWestNorth for story.)

证监会主席发来贺电：非常谢谢河北三鹿，周二开盘如果再跌，就是由于三鹿引起的中国经济信任危机，不再是我们证监会无能了，非常感谢河北三鹿转移新闻热点，股民的心疼，没有患儿父母的心疼。

Congratulatory telegram from the Chair of the Stock Regulatory Board: Many thanks to Sanlu. If the market continues to open lower on Tuesday, it will be because Sanlu has caused a crisis in economic trust, and not because we are incompetent. Also, thanks for redirecting media attention. Stockholders’ pain holds nothing on the pain of parents’ concern for their children.

伊利蒙牛等各企业发来密电：老田阿，咋整滴？不是说好了少加点吗，怎吗加那吗多呀，看错秤啦？好心情每天！

Yili and Mongolian Cow sent secret telegrams: Old Tian, how . Didn’t we agree to add just a little? How could you add that much? Did you misread the scale? Keep your spirits up! (note: not unexpectedly Melamine has been found in other milk products, including candy bars, and in other brands.)

中国人在食品中完成了化学扫盲，从大米里我们认识了石腊，从火腿里我们认识了敌敌畏，从咸鸭蛋辣椒奖励我们认识了苏丹红，从火过里我们认识了福尔马林，从银耳蜜枣里我们认识了硫磺，从木耳中认识了硫酸铜，今天三鹿又让同胞之道了三聚氰胺的化学作用。

Chinese people have learned about chemistry through food products: from corn we learned about paraffin; from ham we learned about panaplate; from jujubes we learned about sulphur; and from tree fungus, we learned about bluestone. Today, Sanlu taught us the chemical uses of melamine. (note: In May this year, corn was coated with paraffin to make it shiny and more appetizing in Sansui, Guangdong; Panaplate is apparently a trade name for Dichlorvos (2,2-dichlorovinyl dimethyl phosphate), or DDVP, a highly volatile organophosphate, widely used as a fumigant to control household, public health, and stored product insects [definition from: China Environmental Law], although I’m not sure how it got into ham; sulphur has provided longer shelf lives to honey-processed jujubes; bluestone is the trade name of copper sulphate, a fungicide used to control bacterial and fungal diseases of fruit, vegetable, nut, and field crops. For a full list of the very scary toxilogical effects visit the Extension Toxicology Network. We know what melamine does.)
And some puns:

外国人和牛奶结实了，中国人和喝奶结石了。

Foreigners drink milk and become strong, Chinese people drink milk and get kidney stones.

日本人口号：一天一杯牛奶振兴一个民族；中国人的口号：一天一杯牛奶，震惊一个民族。

Japenese slogan: a glass of milk a day strengthens the nation; Chinese slogan: a glass of milk a day shocks a nation.

historic preservation

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i have been reading about ideas and efforts to renovate shenzhen, and have discovered an intense interest in historic preservation. there are several obvious examples–the chiwan tianhou temple (museum), the renovated dongmen commercial area (west of dongmen road), nantou old city, the hakka compounds in longgang, pengcheng garrison–and several more recent “discoveries”–any of the early 1980s light industry parks, remnants of older villages, a ming dynasty temple in baoan, older ancestral halls, dongmen commerce before historic renovation (east of dongmen road), 4 and 5 star hotels from the late 80s and early 90s, including the eastern pearl luxury cruise ship landlocked behind a golf practice range in seaworld. in various ways and with various degrees of success, all of these areas have been integrated into the new shenzhen.

of course, at stake is the question: what counts as history? the current effort to renovate inner city villages acknowledges that shenzhen’s only living cradles of pre-urban history are the villages, but on the other hand, what makes shenzhen “special” has been its urbanization. this contradiction means that even when village histories are chronicled and preserved, they do not resonate with shenzhen’s migrant communities. nor have i heard (note: what follows is highly anecdotal) that historic preservation in one village means anything to folks from other villages, except to encourage them to write their own histories. these histories re-write village history in terms of urbanization and what shenzhen has done for them.

so one telos, with history becoming the search for one origin. perhaps this is where the difficulty lies in writing shenzhen history. there isn’t one origin, nor one telos for that matter. even bracketing multiple development trajectories at any one time, there is still the fact that shenzhen’s official goals for urbanization have changed with every urban plan. this means that the editorial choice for one origin becomes deng xiaoping’s decision to establish sezs, and the telos becomes whatever has been built to date. so writing shenzhen’s history becomes tracking the history of changing teloses…and this is invisible. we lurch from one state of being to another, but can’t remember what was here before, or are compelled to forget what was here, even yesterday… we are busy explaining the link between deng xiaoping and shenzhen today.

the difficulty of trying to make shenzhen’s multiple teloses visible became clear to me several weeks ago. i met with a friend to show him several years of pictures of houhai and he said, “i thought the change would be more obvious. i can’t tell which pictures were taken first.” image quality told part of the story–i’ve used better cameras over time, so the better the resolution, the more recent the picture. its true. houhai has changed, but the way its changed–reclaim land, build tall buildings–hasn’t. so signs of change include building style, height, materials, distance from original coastline, which is marked by the oldest buildings, green space (as shenzhen has become richer, landscaping has increasing relied on imported, rather than local plants). but who has this kind of knowledge, which might form the basis of some kind of historic recognition? this knowledge is excruciatingly site specific. and people like my friend who haven’t repeatedly walked the coastline, don’t see the change. they see, instead, more of the same and when i visit places in shenzhen, i often find myself relying on knowledge of other places to read the extent of urbanization…

i am tempted to compare this feeling of eternally recreated present to the scene in the matrix, where the keanu reeves character (who’s name i’ve confused with nemo the fish) figures out he’s in a computer program because of a glitch; the same woman in the same dress walks by the same building twice, and only that experience, that moment of awareness reveals change. so history writing becomes looking for these glitches that otherwise go unnoticed.