Tag Archives: culture

Choices PK 机会

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This year, I began working as a college counselor, advising bright and talented students on the value of a liberal arts education and the concept of fit, as well as more mundane matters such as crafting essays that answer the question and making sure that an application is filled out correctly. My students willingly do homework, take tests, join clubs, and volunteer in order to craft themselves into highly desirable candidates. They are, no question, great students. Yet as the semester has progressed, I have found myself angry, frustrated, and screaming at my husband because the telephone is ringing.

Why the pissy attitude?

At first, I attributed all this unpleasentness to stress, comforting myself with wishful thoughts that after the first rush of applications, I would calm down, teachers would submit recommendations in a timely manner, and students would follow instructions. The question, as I first saw it, was procedural; all we had to do was figure out how to cooperate and everything else would fall into place. Nevertheless, despite major adjustments, minor tweaks, and a general policy of bribing and bullying students as necessary, my irritation only increased.

Several days ago, a student came to me and said, “I want to apply early decision.”

I asked, “What school are you thinking about?”

He replied, “What school do you think I have the best chance of getting in?”

I rolled my eyes and repeated, “Where do you want to go?”

“Recently, the University of X has admitted many Chinese students. Do you think I have a chance?”

“Why do you want to go there?”

“I want a good study environment and it has a high ranking.”

“But what’s special about this University?”

He stared at me. I rephrased, “How will you answer the application question – Why do you want to attend University of X?”

He reassured me, “That’s an easy question to answer. Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll have something to say.”

Another college application standoff. I wanted to convince him to choose a college that fit him, he wanted me to get him into the highest ranking college possible.

This student typifies how my students have approached looking at US colleges and universities. They look at college rankings with an eye to how famous a school is in China and then compare the requirements for attending that university with what they have thus far achieved. They apply to a range of colleges based on these criteria – how highly ranked, how famous, how likely am I to get in? This is a highly rational approach to selecting a college and it has bothered me no end.

Only in retrospect have I unpacked my frustration in how my students have approached US college applications. I believe, unthinkingly, that which college a student attends is a choice. I maintain that the proper way of making a choice entails reflecting on one’s values, passions, and intellectual stregths. In this sense, academic achievements are necessary but insufficient to make a choice. The deciding factor is how a student wants to live. Moreover, it is the responsibility of the student to understand who she is and choose accordingly. This is a crude definition of “fit” – the idea that schools have different strengths, allowing students to flourish in different ways.

My understanding of “choosing a college” is based on a larger American valuation of choice in general. To my mind, a “good” person makes choices, a “bad” person opportunistically maximizes options. I value choice because it is where I express my commitments, ethics, and personality. I believe that society should be structured in such a way as to provide fair and equal opportunities to make choices. Indeed, I understand “freedom” to be defined through choice, experiencing the absence of choice as not only emotionally intolerable, but also unjustly oppressive. Moreover, I interpret other people’s actions with respect to my valuation of choice. I understand critical moments in a life to be defined by the choices that an individual has made – the choice of friends, the choice of where to go to college (or not), the choice of a spouse (or not), the choice of jobs… At each moment, I see that the self must express itself by making choices. A not B, C rather than D.

Here’s the cross-cultural rub: My Chinese students don’t operate out of the same valuation of choice. Instead, they value contexts of possibility. They understand that if they attend a certain high school, they will have the possibility to meet a particular set of friends, attend a given set of colleges, and find a related job. At each moment, they see that one’s options are context dependent. Consequently, they work to make ensure that at any moment they have as many options as possible. Indeed, they see the greatness and expansiveness of the self in terms of endless possibility.

Clearly, choice and opportunity as organizing principles have different consequences, both good and bad. On the upside, those of us who value choice making, craft highly defined selves. We also tend to see ourselves as shaping the world. [Good morning, America!] Those of us who value an array of options, craft highly fluid selves. We also tend to see ourselves as adapting to an already formed world. [Hello, China!] On the downside, Americans who value choice making, often miss opportunities to live and experience the world otherwise because our selves are so firmly fixed through definitions of what “I” should choose. Likewise, Chinese who maximize opportunities, often live passively and without passion, taking what is offered as if it were an unchangeable fate.

可想而知 – as can be well imagined – when I, a muddled and American teacher meet up with bright but Chinese students to discuss the future, we often talk at cross purposes. Fortunately, we become vexed when the misunderstandings become too obvious to ignore. In turn, this irritation allows us to re-think how different points of departure might nevertheless lead to common ground.

Another highly speculative post from the depths of Shenzhen. What do you think?

the meaning of work and the pursuit of 幸福

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I have been thinking about the familial as opposed to the personal value of work in Shenzhen. More specifically,I have been thinking about how happiness (幸福) is tied to family life and thus, how work is understood in terms of how it contributes to and/or impedes the creation and maintenance of families. For example, when people talk about why their jobs are important, they do so in terms of how it contributes to family life, rather than in terms of personal satisfaction. Thus, a “good” job provides a stable income and respectability for a family. If the job allows an individual to pursue and develop interests, so much the better. But if not, individuals may still derive (some) satisfaction from their jobs insofar as these jobs allow them to fulfill their responsibilities to their families.

This insight has allowed me to rethink how my students and their families understand my role in their lives (helping them get into top schools so that they can launch into good jobs), as opposed to what I think my job should be (helping them get into schools that will help them further explore, discover, and develop their passions so that they can find satisfying jobs).

1. The purpose of education: If the social value of a job is familial, it means that the goal of education is to prepare students for well-paid, stable and respectable jobs. These means that in an increasingly technology driven world, education would focus on the sciences and mathematics, despite (and often at the expense of) students’ interests in the arts and humanities. In contrast, if the social value of a job is personal, it means that the goal of education would be to help students figure out what their passion is and how to perfect it, whether or not that particular passion was economically viable.

2. The gender of the job: If the social value of a job is familial, it means that family roles become one of the most important criteria for choosing a career. Fathers/husbands must find jobs that allow them to provide for their families. Likewise, mothers/wives must take jobs that allow them to take care of the family. This means that men often end up taking jobs that they don’t like and women often don’t pursue jobs that they might enjoy in order to maintain family stability.

3. Who decides what one does: If the social value of a job is familial, it also means that parents, spouses, in-laws, and lovers all have a say in what one does because what one does is understood to be an expression of one’s commitment to these relationships. For example, a man who pursues an engineering career has expressed both the potential and the desire to take care of his family because engineering is a proven middle class job. In contrast, a man who pursues a passion for painting has demonstrated neither the potential nor the desire to care of his family because earning a living from painting is difficult. Likewise, a woman is rarely evaluated in terms of her success, but how that success impacts family life. For example, after a woman has a child, the child’s welfare comes before her job. Moreover, problems that children have are often explained in terms of mothers’ inability to manage both work and family responsibilities, regardless if the mother works long, underpaid hours to help meet ends meet, or has chosen to pursue a demanding career, which requires long, well paid hours to meet professional goals.

4. There is more sympathy for folks who are trying, but failing to fulfill their responsibilities to their families through respectable jobs than there is support for folks who trying, but failing to fulfill their family responsibilities by pursuing their interests. Thus, men find their interests are limited by their ability to earn and women find their ambitions are constrained by household responsibilities.

5. Insofar as creating and maintaining a family is considered to be and bring about the highest happiness (幸福), it’s an open question as to how helpful it is when I encourage students to follow their dreams rather than to obey their parents’ instructions.

Hmm.

i’m just a symptom of the moral decay…

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If I didn’t realize it in college, when I happily sang The Sinking Feeling by The The, I know it now – I’m just a symptom of the moral decay, that’s gnawing at the heart of the country…

My interlocutor explained that of the three ways to be unfilial, not having children was the worst (不孝有三，无后为大).

I laughed. He turned serious, “This is what’s wrong with foreigners. You have no sense of responsibility.”

I admitted that I didn’t want to raise a child and pointly asked, “Does China really need more people (中国真缺人吗)?”

He counterpointed that, “Every family needs their own (每个家庭都缺自己的).”

I laughed again.

He went on to explain that I had failed to continue my family line. Chinese abroad and at home have geneaologies that clearly mark generational differences. For thousands of years, each generation has followed the next. He himself had two children, three grandchildren, and hoped to hold a fourth.

I congratulated him on his happiness (幸福).

He nodded soberly and encouraged me to reconsider, “Maybe your mother-in-law can take care of the child and you can continue your carefree [and irresponsible] life.”

This truly is an argument I didn’t know I was in and can’t win anyway.

Temporal Dislocations

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I have spent most of the past fifteen years of my life thinking about the creation of space in Shenzhen. However, the trip to Switzerland provoked me into thinking about time – the other half of that ever useful phrase “chronotope”.

Before I left for Switzerland, I sat in front of my computer and imagined what might connect Switzerland and Shenzhen and came up with rather banal pseudo-statistics like: (1) Switzerland has a population of 7 million, and Shenzhen has a guestimated population of 14 million, that means we can stuff two Switzerlands into one Shenzhen; (2) Switzerland is as large as the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, which means (a) those 7 million people have a lot more room than we do in Shenzhen and (b) there are about 70 million living in the PRD, so we could stuff 10 Switzerlands into the Delta; (3) there are lots of fake Rolexes for sale in Shenzhen, possibly even more than there are real Rolexes for sale in Switzerland.

“Temporal Dislocations”, a two panel image-poem was the temporal unfolding of my thinking, travel, and reflection on Switzerland and Shenzhen. First, I made the panels: Swiss Times, which used maps of Switzerland and Rolex watches to map Shenzhen and note key historical moments in the creation of the SEZ’s chronology and Shenzhen Speed, which departed from Marx’s insight that in capitalist societies “all that is solid melts into air” in order to express the experience of capital accumulation in Shenzhen. Next, in Switzerland, writers and other food-scape participants, wrote various comments about time in general and/or our times together on the scrolls. Finally, back in Shenzhen, I made frames out of snapshots from the trip and the events that led up to the Swiss visit. So chronologically, one frame begins where the other ends.

However, as I have marinated in the idea of time, I have realized that there are at least three ways that the social production, use, and valuation of time in Switzerland and Shenzhen might be interestingly compared. So, a bit of anthropological musing, which might be understood as theorization without a literature review (and any real in depth fieldwork in Switzerland):

(1) Time as an expression of personal character. I’ve already speculated on the whole “以人为本” sense of time. Here, I’ll just mention another example of the personalized vs externalized experience of time in the public expression of “ability” versus something like “respect” (yes, I need a better word, please suggest). In Shenzhen, there is constant talk about “firsts” – the first person to do something, the first person to earn something, the first person to achieve something… that first sets the parameters for everything that follows. This means what is important is pride of place, rather than the actual means needed to grab it. However, In Switzerland, I had the impression that respect for the externalization of time through amazingly efficient clocks seemed to make punctuality function within discourses about respect and equality, so that vying for first place, especially elbowing one’s place to the front of the line, would definately come off as nouveau riche. So in Shenzhen, being first means one has “ability”, where it seemed that in Switzerland, being punctual meant one was “respectful of others”.

(2) Time as a way of making a living. The time as a way of making a living envolves different relations to the measurement of time. In Switzerland, people make watches, so they are actually involved in the mechanicalization of time. Click. Click. Click. Whereas in Shenzhen, the city has flourished because of high-speed mass production, which is in fact our competative advantage. The factories and assembly lines, the construction sites, all run 24-7, unless there’s some kind of electrical rationing going on or a recession in the United States.

(3) How history is materialized. In Switzerland, much social value was created by saving wonderful examples from the past. They invested much in preservation so that what came out of history were unique buildings and objects that could not be replaced. In contrast, Shenzhen focuses on being in front of developments, what is actually pursued is the future, which appears as blueprints and models. Once built, there is a sense in which the value is less than the next, great project.

(4) What needs to be theorized is the way in which it all connects through international finance. “Interest” is, of course, a product of rules about making money simply because life unfolds. (And once upon a Catholic time, wasn’t usury a sin?) All those Swiss banks. I don’t know how they’re connected to Shenzhen. I do know Switzerland was the first country to sign a bi-lateral trade agreement with the PRC (Feb this year). I suspect there’s lots of Chinese money in Swiss bank accounts. I know that many Chinese students attend Swiss schools, especially those that grant degrees in hospitality.

(5 – just because numbers make it all seem logical) What’s also interesting to me is that different kinds of city’s grow out of these different value systems. So, Switzerland has cities that are dedicated to the production of watches, and cities that are beautifully preserved tributes to past worlds – Romainmotier and St. Gall, for example. Likewise, the different areas in Shenzhen are defined by manufacturing and the next area to be developed – Gangxia and huge tracts of Houhai, for example.

Anyway, Temporal Dislocations may be viewed here.

harmonic pizza: the usefulness of cultural disorientation

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foreigners in shenzhen devote hours to discussing “the chinese” and what makes them tick. more often than not, the conversion circles around the very practical questions of how to make friends, how to work together, and how to feel more part of the urban scene in the face of experienced and actual failures to make friends, to cooperate, and to integrate oneself into shenzhen.

euro-american foreigners often refer to “the fact that chinese people are more group oriented than we are” to explain their discomfort in establishing, cultivating, and maintaining relationships with chinese friends and colleagues. on the face of it, one would think that it would be easier to enter relationships with people who use interaction as a chance to demonstrate their commitment to a relationship than it is to make friends with people who use the relationship as an opportunity to express their individuality. but apparently not. many euro-american foreigners experience chinese commitment to the relationship as a kind of duplicity. true friends, they say, are themselves, rather than pretending to be someone just so you’ll like them.

an american friend told the following story to illustrate her discomfort in relationships with chinese people. although she eats chinese food, she can’t eat it every meal, and often likes to have western food, especially pizza. one of her chinese friends invited her out for pizza. while enjoying her second slice, the american suddenly realized that her friend wasn’t eating. when she asked why not, her friend said she wasn’t hungry. however, my friend persisted: you don’t really like pizza, do you? she asked. her friend admitted that she would have something else to eat once she went home. this exchange ruined the happy feeling my friend had felt just a few seconds before.

“why didn’t she tell me she didn’t like pizza?” my friend asked, truly confused.

“but you like pizza,” i said. “you’re the guest. why wouldn’t she take you out for food that you like?”

i admitted that i not only realize my chinese friends cater to my tastes, but also (when asked) state unequivocally what i like to eat.

“it gives me a childlike charm,” i joked.

my friend glared and then said, “anyway, i can’t go out for pizza with her anymore. i can’t force people to do what they don’t like to do just because i like it.”

“i don’t force anyone,” i clarified, “if asked, i don’t equivocate.”

my friend laughed, but repeated that she couldn’t eat pizza with people who didn’t like it, especially if they were paying for it. i gulped and held my tongue. when broke and hungry, i frequently show up on a friend’s doorstep and have them feed me. just last night, for example, i had a friend take me out for spaghetti at my favorite italian restaurant. now my friend prefers chinese food, but it wasn’t that difficult to order dishes that all of us could enjoy, and after ordering a range of meats, vegetables, risottos and spaghettis, we organized all the entries in the center of the table, and ate family style–little of this, little of that, a little more of that and that and that…

…but to return to the question of negotiating cultural difference. my friend and her chinese friend had gone to dinner with the same intention–to deepen their connection. however, for my american friend, the pizza dinner was an expression of individual taste; she was looking to see if she and her chinese friend had something in common. however, her chinese friend was offering her something she thought she would like to show her commitment to the relationship. thus, as neither approached the dinner in the same way, they ended up in an impasse, which has come to define their relationship. on the one hand, they both like each other and want a better relationship. on the other hand, neither has figured out what the next step should be, so they sometimes meet for coffee, each feeling a slight regret that they haven’t yet brought the relationship to where they once hoped it would go.

any euro-american living in china has similar stories; suddenly, we find ourselves unable to interpret what is happening and thus incapable of acting in ways that will help us realize our intentions, which are often unhelpfully vague. this experience, especially when repeated, can be discouraging, frustrating, and often alienating. more often than not, we gloss these moments as examples of culture shock or difference, and leave it at that, moving on to the next awkward dinner and inevitable conversation with compatriots about “what makes the chinese tick?”

at times like this, i think the concept of “culture” does more harm than good; if our intention is to improve the quality of dinner with friends, we don’t need to imagine that the great monolith of chinese culture looms overhead, casting a deep and impenetrable shadow. we need neither to read ethnography, nor to memorize lists of cultural traits. we don’t even have to read the introduction to chinese culture, which prefaces the guidebooks many of us keep on our bookshelves. we can definitely do without comparing stories of cultural misunderstanding, duplicity, and heartbreak. in short, we need to stop playing the intellectual equivalent of collecting and trading baseball cards, and get on with the serious work of figuring out why we are here, despite all our moaning about cultural difference.

making culture an abstract concept that we apprehend intellectually hinders more than it helps the cultivation of specific friendships because it focuses on general types, rather than the person sitting with us. instead, i believe that it is more useful to approach these moments of disorientation as opportunities to examine our own assumptions about what we are doing, and modify them so that we can achieve our goals with less friction and more joy. if necessary, we may also have to look at what it is we intend to achieve through a specific interaction, in which case, it is our goals that need to be reevaluated.

once we take take cultural disorientation as a chance to clarify our actions and motives, there are suddenly all kinds of opportunities to grow friendships, improve cooperation, and integrate oneself into new communities, both at home and across the so-called east-west divide. reframed as self-examination or cultural critique, the intellectual study of cultural suddenly provides all sorts of benefits. indeed, one of the great benefits of living abroad is that more often than at home, daily life disrupts our taken-for-granted assumptions, inviting us first to rethink the world as we know it and then, by cultivating more skillful practices, to transform it.

大鹏所城: on cultural history

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dapeng suocheng inner garden

Once or twice a decade, I want material proof–as opposed to theoretical reconstruction and anthropological speculation–that Shenzhen has more than 30 years of culture. Usually, I go about asserting long term cultural occupation of the area as if it were a self-evident truth. Even if the landscape isn’t what it was or the buildings are less than ten years old, I say, there are deep histories histories here: listen. However, as I just mentioned, once or twice a decade, my resolve falters and I wonder: is it possible that what my informants and friends say is true? That Shenzhen doesn’t have any culture?

Now 文化 (wenhua) seems to me tricky to translate because its tied up in understandings about history and accomplishment in ways different from the english word, culture. For example, a maid explains that she hasn’t culture (我没有文化) because she didn’t go to high school. Or when I say I like hakka food, a friend agrees that Hakka culture is rich (客家文化很丰富). Or again, when someone asserts that unlike Beijing, Shenzhen doesn’t have any culture (深圳没有文化) because it is a young city. In hese three examples, the meaning of culture ranges from education through culinary traditions to imperial history.

Located in Longgang District on Daya bay,大鹏所城 or Dapeng Garrison is an anomaly in the Shenzhen landscape–by all counts it is culture of the highest kind. The garrison, which gives Shenzhen its nickname “roc city (鹏城)” is one of only 2,351 national important cultural relics (全国重点文物保护单位). Throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, soldiers stationed at Dapeng protected the area from pirates and colonial forces. Architecturally, was a walled garrison city, including housing for roughly 1,000 people, at least five temples, a school, and several large family compounds, which belonged to the resident general. Socially, it represented one of the military innovations of the ming. the soldiers stationed at dapeng were also farmers; the garrison was economically self-sufficient.

So yes, Shenzhen has culture. Why, then does it go unrecognized? And not only unrecognized, unvisited. Many of my acquaintances have never heard of Dapeng and most have never visited the garrison (even as part of their patriotic education). Unsurprisingly, all the parts and tourist attractions within the garrison are closed for want of visitors.

In part, I suspect that Shenzhen’s so-called lack of culture is a product of the city’s unfettered drive to modernize; no one actually notices historic relics as such. In part, I also think that Shenzhen’s lack of culture has been a rhetorical devise to produce the area as a tabula rasa; if there was nothing here, then the space is clear for all kinds of development. I’d also argue that by claiming that Shenzhen lacks of culture, urban immigrants assert their superiority to local rural residents. But in the end, I sometimes think the answer to the question, why doesn’t Shenzhen have culture is simply practical — most inhabitants lack of the time to be curious about where we are and how we got here. Most in Shenzhen are too busy making ends meet to think beyond their immediate concerns. So we’re stuck here in a present that keeps repeating itself–build, raze, build taller, faster, bigger, raze.

Culture, it seems to me, like education, good food, and history, grows in, through, and over good time, and that is precisely what Shenzhen lacks.

Pictures of Dapeng Garrison.

移民与海： oh that shenzhen cultural industry

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yesterday at 派意馆,　the shenzhen sculpture institute (深圳市雕塑院) hosted the opening ceremony/press conference for its multi-cultural documentary “immigrants and sea (official translation of 移民与海). paiyiguan is an exhibition space located in the oct loft area, right near the art center. the documentary explores the question of (in word for word translation of the chinese) “coast cities immigrant culture way of life (滨海城市移民文化生态).” a string of descriptions that force grammatical impositions in english. safest translation, perhaps: the immigrant culture of coastal cities.

the entire project has three parts: a documentary film about cultural life in latin american coastal cities; a public culture project in shenzhen; and an exhibition in the shenzhen architecture biennial. the documentary recounts cultural moments in various south american countries and cities. in havana, the shenzhen photographer xiao quan (肖全) takes the audience on a tour of havana’s charms. “he passes through cuba’s big streets and small alleys, searching for and recording cuban smiles and happy faces, ceasely uncovering the native warmth of cuba’s powerful culture and integrative force.”

in chile, liang erping retraces the footsteps of pablo neruda, citizen of a country of only 15 million people that nevertheless produced a nobel laureate. in brazil, shenzheners are less interested in rio than they are in brazilia, itself a famed overnight city. our guide in brazilia is shenzhen television personality, hong hai. the documentary pays special attention to carnival. in buenos aires, a shenzhen designer han jiaying explores the richness of argentine tango, soccer, and architecture.

that brief sysnopsis helps define what the film makers mean by “culture”; it is not only high culture, but also culture as giving a city definitive international identity. what kind of culture would shenzhen’s immigrants have to create in order to attain similar recognition?

historical alleys like havana? the attempt to package the ming and qing dynasty county seat at nantou has not succeeded.

noble prize worthy literature? one of shenzhen’s most famous author is an ze, a woman who broke out of being a laboring daughter (打工妹) by exposing the gritty and sexualized underside of shenzhen’s development. unlike the protagonist in wei hui’s better known book, shanghai baby who attempts to realize herself through writing and sex, the protagonist’s of an ze’s (also banned) books use sex to get ahead. sex in shenzhen, the story goes, is not liberatory, but cohersed and mercenary.

municipal festivals like carnaval? at windows of the world themepark, shenzheners already participate in carnival, oktoberfest, and water festival. there is, however, no city wide festival, in part, because most native festivals are village based. indeed, going with a local festival would entail shenzhen’s urban elite recognizing the contributions of local villagers to urban culture, something that hasn’t happened as of yet.

architecture like in buenos aires and brazilia? this seems the most likely, and shenzheners continue their pursuit of architectural excellence. it is telling that this project is entering shenzhen’s public culture through the architectural biennial.

fat bird enters this picture in part three, the sculpture exhibition. the sculpture instute is the same organization that sponsored fat bird’s inclusion at the guanshanyue museum’s tenth anniversary celebration. they have also invited us to participate in the biennial. we are currently working on a project about remembering nanshan’s now banned oyster farming as our contribution to shenzhen’s coastal culture. in fact, remnant beaches (in yantian district) of oyster cultivation could become an important and unique marker of shenzhen cultural identity. the catch is that oyster farmers immigrated generations ago, and shenzhen’s cultural elite are interested in creating high culture out of their immigrant experience.

yang qian and i left the press conference with a purble paper bag stuffed with gifts: a neckless, advertising materials, and purple immigrant & sea shirts. unfortunately, my camera was uncharged, so i didn’t photograph the event. so i have included a picture of yang qian modelling the purple shirt. he is standing on the balcony of our houhai apartment. faintly visible in the background is the land reclamation project, which is perhaps shenzhen’s most concrete contribution to coastal ways of life.


the purple shirt, the balcony, the reclaimed coastline

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.