mucho press about shenzhen lately. i just stumbled across this article by justin mcguirk in icon, an architecture magazine out of london. datewise, the article precedes the rolling stone and ny times articles by about three months; and there is the obligatory reference to dubai. i don’t know all that much about dubai, other than it shares with shenzhen a love of high-priced highrises. but according to jonathan, who is sitting next to me, what’s interesting about the shenzhen-dubai comparison is that the two cities are only comparable in the western mind’s eye. but i’m too tired to think through how dubai makes shenzhen legible.

anyway, overall, the icon article is long on attitude and short on information. some quotes:

Shenzhen is a border town – Tijuana on steroids. Clinging to the Shenzhen River that separates it from Hong Kong, it is a parasite city, feeding off the capitalist wealth of its neighbour.

In fact, everything in Shenzhen is cheaper, so the Hong Kongese cross in droves, stocking up with the vim of ferryborne Brits raiding Calais for wine. The Shenzhen side of the border at Luohu is a classic grey market of cheap cigarettes and prostitution. Rich Hong Kong businessmen keep their mistresses in Shenzhen.

Occasionally you’ll glimpse a backroom full of diligent copyists – skillful artisans fuelling a global trade in tat: made in China, sold in Wal-Mart.

mcquirk also managed to cite me at my snidest:

“Shenzhen is quite cosmopolitan now,” says Mary Ann O’Donnell, an expat American teacher who has lived here for 13 years. “There’s a lifestyle for the leisure class in place, and ten years ago that wasn’t true.” She adds, referring to the biennale, “Suddenly all the pretty culture people are in Shenzhen.”

and then mcguirk adds:

The image of this city – a light but permanent smog clinging to the skyline of unlovely towers – can belie the idea of a leisure class at all. And yet it is well stocked with large and formally landscaped parks and, north of the city, boasts the biggest golf course in the world. But, like Dafen, the leisure zones can take on a surreal quality. To the west is a series of theme parks. The largest, Window of the World, offers visitors “the cream of world civilisation”. At 108m high, the replica Eiffel Tower is no slouch, and acts as a genuine urban landmark, dwarfing the nearby pyramids of Giza, French chateau, Dutch gabled houses and pigmy Taj Mahal. As a gesture, there is something sinisterly pacifying about the park, as though it were asking, “Why would you want to leave Shenzhen when the whole world is here?”

sinisterly pacifying? i’m not sure what people come to see in shenzhen. i know my father loved it here, but what my father loved is what many chinese people love: capitalist opportunity. i remember seeing the play shopping and fucking while in houston (shenzhen’s actual sister city), and i paraphrase: “making money is barbarbism, but having money is civilization.” so what’s at stake is when precisely making becomes having, but also legible as civilization.