Category Archives: shenzhen fieldnotes

historic houhai

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July 1, 2007. ten year anniversary of the Handover of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. Unlike ten years ago, when the city buzzed with anticipatory dreams of what two systems might mean for ordinary people, this year Shenzhen has been relatively unconcerned with commemorating the other of Deng Xiaoping’s two accomplishments. When an American friend asked a Shenzhen friend what they were doing for “July 1st,” my Shenzhen friend looked at both Yang Qian and me, trying to figure out what holiday it was.

May 1st is International Labor Day. June 1st is International Children’s Day. July 1st is the birthday of the Chinese Communist Party, although its an internal holiday, so nobody celebrates it. As we counted, everyone got into the “first” spirit. August 1st is the birthday of the People’s Liberation Army. September 1st is the first day of school. October 1st is National Day. November 1st is All Saint’s Day. December 1st? Nothing. January 1st is New Year’s Day. February 1st? Nothing, but February 2nd is Ground Hog’s Day, which might count in a more generous world. March 1st? Again nothing, but International Women’s Day falls exactly one week later on March 8th. April 1st is All Fool’s Day. We turned to our guest. July 1st?

Tenth Anniversary, she said.

Ahh. We knew that, but it hadn’t registrared. Clearly.

Not that Shenzhen hasn’t prepared a major engineering feat to commemorate the Handover. This morning at around 10 a.m., the Western Corridor Bridge (lit up)officially opened, as did the Shenzhen Bay Border Checkpoint. At 6 a.m,. this morning I made my cursory “in the spirit of documenting history” appearance at the site. I walked down the old Nanyou street. At the intersection between the road and the new Houhai Ocean Front Road, police had set themselves up to prevent cars from going in. Presumably, they were also keeping people off the sidewalk. However, about 10 steps away it was possible to walk through the park that had just been put in (also for the opening ceremony). Walking this way it was possible to go around the police and head toward the new Customs Checkpoint and get a closeup of the Bridge.


heading south the banners read: one country two systems, together build a harmonious society; one land, two checkpoints, achieve scientific development

I came back to the house and told Yang Qian that I felt for the police. Not because I think they should be barricading people away from the checkpoint. Not even because they had to stand in weather that alternated between excruciating sun and thunderstorms. But because they were called on to do a job they couldn’t actually do. Anyone who wanted to walk toward the checkpoint and look at the fuss could and did. There were just too many open spaces from which to access the site. All this reminded me of when I tried to get on the Houhai land reclamation site at Number 8 Industrial Street and ended up walking around to Number 7 Industrial Street. And the funny thing is, once on the site, nobody questioned my right to be there. Likewise, once wandering around the new coastline, noone stopped me. This perhaps an important point about cultural assupmptions about belonging. Difficult access, but once in/on a site noone bothers you. How different from the US, where its not enough to get past the guards, but you also have to remain out of sight. Different forms of regulation. Or assumptions about what regulating means.


heading north the banners read: one bridge connects north and south, shenzhen and hong kong add another connecting passage; enthusiastically celebrate the official opening of the shenzhen bay border checkpoint

Once at the new coastline, much about the topography that the land reclamation project has produced fell into to place for me and I could see a whole, where previously I had only seen partial edges. Those already obsolete pictures, took when looking out toward unbounded space have something immence about them. In contrast, from the perspective of the new coastline, the area still looks big, but now seems managable, within the scope of a retrospectively visible and relentlessly mastering plan. As if we knew what we were doing all along. Or somebody did. So, pictures of historic houhai and a sense of just how banal human effort can suddenly seem.

more whiskers

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cast, again

last whiskers performance at guanshanyue, yesterday. it seems that some of the (rumor has it over one hundred) museum directors in shenzhen (for a national meeting also liked the show and we may be going on a museum tour! at any rate, we’re tentatively scheduled to go with the show to shijiazhuan (石家庄). perhaps even further. but in the meantime, pictures of the show and after show dinner.

oct loft: enculturing shenzhen

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remaking industrial shenzhen: pedestrian street, oct loft

space by space, shenzhen is transforming its industrial self. at the same time that tianmian is remaking its factories into design studios, overseas chinese town (oct) is transforming its factories into a more explicitly bohemian art space. those factories that aren’t being transformed, are being razed to make way for upscale residential areas. gentrification in a generation, before anyone had time to grow up in an industrial city and miss anything about it.

this weekend, i visited oct loft (one year anniversary web release here) this weekend. the area is still under construction, but tea houses, restaurants, studios, and the contemporary art center have opened. along with he xiangning museum of art, the art center is holdoing a month-long exhibit called “abstraction is an expression of freedom (抽象是一种关于自由的表达).” the exhibit will tour hong kong, beijing, and then new york.　art center’s director huang zhuan provides an explanation of their inspiration, here. as at the open ink painting, there’s an urge to make china’s past contemporary.

two details struck me about the space. first, like tianmian, oct loft’s industrial facelift entails replacing cement walls with glass. so the structure of the buildings remain, but now its all shiny and exposed. lots of black as well. second, the quality of the exhibition suggests an anti-dafen village moment. indeed, when i met several of the young men involved in getting this project up and going, one was vehement about separating what he was doing from dafen. such are the debates over “professional” versus “commercial” art in shenzhen, itself a telling distinction.

take a walk through OCT loft and compare with transformations in tianmian.

开放的水墨：the open ink painting

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whiskers cast, main entrance, guanshanyue museum of art

the guanshanyue museum of art was built ten years ago. at the time, it manifest shenzhen leaders’ understanding of state of the art, so to speak. it also incorporated the practical details of the state of construction. pink tiles, green glass, and limitted use of elevators define the space. this year, the museum is celebrating its anniversary with a series of exhibitions and events. draw whiskers, add dragon was commissioned as part of the celebration.

yesterday was the opening ceremony of the open ink painting invitational exhibition at the guanshanyue museum of art. in addition to organizing the regular media to come to the opening, exhibition organizers also invited art bloggers, who have uploaded introductions to and interviews with key participants, here and here. indeed, there’s more online about the exhibition than in the regular newspapers.

as with many shenzhen art events, there was a predictable tension between the cost of the show (an index of the importance that the municipal government now places on “art”) and attendence (an index of the importance that museum visitors place on “art”). this crude opposition highlights the urgency that organizers and participants expressed feeling about making ink painting relavent to contemporary audiences. contemporary audiences included:

westerners who take ink painting to be a sign of “chinese identity”;

chinese artists who believe that ink painting is a sign of “chinese identity”, but a sign which has been corrupted/transformed by the internalization of the western gaze. importantly, speakers included the organization of art exhibitions in their understanding of “western gaze” and stated that the guanshanyue exhibit was an important attempt for chinese artists to take the lead in defining the social and aesthetic meaning of contemporary ink painting;

young chinese who don’t know or care about ink painting. for these youths, participants seemed eager to strategize forms of aesthetic outreach. however, it’s worth noting that participants themselves (except for one artist, the dancers and actors) were all born in the late 40s, 50s and early 60s.

all of the participants agreed that it was necessary to investigate and explore and transform chinese tradition to make it relavent to contemporary audiences. during the opening discussion, much of the conversation circled around the themes of “ink painting spirit (水墨精神)” indeed, this is why organizer sun zhenhua (孙振华) invited shenzhen composer wen li (文莉) and fat bird to perform ink painting inspired dance and play, respectively.

the differences between wen li’s piece “江峡行　（river canyon walk)” and fat bird’s “draw whiskers, add dragon” suggest the possibilities and constraints on transforming ink painting spirit. wen li uses tradition as an asesthitic; she creates beautiful forms and sounds that suggest a refined sensibility and moments of private contemplation. fat bird described a world where the only way in which chinese tradition could survive was through advertising and tourism.

during the three-hour discussion, one of the fat bird actresses had sat quietly, playing a game on her cell phone. when i leaned over and asked if the disappearence of ink painting would make her feel less chinese, she laughed, said, “no,” and then went back to her game. the participants kept talking. images of the show, museum, and organizers.

more cellphone messages

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yesterday was 端午节　or dragon boat race festival, which commemorates the death of the poet qu yuan. for origin stories, zongzi recipes, and related poetry go here. in the meantime, the text messages have been flying, some about happy thoughts for each other on a fesitival day, others about stock market trials and tribulations. but whatever the inspiration, the spirit of these jokes points to difficult and strained relationships. to paraphrase an american colloquialism: in shenzhen, we’re taking the lemons of globalization and making lemonade.

for the festival:
武功再高，也怕菜刀
智力再好，一砖撂倒
走自己的路，让别人打车去吧
穿别人的鞋，让他们找去吧
我现在就送给你端午节快乐的祝福，让别人羡慕吧

no matter how skilled, one still fears a knife,
no matter how brilliant, one could be knocked out by a brick.
walk your own path, let others take a car.
wear someone else’s shoes, let them search in vain.
i’m sending you festival greetings, let the others envy you.

from the market a pithy take on four generations of leadership:

老毛一挥手：下乡！
老邓一挥手：下海！
老江一挥手：下岗！
老胡一挥手：下跌！还得意洋洋地说：我叫胡紧套，还怕套不死你！

old mao directed us: go down to the countryside!
old deng directed us: go down [jump] into the ocean! (a reference to the country becoming capitalist)
old jiang directed us: go down [leave] from your post! (a reference to rising unemployment)
old hu directed us: go down! (a reference to plummiting stock prices) what’s more, he arrogantly said, “i’m just afraid that you won’t be taken in!”

吉田园：the spectre of modernized death

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high density real estate

today, some notes on human death and the spirit of capitalism with chinese characteristics.

last week some shenzhen university architecture grad students and i visited 深圳市吉田永久墓园 (shenzhen lucky fields eternal cemetary) (official translation: jitian permanent cemetary shenzhen) the translation difference is instructive. eternal resonates with my sense of death, but permanent speaks to the anxieties of the living: will the graves be moved? in shenzhen, land appropriation for development has meant that village graves have been moved; many have been reinterred at lucky fields. moreover, razing extant sites for new and improved development is a skill shenzheners have cultivated. so it’s not completely for sure that lucky fields won’t become obsolete.

lucky fields is a large scale cemetary located in buji, about twenty minutes (depending on traffic) from dafen village. like all buji real estate it abuts factories, which for me intensified the feeling of being packaged and slotted. in class, we’re thinking about modernization and the reorganization of traditional spaces, with an eye toward contributing an installation to the shenzhen architectural biennial, which takes place at the end of this year. (i’m beginning to think a cultural career might be made out of these biennials!) so, in addition to reading and discussing related materials, we’ve been going on field trips. going through the lucky fields’ literature, i was struck by the rhetorical similarity to all land related projects in shenzhen, namely the emphasis on planning and management, but also the promise to develop lucky fields as a namebrand (品牌). excerpts:

the shenzhen lucky fields eternal cemetary was established in 1994. it was approved by the guangdong provincial goverment department of civil affairs, and managed by the shenzhen municipal government. lucky fields covers an area of 448 mu and currently employs 30 people. after ten years of effort [paper was written in 2004] lucky fields has gradually transformed from a cementary conceptualized on paper into a new form of cememtary which exhibits modern culture and boasts beautiful scenes. throughout the construction of the cemetary, we have paid attention to planning and management. experience has taught us that planning is the basis of a company’s development and management the key to success. neither can be lacking. accordingly, at lucky fields we ceaselessly work to keep these two…[魂 also “soul” in some translations], it is also a company’s spirit/soul. in the intense competition of today’s market, if a company has a brand, it has a market, which is to have a future. this brand will promote a company’s growth and development at every moment…

(5) branding strategy a brand is a product’s spirit

now what’s fascinating is that as part of the promotion of the lucky fields brand, the company has joined the (apparently) first virtual memorial webside, 无尽的爱纪念网. online, people can post pictures of departed loved ones, write messages, and send condolences. there are also sites for beloved teachers, famous people, blogs, dreams, tradition, and marriages and births.

eelove compliments online marriages and gaming as a way of connecting to the world through electronic webs. it also seems to be important among diasporic chinese, who are unable to visit graves on important days.

interestingly (but not unexpectedly in the era of branding) eelove holds (non-traditional) memorial events (some free, some having fees) to go along with other holidays. but, then again, holidays are when we remember those who have left us. many of us (not just diasporic communities) aren’t living in the neighborhoods where we were born because we pursue jobs and dreams in a global world. we not only live far away from family, but also die and are buried in places that relatives can’t visit regularly, if at all. how do we speak to that alienation?

personally, i have been more moved/disturbed/confounded by the capitalization of death rituals than life rituals (such as marriage or birthdays). at death, the fact that we’re making money off each other just sits there, uncovered by the hopes that accompany life rituals. even if in formal terms the commodification of marriage and death is the same, viscerally i feel that wedding planners aren’t the only ones benefitting from marriages; somehow an expenditure of capital at a wedding seems to thrust the couple into the future. but where do commodified burials–whether actual or virtual–launch us? sentimental values indeed.

take a virtual (!) walk through lucky fields.

dafen museum

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dafen village museum

went to dafen village the other day. the museum building is finished and staff are now finishing the interior, including choosing pictures and designing galleries. the idea of a dafen museum is itself stunning, especially as the museum is a 5 minute walk from the dafen louvre, one of the largest art malls associated with the village. (unlike the museum, the louvre is located accross the street from actual village borders.) so pictures of what seemed incredibly like a critical performance piece but was in fact business as usual–pictures of workers transporting oil paintings from the yet unopened museum to waiting trucks, the same small, blue trucks that are used throughout shenzhen’s industrial villages…

画须添龙： photos

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hamming it up at rehearsal

rehearsals for draw whiskers, add dragon proceed. cast photos, here.

houhai, lay of new land

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new roadwork, houhai

this week shenzhen hosts a conference on sustainable, urban development. yesterday, at the flag raising ceremony we were told the new limit for air-conditioning is 26 degrees centigrade. houhai marches on. now that the roads have been layed, the next step is partitioning the land and putting in infrastructure for new residential and commercial areas. another houhai walk.

that was then

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i have written earlier about the central axis. today i went walking, two years later, along the portion south of shennan road. i will update the ongoing creation of shenzhen as a city of sustainable development (unquote recent official exhortions) in another entry. the new park space is stunning and has left me searching, again, for words to describe the disconnect between the beauty of trees, blue sky, and radiant buildings and the monotony of low-paid jobs to maintain such places. for them moment, however, i’m thinking more about the unseen, unheard leap toward new states of being that occur in shenzhen. if a building or seven go up and noone notices, did the landscape change or was it always like this?


august 2005


june 2007