This past week, I had the pleasure of visiting the Taipei Dream Community, a fascinating place where Gordon Tsai has used real estate to push forward hippie dreams–redeveloping Xizhi (汐止), stimulating community through carnivals, and artist residencies.
Speakers of North American English such as myself often fall into linguistic rabbit holes when reading official Chinese documents. My confusion arises from what both Western Marxists and Chinese Party members might call “historic questions/ problems of translation (翻译的历史问题)”. Thus, although their are semantic overlaps, a city is not a 城市, an office is not a 办公室, a community is not a 社区, and a collective is not a 集体 because the respective geographies of the USA and PRC have been formed through vastly different cultural ecologies and property regimes. Continue reading
Shenzhen long since gave up on “neighborhoods (居委会)” and “villages (村)”. Instead, the ruralized urban hybrids that the SEZ has spawned are legally known as “communities (社区)”. Note du jour is simply to point out that many of the sites connect landlords and renters. Soufun or “Search for a house” web, has sites that not only include rental information, but also track real estate prices. Guloucun — literally Old Lou Village Community (古楼村小区网) and Tianmiancun or Tianmian Village Community (田面村小区网), for example.
However, some community websites are more community oriented, in addition to providing a commercial forum. For the curious, checkout these community websites:
Shangsha and Xiasha Community Website (上下沙社区网)
Baishizhou Community Website (白石洲社区网)
Shenzhen Noted 