Tag Archives: dialogue

O Sole mio – or who can stop the sun?

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Shenzhen buses have televisions that broadcast flash cartoon versions of popular skits (小品). Two days ago, Yang Qian and I saw Pan Changjiang and Wang Ping’s skit “O Sole Mio (我的太阳-regular performance)”.

The skit quit obviously spoofs blind infatuation with high western culture. Pan Changjiang plays “Pavaroti’s student’s student’s student’s student” whose English name is derived from his teacher’s teacher’s teacher’s teacher’s name” – hence 帕瓦罗蒂’s student’s student’s student’s student’s English name is 帕瓦罗锅 or “Pava Hunchback”.

Hunchback comes dressed in a tux to sing “O Sole Mio” to a Chinese audience. His accompanist, 二锅头 (played by Wang Ping, the “guo” in liquor picks up the “guo” in Hunchback) is dressed in a grey scholar’s robe. The differences between the two includes hairstyle. Hunchback frequently finger-combs his shoulder length, while Wang Ping’s short hair is neatly brushed away from his face in the style of middle management and party leaders.

Hunchback and Liquor quite literally can’t get on the same page. Hunchback keeps trying to sing “My Sun” – “His Sun” – “No, My Sun” – “Your Sun” – yes, shades of “Who’s on First”.  Then, Wang Ping keeps playing a song I don’t recognize but includes the lines “The stars are still those stars…” The reason? When it’s sunny in “your” Italy, it’s starry in “our” China. Hunchback insists that it’s already today, so Liquor packs up to leave. Work is over.

A bribe of water (“It’s actually water!?”) later and Liquor starts playing the trumpet. He begins with O Sole Mio and then goes through a variety of songs. At each change in tempo, Hunchback follows with the appropriate dance or song. Any thinking that Hunchback does is always of the “Wait a minute” variety as he tries to keep up with the curveballs that Liquor keeps throwing.

This skit prompted a discussion about “The top has directives and the bottem has countermeasures (上有政策，下有对策)”. There’s never direct confrontation, but constant unending non-cooperation in the most obsequesiouly annoying manner possible.

Which in turn prompted another joke (loosely translated):

Reporters asked Pukin, what  should be done about Bin Laden? –Blast him away with bombs.

They asked Bush — Deploy Israeli forces to destroy him.

Then, they asked Jiang Zemin who said — Why use such complicated measures? Send the “Three Representatives” to annoy him to death. heh!

As friends constantly remind me – no one has it easy (谁也不简单)!

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.

儒商: classical fantasies

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one of the more interesting figures to haunt the landscape of chinese reforms is the “confucian merchant (儒商)”. there is an online club and international confucian merchants association. according to an article written by dean of the confucian academy and chair of the hong kong confucian merchants association tang enjia (汤恩佳),confucian merchants approach commerce in the spirit of confucious, conducting their affairs in accordance with the five central values of confucianism: benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trust (仁、义、礼、智、信). for the confucian merchant the greatest of these is trust (诚信), which shares an uncanny etymology with “credit (信用).”

i have my doubts about the possibility of mercantile confucianism, in part because confucianism strikes me as decidedly feudal and current business practices decidedly capitalist and also in part because the figure of the confucian merchant seems to legitimate all kinds of inequality, much in the same way that romances about tormented, but ultimately good-hearted tycoons justify unequal social relations. but mine could be a cynicism born of reading too many text messages, like the one currently circulating about wang shi (王石), the ceo of shenzhen’s mega-real estate development company vanke 万科. googling “wang shi vanke” brings up all sorts of capitalist self-congratulatory stories in english, including an article in nytimes real estate magazine. googling 万科王石 brings up even more, including his blog.

王石者，广西柳州人氏。其母戎狄也，故性焊。少有异志，及长，经营房产，遂至巨富。石好登山，每登必耗巨资，其行小善必刻石以记之。和谐年间，川中大震，灾民流离失所国人莫不解囊共济之。石出二百，并噣下捐不得过十，有人讽为“王十”，众责之，石辩曰：灾降国乃常事，吾留钱备后用。又曰：济民赈灾，人所自愿，岂能强吾所难。众评曰：身虽临绝顶，心已死苍生！

[mock classical chinese] wang shi, a person from liuzhou, guangxi. his mother was a barbarian, so he had a fierce personality. as a child he was unusual, as an adult, he operated a real estate company, realizing his dream of great wealth. shi liked to mountain climb, and spent a great deal on every climb. even the smallest detail of every expedition was engraved in stone. in the era of harmony, there was an earthquake in sichuan. the people were left destitute and homeless and there wasn’t anyone in the country who didn’t open their purse to send relief. shi only gave two [million], and ordered his subordinates not to give more than ten rmb. some starting sarcastically calling shi “wang ten”. when the people reproached him, shi defended himself: disasters frequently befall the country, this is nothing new, i’m saving my money for a later day. he also said: helping people in disaster zones is voluntary, how can i be forced? the people evaluated him thus: even though his body has reached the highest summit, his heart has already died to the people!

shi has responded to the criticism by promising 100,000,000 rmb to rebuild a sichuan market town. so yes, public humiliation has its uses…

update may 31, 2008: wang shi remains near and dear to many shenzhen hearts. when i mentioned that i had translated this message to a friend, who works in advertising, he immediately said he analyzed the whole wang shi-wenchuan phenomenon.

according to my friend, in order to understand wang shi’s response, you have to understand how the chinese media works. the first time that the earthquake was reported, the chinese press simply mentioned that there had been an earthquake in sichuan. he explained that the chinese press doesn’t proactively report, but instead waits to see how the central (or provincial or municipal) government is or is not going to respond, before it does or does not report. on my friend’s interpretation, wang shi had responded to the first reports, by the time the other reports came out, he didn’t have enough time to actually respond appropriately, leaving himself open to misunderstanding.

another friend pointed out that wang shi did the whole tycoon thing better than anyone else in china. he has charm and charisma, so that makes people want to see him fall. my firend then pointed out that the wenchuan earthquake proved [once again] that the chinese people are good (很善良), but unwise (没有智慧). wang shi, he suggested, wasn’t totally off base when he suggested that there would be need for money next disaster.

in another wang shi event, my new boss has used wang shi as an example of how to be single-minded and focused. vanke doesn’t do anything by upscale housing; a school should only have one pedagogical mission.

so here in shenzhen, we continue to watch wang shi and the development of the ethics of the city’s emergent elite. this returns me to the persistence of confucian merchants. i don’t think that wang shi qualifies as a confucian merchant in the strict sense of the term, specifically as he has self-presented as a kind of hip, smart, and living life to the fullest self-made millionaire. nevertheless, the way he has been positioned vis-a-vis wenzhou suggests that its quite alright to be hip and go mountain climbing, but in times of national disaster, the people might use the confucian merchant to call the elite to heel.

of plants and smog

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shenzheners are developing an environmental consciousness. indeed, the shenzhen 2030 development strategy calls explicitly for sustainable development. so now we encounter billboards to protect endangered species. the irony, of course, is that these billboards have been raised at the former new houhai coastline. about 10 years ago, the elephant would have been standing on the beach. 20 years ago, said elephant would have been up to its knees in water, possibly even deeper.


save endangered species billboard

moreover, only five years ago, if memory serves as well as i hope, the elephant would have been standing beneath “blue skies and white clouds.” these days, smog is an all too often topic of conversation in shenzhen. most folks blame the cars, and then quickly remark that cars are necessary, both for convenience and building the economy. all of us, however, lament that the environment has deteriorated so obviously, so quickly.

at the same time, shenzhen’s furious pursuit of garden cityhood proceeds. recently exotic plants abut the new roads and construction sites of the houhai land reclamation zone. although beautiful, these plants irritate me. unlike the once ubiquitous and local banyan tree, shenzhen’s palms and bushes and flowering trees don’t provide shade. they also require large teams of gardeners, who water the plants with an irrigation system that stretches along the ever changing coastline. these plants confound me. i wonder where their gardeners live and how much they earn; as far as i know, the blue uniformed gardeners in central park, live in dorms in the park itself, but there aren’t any dorms on the landfill, only temporary construction dorms. the extent of the irrigation system also has me wondering, given the city’s water shortage, who isn’t getting water if imported fonds are. and if perhaps, we’ve reached the final coastline.

this afternoon, on the landfill, i stopped to talk with several people. one, a migrant worker who had just came to shenzhen and lived in one of the nearby shanties, said that it was nice to walk on the coastline where the air was fresher. true enough. i actually breathed in salty air. a second interlocutor, was an old shenzhener, originally from ningbo, who like like me, enjoys photography. he showed me some of the pictures in his very nice camera–flowers, parrots, traditional architecture, and old village rivers.

“unfortunately,” he said, “shenzhen is a new city, so there isn’t much beauty here.” as i understood him, beauty referred to things natural and manmade that had a graceful harmony. he admitted that all shenzhen’s glass buildings were impressive, but not yet beautiful, unlike shanghai, where old sections of the city had been preserved and improved. his comments had me wondering if we wait long enough, shenzhen will become beautiful through age. although with all the upgrading and razing of older sections of the city, this path to beauty may not be the most efficient and shenzhen may as well just stick with its the newest is the most beautiful aesthetic. speculation aside, we agreed that the smog had become a serious problem that would become even more serious, “unless the government takes serious action.” as we separated, me to take more pictures of houhai and him to continue searching for beauty, he exhorted me to visit other cities, especially shanghai, “where the environment is really beautiful.”

i am not sure if shenzhen’s utopian origin sets residents up for disappointment, or if memory creates beauty where it may not have been; i’ve been to shanghai, and i remember smog, in addition to the lovely buildings. i do think that the utopian impulse behind the city’s construction continues to inform longterm planning. the idea of shenzhen as a sustainable city is, if it is nothing else, a call to create a better future. and yet. houhai continues to transform the south china environment and climate at a pace unplanned, and more than likely, with unforeseeable environmental consequences.

pictures of plants and smog here.

thoughts on rainy days

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for those not in shenzhen, you are probably blissfully unaware that 4 typhoons have landed nearby over the past several weeks. this means it has rained almost everyday this month. and not little tiny avoidable raindrops, but heavy raindrops that blow horizontally and thus bypass even the largest umbrella. so i haven’t been able to get out and take pictures.

i have, however, been wandering around some of shenzhen’s new hotspots and am struck, once again, by the difference a decade makes. it really is a different era here from ten years ago. yesterday, i saw the latest harry potter in a small, intimate theatre with 40 fat reclining sofas (and mediocre popcorn. the children next to me had the sense to bring kfc.) today, i went to yoga class in wonderful studio with truly wonderful teachers, some who have practiced in india. i then had dinner with a friend and her son at a japonese restaurant. if memory serves, ten years ago i avoided movie theatres because they were often haunted by men who watched with a date chosen from the ladies lined up outside the door. there was no yoga anywhere. and we ate mostly cantonese food; sometimes food from other parts of china, but ten years ago, the cuisine had a definate regional bent.

it’s as if suddenly all the talk about building a global city has come true. the socialist dreamers who came in the 1980s and early 90s have successfully built a city for a middle class that has only recently emerged.
indeed, all the recent cultural activity is no doubt part of this massive yuppification of shenzhen.

or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that those socialist dreamers have built a city for their children, who really do belong to a different world. it is however an open question as to why they belong to a different world. friends who look to japan and korea say it’s possible to be both traditional and modern; china has failed because of socialism. at lunch two days ago, a friend (now in his early 50s) said that people born after 1970 don’t have any tradional characteristics. he blamed the cultural revolution for cutting off contemporary china from its roots. that’s why, he said, china is modernizing like this.

like what? i asked.

without history. shenzhen is the perfect example of new china because it doesn’t have any culture or history. but it’s not even the best copy of the west. china is a fractured (分裂) society. we have no standards to guide us. japan and korea, he continued, have managed to preserve tradition and modernize.

his comments made me re-think the question of master narratives. not the fact that master narratives are imaginary and therefore not real in a material sense. after all, rarely does reality conform to what we think. but rather the fact that without a master narrative it’s hard to make value judgements; why is x better than y? tradition seems to me a legitimate answer to that question. socialism once provided another answer. today, my friend is trying to figure out what happens when all the master narratives have been shown untrue; what can the people believe? how will they recognize the good life? and in what kind of world is shenzhen a desired way of life?

the sweetness and the people

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royal jelly and fresh honey, straight ahead

yesterday walking in the lychee orchard section of shenzhen’s central park, yang qian and i stumbled upon bee farmers. they do the guangdong bee circuit–shenzhen, pingyuan, nanhai–following the pollen. they are from pingyuan and have been coming to the central park these past eight years. the honey is amazing. for those of you in shenzhen who happen on this entry they’ll be here for another week or so, before heading north. more bees, here.

at dinner, i was telling a friend about the 蜂民, i even tried 蜜民, before folks understood that i meant 蜂农，a phrase which (unlike 蜂民) shows up automatically in pinyin word-processing. yang qian laughed and said it sounded like i was talking about “crazy people (疯民)”.

then qingfeng joked, nobody wants to be 民　because that character has a negative connotation in chinese.

i said what about 人民?

no, not good. better to be an official.

who aren’t part of the people?

chuckle, chuckle.

i persisted, what about citizen (公民)?

that can’t be helped (无奈)!

everbody at the table laughed, reaffirming the unquestioned truth that as an american 公民 i couldn’t understand what it means to be a chinese citizen. we then started talking about the medicinal benefits of lychee honey, which helps develop anti-bodies to local strains of flu. it was a polite segue that suddenly seemed a portentious metaphor. now i’m wondering about social honey and culturally born strains of flu: what keeps the people healthy?

短信文化: text message culture

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dinner with beijing friends led, as it inevitably does, to conversation about why beijing and beijing people are the best. this time, text message culture (短信文化) was our point of departure.

according to wan ning and hu lin, all of a sudden people are text messaging their new year’s greetings to each other, rather than calling (as in years past) or sending cards through the mail (as in their childhood). moreover, the telephone companies, especially china mobile, encourage this behavior because every message sent is money earned. to that end, the said companies have allegedly hired couplet writers to come up with messages that will be mass forwarded to everyone on a particular calling list.

wan ning and hu lin also pointed out that beijing pizi write independent/non-corporate messages. (皮子: does anyone have a good translation for this term, which i understand as refering to rebels in the james dean way–young, disgruntled, hyper-individualistic men, who are also passionate, appealling to the rebelious heart beating beneath everyone else’s staid exteriors. yang qian adds that 皮子 are darker and more cynical than 愤青, angry young men, who grow up to be 大愤, big angries, which puns the express, big shits…) anyway, they said that if you’ve lived in beijing, you can always tell the difference between “factory eggs” and the “farm fresh”. i can’t so i’ve posted a few new year’s greetings in no particular order (again with the caveat, loosely translated and always in need of friendly correction):

友情提示未来社会：朋友比领导重要，能力比成绩重要，健康毕业绩重要，水平比文凭重要，情商比智商重要，交友比结婚重要，节日比上班重要。祝生蛋，新年快乐！ (friendly reminder, future society: friends are more important than leaders, skill is more important than grades, health is more important than outstanding achievement, talent is more important than a diploma, making friends is more important that marriage, holidays are more important than work days. wishing you a merry christmas and happy new year!)

2007年到了。别忘了给孩子们讲讲很久很久很久以前的事：那时候天还是蓝的，水也是绿的，肉是可以放心吃的，耗子还是怕猫的，法庭是讲理的，结婚是先谈恋爱的，理发店是只管理发的，药是可以治病的，医生是救死扶伤的，拍电影是不要培导演睡觉的，照相是要穿衣服的，欠钱是要还的，孩子的爸爸是明确的，学校是不图挣钱的，白痴是不能当教授的，卖狗肉是不能挂羊头的，结婚了是不能泡MM的。祝你新年快乐！（2007 has arrived. don’t forget to tell the children about how things were long, long, long ago: in those days, the sky was blue, the water was torquoise, you could eat meat without worrying, rats feared cats, the courts listened to reason, marriage came after courtship, hair salons only gave haircuts, medicine cured illness, doctors saved the dying and cared for the injured, you could make a movie without sleeping with the director, you had to keep your clothes on in a photograph, loans had to be repaid, a child’s paternity was clear, schools weren’t profit-oriented, idiots couldn’t become professors, you couldn’t pass off dog meat as mutton, after marriage you couldn’t play around with young women. happy new year!)

wan ning’s commentary: this message had changed since he first saw it. he believes that people are editing and adding to messages before forwarding them to their friends.

忍养安，乐养寿，爱养富，善养德，诚养誉，礼养谊，正养胆，廉养义，古养今，和谐养文明，时光养友情，睡眠养容颜，运动养健康！恭祝新年好！(endurance nourishes tranquility, happiness nourishes longevity, goodness nourishes virtue, sincerity nourishes reputation, courtesy nourishes friendship, uprightness nourishes courage, honesty nourishes righteousness, the past nourishes the present, sincerity nourishes reputation, time nourishes friendship, sleep nourishes beauty, exercise nourishes health! happy new year!)

translation note: 养 is one of those characters rich in cultural meaning. in addition to meaning “nourishes”, it can also mean “breeds” as in endurance breeds tranquility. the important point is that whatever or whoever does the 养ing takes pride of place in that the 养ee (so to speak) depends upon 养er for its existance.

什么是爱情？色呗。什么是温柔？面呗。什么是幽默？贫呗。什么是艺术？脱呗。什么是仗义？傻呗。什么是朋友？你呗。什么人最记得祝你元旦快乐？俺XXX呗。(what is love? sex. what is tenderness? being a wimp. what is art? stripping. what is having principles? stupidity. what is a friend? you. who is most likely to remember to wish you a happy new year? me, XXX.)

hu lin: you can tell this is fresh off the beijing farm. only beijing people use the expression “面” to mean wimp.

translation note: 呗 (bei) implies a cyncial finality–last word on the subject. 俺 (an3) is funny because it’s a northeastern expression for “I”. northeasterners remain a source of constant amusement for the rest of the country, but especially beijing. as soon as they hear 俺, beijingers start laughing because they know the non-northeastern speaker is cracking jokes (耍贫嘴), a form of verbal spoofing (恶搞). one of the funnier practitioners of this art is xue cun (雪村) from jilin. his website includes the wonderful flash version of his breakaway hit “northeasterners are all living leifengs (东北人都是活雷锋)” as well as recent songs. a fun aside and in the spirit of xue cun is cui jian’s flash version of “net virgin”.

快年底了，地下的先烈们纷纷打来电话询问。江姐问：国民党被推翻了么？答：被阿扁推翻了。董存端问：劳动人民还当牛做马么？答：不劳动了，都下岗了。吴琼花问：姐妹们都翻身得解放了吗？答：思想解放了，都当小姐了。杨子荣问：土匪都剿灭了么？答：都改当公安和城管了。杨白劳问：地主都打倒了吗？答：都入党了。雷锋问：那资本家呢？答：都进人大和政协了！刘胡兰问：同志们都藏好了吗？答：都隐身上网了。毛主席问：大家现在都在忙什么呢？答：都在斗地主。毛主席：那我就放心了！(the end of the year will soon be here, and so the martyres from below are calling to ask about the current situation.

sister jiang,”has the kmt been overthrown?”

answer: by a bian (陈水扁, chen shuibian).

dong cunduan, “have the workers ceased to work like oxen and horses?”

answer: they’ve all ceased working.

wu qionghua, “have my sisters been liberated.”

answer: their thinking has been liberated and know they’re all young ladies (小姐 also means escort).

yang zirong, “have the bandits been erradicated?”

answer: they’ve changed status and jointed the security forces and city police.

yang bailao, “have the landlords been over thrown?”

answer: they’ve joined the party.

lei feng, “what about the capitalists?”

answer: they’re now in the people’s congress and people’s political consultative committee.

liu hulan, “are our comrades safely hidden?”

answer: they’ve hidden their identity and gone online.

mao zedong, “what is everybody busy doing?”

answer: struggling with landlords.

mao zedong, “then i can rest easy!”)

i leave it to the reader to make the relevant political and gender analysis.

韩流: caught in the undertow

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A funny thing happened on the road to Heyuan. In order to keep passengers entertained, the bus company had installed a television screen and DVD system. At first, I entertained myself by composing an essay about the obvious irony of watching a Korean drama how a young girl marries up and going to visit poor people. But 15 minutes into the trip, I stopped thinking about social ironies and found myself following the intricacies of romance in an arranged marriage between an 18 year old high school student and a 28 year old district attorney.

I can’t say “The Bride is 18 ((新娘１８岁)” was either intellectually compelling or even socially redeeming. The plot hinged on the question, could two radically different people get married and become a loving couple? The answer was yes. Yes because the groom understood compassion and how to teach a recent high school graduate how to be a human being. Yes also because the bride didn’t want to go to college but wanted to be a housewife.

These past few years, I have been vaguely aware of the popularity of Korean pop in China, especially music and drams. Indeed, I have listened to friends talk about their favorite dramas and even watched part of “Wish Upon a Star”, staring An Jae Wook (安在旭), who was a breakout Korean star in China. My students listen to K-pop stars Rain, se7en, and BoA. However, I never considered buying into the Korean Wave (韩流 hallyu in Korean). I classed them with Brittney Spears, Justin Timberlake and other young American popstars—cute, manufactured, well-dressed, cute, photogenic, and did I say cute?—but not really for me.

And yet.

After a four hour trip to Heyuan and then a four hour return to Shenzhen, I was still six episodes from our heroine’s happily ever after. I got off the bus, said goodbye to my students, and then felt compelled to do something I never thought I would: I bought the complete Bride just to watch those last six episodes. I was caught in the undertow.

I confessed to a good friend, who told me that Korean dramas are formidable (厉害). A business associate’s wife, she continued, is totally addicted. After breakfast, the wife is said to make herself a pot of tea, turn on the television, and cry along with her favorite stars.

So to understand how I and other 40-somethings might get hooked on k-dramas, I took an unscientific survey of my friends. One said that k-dramas are good to watch. The sets are fashionable, the costumes are beautiful, and the actors are really attractive. Another added that the shows are really relaxing because you don’t have to think when you watch them. Yet another added that she liked to follow k-dramas because they’re realistic. At this, I raised a disbelieving eyebrow, “Realistic?”

“They talk about urban life. And young people’s hopes and dreams. Not like Chinese dramas.”

My husband watched an episode with me. He thought that the attraction lay in the main characters’ rebellion against social norms, without actually breaking human ties. “Asian people,” he said, “live in relationships. But sometimes we just want to do what we want.”

“Yes,” another friend mused, “it’s that the shows always end with reunion (团聚). Real life isn’t like that. It’s comforting to see everybody come together, no matter what their differences were. And the actors really are attractive.”

Perhaps that’s all it is. Pretty people living beautiful lives. An easy distraction. A coffee break conversation. But then, again, I wonder. How could a contrived melodrama about a girl who gives up college to be a housewife hook me? It wasn’t the story. Not the pretty faces. Not even coffee break conversation. But I’m also sure that simply turning off the TV won’t make me immune. I want. Want powerfully. And in those shows wanting brings about its own reward. Forever.

浪心：surging hearts

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grandma sou from langxin village

The characters for 浪心村, Langxin Village literally translate as “wave heart” village. However, I’ve chosen to title this entry “surging hearts” because of the four people I met there.

This weekend, Yan Ling invited me to go with her to langxin to interview Grandma Sou, a 90 year-old woman who was still living in her old home; indeed she had been in the same home for over seventy years, since the day she married into Langxin. Her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have all moved out of the village. Some are in the United States, others live in new village housing located next to the old village, which is now home to migrant workers.

Because neither Yan Ling nor I speak enough Cantonese to actually interview anyone, we asked A Jun to go with us. Once we arrived, however, A Jun suggested that we find someone from the village to introduce us to Grandma Sou. In old village housing next to the yuan surname ancestoral hall, we asked who had a key to the ancestoral hall so we could see it. A woman from Hunan brought us to Uncle Chen’s house. Born in Langxin, Uncle Chen retired to langxin in 1992. Before that he had been in Beijing and for a time in Hong Kong.

Uncle Chen told us that the Yuan ancestoral hall was one of three important buildings in the village. The other two were a family temple and the old school. All three were in various statges of disrepair, although money was spent to keep the ancestral hall and village clean and incense burning. In order to earn the roughly 5,000 rmb necessary to keep the ancestral hall clean, Uncle chen had rented out space behind the hall to migrants. the rental money was used for the upkeep and an annual dinner for all the villagers.

“How many villagers are there?” I asked.

“Roughly 20 males in the village,” Uncle Chen replied.

“Not many.”

“No,” he agreed. “They’ve all left.”

Not quite it turns out.

We asked uncle chen to introduce us to Grandma Sou. He agreed to ask if she would see us. And she did, with the caveat that she was partially deaf and couldn’t understand most of what was said to her. So we went to her home, where she smiled at us, and we smiled back, as Uncle Chen occasionaly screamed our questions at her.

WHY DON’T YOU LEAVE?

Because its quiet here.

DO YOU COOK FOR YOURSELF?

Yes.

WHO DOES YOUR SHOPPING?

My children.

After a few photos, we left. I was struck by her graciousness and also her independence. We could come or go; this was her life and it certainly needed no explanation or documentation. At the door, we met two of her friends, who have also lived in the village for almost seventy years. They come to visit everyday, even though they know Grandma Sou can’t hear them speak.

“How many old women are in the village?” we asked.

Over ten was the answer.

They asked me where I was from and laughed when I insisted that they were beautiful, one of the few phrases I can manage in Cantonese. They allowed me to take their pictures and then went in to sit with Grandma Sou.

objectified space

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two questions have prompted me to specify what i want to achieve through the found objects project.

lesley sanderson posed the first question at the cruel/loving bodies exhibition, “look at you work critically and decide what you are trying to do.”

sasha welland then asked me, “why do you pick up the objects and photograph them elsewhere? why not just photograph them in place?”

a preliminary answer to these questions. in the found objects series, i map shenzhen from the perspective of the object. in constrast, i have tended to photograph large objects in place, calling attention to the construction of shenzhen through specific objects. how might this latter project be different from simply photographing places, which i’ve done all along?

while trying to get onto the houhai land reclamation project in shekou, i took pictures of discarded objects on that walk. i also photographed baskets left on a street.