I am in Tianjin and heard the following definition of harmonious society:
什么是和谐社会？和谐社会就是富人更富，穷人更文明！
What is harmonious society? The rich become richer, and the poor become more civilized!
Yes, one of the joys of Tianjin remains the city’s justifiably famous ability to “talk”. Indeed, the city has a reputation for being the hardest audience in the country, producing some of the sharpest wits in the crosstalk tradition.
I hope that the first day of the New Year opens new possibilities for all. May our lives make the world more beautiful.
Gregory Bateson helped me learn to think about how human beings engage in (ultimately) self-destructive forms of competitive growth; Wendall Berry continues to inspire how I think about rural urbanization under capitalism.
Bateson provided a theory of schismogenesis or “vicious circle,” in which our behavior provokes a reaction in another, whose reaction, in turn, stimulates us to intensify our response. According to Bateson, schismogenesis comes in two flavors: symmetrical and complementary. Symmetrical relationships are those in which the two parties are equals, competitors, such as in sports. Complementary relationships feature an unequal balance, such as dominance-submission (parent-child), or exhibitionism-spectatorship (performer-audience). The point, of course, is that unless there is an agreed upon limit to the development of provocation and response, the relationship just keeps going until it hits a natural limit – collapse of the relationship because neither side can continue to meet and exceed the other’s call.
Berry teaches that one of the more deadly tendencies in capitalist urbanization in the United States is to turn all of us, eventually, into Native Americans. On Berry’s reading, the basic structure of American life was to eradicate the people and lifeways of Native Americans and then to replace those people and lifeways with settler capitalism. Importantly, this model of a settled community being replaced by the next, more intensive form of capitalist production both established the rhythm of American development and has become a powerful symbol of how generations of Americans have justified our destruction of people and lifeways in favor of more efficient and valuable forms of life. Importantly, efficient and valuable are defined in terms of profit. Thus, industrial, mass agriculture replace the settlers that had replaced the Native Americans; smart technologies and production are offered as the solution to problems of rustbelt withering.
How have Bateson and Berry shaped my understanding of Shenzhen?
Shenzhen all too clearly grows through an amazing range and diverse levels of complementary schismogenesis. Within Shenzhen, villages, neighborhoods, districts, and municipal ministries all engage in compete for competitive advantage; at the same time, Shenzhen as a city competes with all other cities in the PRD as well as internationally. In this system, the function of urban planning is contradictory. On the one hand, the Municipal government needs to stimulate competition so that the city can respond to development in Guangdong, China, and the world. On the other hand, the Municipal government also needs to set limits – usually in the form of social goods, such as parks, schools, and hospitals – on how far development can encroach on the people’s quality of life.
Moreover, as Berry noted, the pattern of the first razing and replacement sets the rhythm and symbolic lexicon for understanding capitalist schismogenesis. The problem in Shenzhen is that eventually, we all become locals, our homes and lifeways replaced by more capitalist intensive forms of consumption (increasingly high maintenance housing) and production (higher value added production).
The result has been the ongoing production of rubble. Villages go. 80s housing goes. 90s residences are going. And as in the United States, postmodern nostalgia has become one of the forms that middle class resignation to this fate takes. The poor occupy the rubble until they are moved elsewhere. Images below.
Yesterday, met with a group of young (and yes, most folks in Shenzhen are younger than I am) people, mostly Generation 80, but organized through and with a few from Generations 70 (and, sigh) 60. The point of the get-together was to talk about promoting vegetarianism and non-violent eating in Shenzhen. As it was a Chinese meeting, the first meeting was less about what can we do and more about can we do it together. I tend to forget this part of collaborating in China; make friends first, then anything is possible. American <i>moi</i> keeps evaluating whether or not the doing is interesting enough for a second meeting…
Anyway. The point is that the sense of the meeting was that Shenzhen is ripe for idealistic ways of living. No one, we agreed, wants only to live for money. Instead, we want to hope that the future will be better in all senses of the word and not just richer, in the most constraining sense of the word.
A good way to launch from tigers to rabbits. Hop hop.
Yang Qian, our florist and his son.
Much happiness throughout Shenzhen. Children play, families stroll, and friends meet for dinners and laughter. Our florist has been exceptionally busy, bringing in orchids, daffodils, and lucky orange trees. Indeed, his sidewalk stand has grown several times its usual size as people purchase New Year’s flowers.
All this bustle is a sign both of how settled Shenzhen has become and how commercialized Spring Festival. On the one hand, many families are not only staying for the Spring Festival, but also bringing in relatives from neidi. In this sense, Shenzhen has become a “hometown”. On the other hand, businesses are staying open, especially restaurants, themeparks, and supermarkets. The malls hum, the parks sparkle, and department stores offer great deals. In other words, consumption is a key element of the celebration and thus, many migrant aren’t going home for the festival because, well, they’re still working.
Of note: the themes of Shenzhen identity, holiday spirit, and consumption all come together in Zhou Bichang’s (周笔畅) version of “The God of Wealth Arrives (财神到),” which was released in 2008, but is still played throughout the city. Zhou Bichang (笔笔 to her fans) was the city’s representative and runner-up (to Li Yuchun) in the first Super Girl contest and she both appeals to and represents the city’s generation 80; she’s cute, fashionable, and comfortable moving between Cantonese and Mandarin. Moreover, the values she represents are unabashedly neo-liberal or possibly even protestant (pace Weber):
财神到财神到 好心得好报 God of wealth arrives, god of wealth arrives, good hearts get good rewards.
财神话财神话 揾钱依正路 God of wealth says, god of wealth says, earn money on the proper road.
财神到财神到 好走快两步 God of wealth arrives, god of wealth arrives, walk a little faster.
To be rich may or may not be glorious, but come New Year’s in Shenzhen, it’s definitely a good time.
Went for a walk today in the reclaimed land behind the cocoon. Behind the construction walls and semi-tropical topiary, discarded objects, trashed seabed, and squatters constitute the anti-Shenzhen, which erupts and disappears with distressing frequency. Signs of life. Despite.
The other day saw two friends off to Xiamen. I had been expecting crowds and unpleasant jostling, but instead found the bus station well organized and people departing without problem. Apparently, the Shenzhen version of the national “Civilized departure, peaceful spring movement (文明出行，平安春运)” campaign is going well.
To put Shenzhen’s estimated 10 million arrivals and departures in perspective, Guangdong province’s estimated spring movement is 141 million trips from Jan 19 to Feb 27. Halving that total means an estimated 75.5 million people will be moving in and around Guangdong.
Once again, I don’t know how to imagine this scale of movement. I don’t even know how one would go about counting heads. I think that numbers this large (75.5 million is 1/2 the population of Russia; Shenzhen’s measly 10 million halves to five million or more than the population of Houston) must be of world significance, but offhand I’m not sure exactly what that significance is.
All this to say that at many levels, the scale of the transformation I am witnessing from my perch in Shenzhen confounds me. I grew up thinking about population in terms of thousands; even NYC had less than 10 million when I was a young’un. I note increasing traffic jams, insufficient places for high school students, and the radical restructuring of Shenzhen Bay and associate it with increased stress, growing inequality, and environmental degradation. But. What does it mean if we do not choose to live otherwise?
Today, a friend and I spoke about what an intervention might look like. She said that according to Chinese understanding, the best time to intervene is when a mistake happens, branding the event into the person’s mind. “For example,” she offered, “the other day I was trying to get on the bus carrying my camera and supplies. I asked two teenager girls to let me through. I was trying to be polite because I didn’t want to bash them with my equipment. But one of them sniffed and said, ‘I’m not fat.’ Strange. She thought me asking her to move meant I thought she was fat. At the time I wanted to say something, but then thought, forget it. Let her learn from society.”
“So we intervene one by one?” I asked.
She sighed and explained, “If more people were well-intentioned, it would be a beautiful world.”
In fact, one by one is how we do it. And maybe the point isn’t to finish, but to keep trying.
If the languages that appear on ATM machines are any indication of how a society imagines its others, what are we to make of the fact that Arabic has appeared on some newly installed Shenzhen ATM machines?
I’d been thinking that it might have had something to do with the fact that roughly 8 months ago, China became the biggest importer of Saudi oil. But maybe not. According to non-random conversations with several friends (1) East Asian foreigners (Korean, Japanese, the other Chinas) are expected to read Chinese, and (2) Euro-descended foreigners are expected to speak English, after all the meaning of “外语 (outside language)” in everyday discourse is “English”. As in “I don’t speak 外语 (foreign language = English)”. This means that (3) Shenzhen’s third language needs to be another large, representative language of many speakers. And although Russian might have also been an interesting choice, it is a Euro-language and therefore counts as “English”. Moreover, given the way colonialism has reworked continental lingua francas , most peoples now speak some variant of a Euro-language (English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and other variants of “English”), leaving Arabic a clear favorite for Shenzhen’s third language and providing us with an interesting reworking of “three worlds” theory.
Thoughts?
Nicknamed the spring cocoon (春茧),the Shenzhen Bay Stadium (built for the Universiade) is nearing completion. A group of Shenzhen photographers have taken night shots and, yes, the latest of Shenzhen’s architectural mania is stunning.
An earlier post shows what the area looked like a year ago, contextualized by a coastline shot from 2003.
Shenzhen Noted 
