Tag Archives: exegesis

（光明新区）楼村: Of what use is [urban] planning?

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Located in Guangming New District (光明新区), Lou Village has the largest area of any in Shenzhen and a villager population of 4,000. Of course, it is no longer Lou Village but Lou Village Neighborhood (楼村居委会) and its population is no longer under 5,000 — and therein lies today’s tale.

At the 15th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, the second line (二线) still divided Shenzhen into two distinct administrative structures, the SEZ (now called guannei or “inside the gate”) and Baoan and Longgang Districts (now called guanwai or “outside the gate”). The year was 1995 and Baoan and Longgang District governments had been built and staffed, 25 urban markets soon to be precincts (镇 into 街道办事处) had been designated, and consequently the work of incorporating over 200 guanwai villages into the municipal apparatus begun. Economic advancement was an important aspect of political incorporation precisely because 15 years into reform, Shenzhen had discovered that “allowing a few to get rich first (让一部分人先富裕起来)” undermined social stability. Continue reading →

Not your cup of tea?

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Ten of us were having dinner at a private style restaurant. Unlike mom and pop “family style” diners, which serve standardized fare at similar prices, a private style restaurant caters to the discerning rich, who have a good relationship with the owners. Trust and taste define this good relationship. Guests trust that the owner will provide quality tea, food, and service for a price that includes a “reasonable” profit. In turn, the owner trusts that these guests not only desire, but also can afford high quality teas, expertly brewed, seafood delicacies and soups adorned with beautifully shaped fungi. There is a menu, but it seems to be used for pedagogical purposes, including the health benefits of particular foods and herbs. Consequently, guests don’t order individual dishes, instead a meal’s host discusses a menu with the owner, who then plans the meal. The price of the meal is either set ahead of time (the host setting an upper limit, for example) or, if the guest returns regularly, the owner can plan a meal based on the number of guests. Special requests for imported seafood can be accommodated with 24-hour notice. Private style restaurants set the stage for intimate displays of taste and friendship. Sharing a meal of this quality, for example, enabled my friend both to demonstrate how much he cares for us (because the food is outstanding) and to show off how very good his good life is (because really, the food is that outstanding. And the tea. Wow.)

Bourdieu, of course, has reminded us that elites use aesthetic distinction or good taste to solidify class identity, arguing that cultivated predispositions to certain foods, music, and art enable us to recognize relative social status; we “like” that which is appropriate to our social position and “dislike” that which is not. Continue reading →

Apparently, no one is clean…

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Shenzhen seems engaged in a classical turn, not simply in terms of neo-confucian efforts to remake the citizenry into folks who know and are happy in their place, but also to shrug off the possibility that any official might be clean. “They’re all corrupt; it’s tradition [speaker’s emphasis],” I was told. The inevitability of official corruption was demonstrated with a phrase from the late Qing: 三年清知府，十万雪花银, which means “after three years in office, even a clean magistrate will have accumulated 100,000 taels of silver”.

mapping ignorance

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Was conversing friends about political succession since Mao and how to interpret reports coming out of Beijing and Guangzhou with respect to Shenzhen’s political status and symbolic valence within the national imaginary. Their 15 year old daughter was at the table, politely ignoring us, when someone mentioned Hua Guofeng (华国锋). She lifted her eyes and asked, “Who?”

Her father explained Mao’s appointed heir had been at the center of a political struggle with Deng Xiaoping to decide if China would continue Maoist policies or pursue reform. This struggle ended with a coup d’etat and the Sino-Vietnamese War as Deng Xiaoping gained political control by securing support of military leaders and high-ranking Party commissars. We then mused about the relationship between violence and political succession, even if indirectly, because Jiang Zemin (江泽民) only became Deng’s appointed successor in the aftermath of Tian’anmen and Zhao Ziyang‘s (赵紫阳) fall.

“Who?”

All this to say, that dinner I experienced a We Didn’t Start the Fire moment with post Cold War Chinese characteristics — recent history actually is this easily forgotten. Or more to the point, I realized (again!) the extent that what we know of recent history comes only as events disrupt our daily lives.  Continue reading →

汉奸 — notes on China’s gendered racism (and it lives just like gendered racism in the United States)

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The bloggers at 乌有之乡 continue to push neo-Maoism to its logical extremes. Today, Feb 21, one of the hotter posts is 今日汉奸知多少. The keyword here is 汉奸, which can be translated as “traitor to one’s country”, but literally refers to “a person who betrays the Han people (背叛汉族的人).” Thus, the article title, which clumsily (albeit patriotically) alludes to Meng Haoran’s poem (春晓), might be literally translated as “Who Knows How Many Are Betraying the Han People Today? as well as figuratively as “Who Knows How Many Are Betraying China Today?”

The slippage between betraying the Han people and betraying the Chinese people is a key difference in contemporary critiques of what’s wrong with Mainland society, reminding us that racism continues to shape these debates. It bears mentioning that 汉奸 debates are eerily similar to White supremacist concerns with race traitors because yes, the talk gets just as ugly just as quickly and yes, the loudest voices in the debates are also men who embody an ideal racial type.

For example, Mu Chuan identifies those who are not only corrupt, but like Guo Jingyi whose corruption leads to the transfer of Chinese resources to foreign multinationals as being Han traitors. This seems rather straightforward enough. However, Mu Chuan also accuses intellectuals like Xiao Han (萧瀚), a lawyer and proponent of making Chinese legal system more democratic as being 汉奸.  Continue reading →

party melodrama as prelude to the 18th national people’s congress

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Shenzhen friends have been speculating about the political-economic shifts we will see as a result of the 18th National People’s Congress. The latest scandal involves Politboro Standing Committee hopeful Bo Xilai (薄熙来) and his henchman slash vice Mayor slash Chief of Police, Wang Lijun (王立军).

The scandal and source of gossip: Wang Lijun visited the US Consulate. The Chongqing military policy surrounded the Consulate, demanding the US to handover Wang Lijun. Beijing sent Qiu Jin, vice Minister of National Security. 24 hours after entering, Wang Lijun “willingly” left the US consulate with Qiu Jin. Subsequently, Bo Xilai went to Kunming for unknown reasons.

I have been trying to understand what’s at stake, why the fallout, and how to read between the lines. This is what I’ve gathered; some of the gossip may even be reliable.

The dramatic background of the Bo Xilai scandal is the fight to become a member of the Politboro Standing Committee, which is a recognized springboard for becoming President and Premier, positions one and two in China. Bo Xilai is one of the more prominent and/or notorious members of China’s Princeling Party (太子党), the generation of Party leaders who have come to power because of their powerful parents. Bo Xilai’s father, Bo Yibo was one of the “eight immortals” of the Deng era Communist Party. The Princelings are in the news because China’s next leader Xi Jinping, son of Communist veteran, Xi Zhongxun is also a Princeling.

Continue reading →

Sexing the Greed, or How We’ve Gone from “Marrying Shenzhen” to “Can a Woman Get Married in Shenzhen?”

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Surfing 天涯深圳, I came across a brief post by an author who claimed that her friends had urged her to leave the city because

“A woman can’t marry in Shenzhen. The most desperate are those who’ve been here form more than two years. There are more and more leftover women in Shenzhen and it’s a big problem (在深圳嫁不掉。其中一个在深圳待了两年的人更是发感慨，深圳剩女越来越多，是个大麻烦)”.

Clearly, this is a small blip in the much larger national discussion of “leftover women (剩女),” which (according to 百度百科) designates upwardly mobile, successful women who are still unmarried as they approach their 30th birthday. The over-30 crowd, it goes without saying, are desperate or resigning themselves to being single for the rest of their lives. The term as well as the debate are obviously misogynistic. More distressingly, however, like the phrase “naked marriage (裸婚)”, the expression “leftover woman” sexes the greed that has come to characterize Socialism with Chinese characteristics as if by fixing what’s wrong with women we could fix what’s wrong with society.

It’s a scary logic. Continue reading →

of submission and changing the world…

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Last night had dinner with friends and learned (1) that Marxism in Mandarin means “materialism”; (2) rumor has it that the Party is promoting Buddhism as a way of preventing the growth of Christianity, and (3) submission empowers us to change the world.

[update Jan 16: realized last night that what I am interested in is a continuum of engagement — surrender-resignation-acceptance-submission. I skipped over the resignation bit in discussion below and that is where I should have headed. Instead, I jumped directly into the differences between surrendering and submitting. Nevertheless, am leaving original post, MAO]

About Marxism: I had been used to thinking in terms of “the dialectic” and “socialism — change the world”. However, when YQ made a joke about China being more Marxist than Marx, the Chinese laughed and I did not. One of my friends asked, “But you’ve read Marx, right?” Me nodding. “Well then you know about 唯物主义 (dialectical materialism).” Apparently, the joke is that Chinese materialism is no longer dialectical just in your face materialistic.

About buddhism, which links to recent post on Hongfa Temple. Friend’s neibu (内部 insider, but specifically within the Party) information is that there are two many Christians in China and, as a general rule, they are more frightening than buddhists. Reference to the Boxer Rebellion. Another mentioned that buddhists accept (接受) reality.

I gleaned three things from this conversational logic. (1) Christians (unlike materialists) change the world; (2) Buddhists are harmless, and; (3) 接受 in this context is surprisingly close to the English idea of submit. Continue reading →

butt-talk public administration

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Yesterday, in the midst of a bout of competitive reminiscing about personal experiences with Party corruption, Western misperceptions of China, and general human idiocy, one of my friends emphasized how ridiculous the world was by saying, “That’s when I finally understood the phrase butts decide the topic (屁股确定话语).”

This was fun. My friend had been telling a story about post-earthquake reconstruction in Wenzhou. Apparently, all the funding, including international relief, had been directed to specific villages, leaving roads between villages nothing more than rubble. However, when word came down that a Canadian official was coming the next day on an inspection tour, suddenly local officials leapt into action, working together to repair the stretch of road between two villages in one night. She clapped her right and against her left palm, emphasizing the unfortunate reality of butt-talk public administration. Continue reading →

what is luxury living?

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I’ve been thinking about luxury because it permeates Shenzhen advertising, especially that for new housing estates. The definition of luxury that appears in these advertisements invariably links high-end consumption, images of happy elites, and the idea of homecoming. The strip of reclaimed land that stretches from Shekou Gongye 8 Road to Dongjiaotou, for example, is thick with malls and advertising, as well as littered with evidence that such lives don’t come cheap.

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The characters for luxury 奢侈 reveal the extent to which inequality threads through and often sustains our desire for these objects. 奢 deconstructs to the characters 大者, or “big one”. Likewise, 侈 becomes 人多, or many people. Thus, the literal definition of shechi is big one many people, leaving the question of the verb that links big ones and the many open to interpretation. Is a luxury item something that all want but belongs to the big one? Or perhaps, it takes many to produce a big one?  Continue reading →