Also, just noticed the FISU logo. Please tell me that the International University Sports Federation committee doesn’t think that college athletes are only male and come in three colors (white, yellow, and black). Sigh.
image captured jan 10, 2011
Tag Archives: gender
Body Work
Short comments on two dance pieces that I saw at the OCAT contemporary dance festival 2010. Both pieces were intensely personal responses to objective reality – here, objective reality in the sense of “can not be changed”, and personal response as “adapting to” and eventually “overcome by” said reality.
First, 朗诵 (recitation or reading) from 纸老虎喜剧工作室 (Paper Tiger Theatre Studio, 2010). Here, objective reality to the form of tests, descriptions from medical textbooks, lists, newspaper articles – printed matter that is taken to accurately represent reality. Direct Tian Gebing’s (田戈兵) response subjected five, young and amazingly fit young men to difficult motions that they repeated until the men were obviously exhausted. In one movement series, for example, the dancers stood at the back of the stage, back to the audience, arms and legs stretched into an X. While one or several read the text, one or several would bend from the knees backward until collapsing with a thud onto the floor. He / they then pushed themselves forward, leaving a wake of sweat. He / they abruptly jumped up. Returned to the back of the stage. Stood in the X position and began again. And yes, the thud was important. Most of the sound for the performance was thumping bodies. For over an hour. Through a rain storm. All the while the dancers clutched pages of text that they continuously read out loud. Until two pairs of dancers sat on two chairs, cradling the partner, who continued to read. Between, around, and behind the seated pairs, a lone dancer continued to dance.
Second, 治疗 (medical treatment, 2008) from 生活舞蹈工作室 (Living Dance Studio). In this piece, objective reality was the suffering and eventual decay and death of the human body. Choreographer Wen Hui (文慧), Wu Wenguang (吴文光), several other studio members, and Shenzhen residents performed the experience of dying and growing old despite medical treatment. The spark for this piece was the last 12 days of a mother’s life. The piece began with a young girl playing with motorized shoes that hummed around the stage throughout the show. One by one, studio dancers and audience members came onstage and then painstakingly moved from the back of the stage to the front. While watching I felt caught somewhere between Noh and Waiting for Godot because dancers held contortions effortlessly, with the end result of relentless pessimism. Indeed, I felt distressed not only because performers used over an hour to move about 50 meters, but also because by the end of the show about 30 or so slow moving, contorted figures had overtaking the space where the one girl – and halfway through the piece it was clear she was the only young, healthy body onstage – continued to keep the motorized shoes moving.
Youth exhausted. Spent in industrial repetitions. Relentless pages of knowledge that never made the movement easier. A single girl. A slow, determined, frightening accretion of misshapen, yet still oozing forward bodies.
Interestingly, although these two pieces provide insight into the experience of China’s boom, I am more interested in how these pieces continue and expand upon the general nihilism of modernist art, when its not being over the top utopian. Living in Shenzhen, we are used to this relentless exhaustion of bodies and the seemingly unlimited replacement bodies that slip onstage and remain unnoticed except and until a critical mass forms. But Shenzhen also thrives on the experience, the energy before one steps into the vortex of change. The threshold moment, when we turn from the past and leap into all that is possible – plans can’t keep up with change, here.
I keep thinking about sighs and the expression 没办法 – no way out as the experience of work and meeting the demands of family and friends by way of exhausting work situations. And I’m wondering when all this exhaustion becomes something other than resignation and nihilism. In this sense, I remain skeptical of any assertion that the only response to “objective reality” is resilient adaptation unto decay. Noticing this reality, yes, step one. But I yearn for alternative second steps.
What’s love got to do with it? Speculations about what it means to say 我爱你 (in Shenzhen)
I am an American woman married to a Chinese man. I have lived in Shenzhen for many, many years. Consequently, I have heard many, many stories about cross-cultural romance – some successful, some not, others vaguely disturbing.
The other day, a good friend – Euro-American man because these labels mark the site of negotiation – told me that Chinese women say, “I love you,” way too soon. Creepy soon. So, I asked another good friend, Chinese woman, why it might be that my friend would go out on one or two dates with a woman and she was already willing to confess her love. My Chinese woman friend countered with her own question, “I thought that foreigners [meaning Westerners] were open about their feelings. Isn’t that true?” I then asked a Canadian born Hong Kong women what she thought it meant to say 爱 and she replied that she usually meant something leaning towards appreciation and gratitude.
Given that I like, respect, and trust these three people, I started thinking that the romantic cultural gap was even further than I had once thought (and yes, pangs of what was I actually doing when I fell in love ringing in my ears). I knew my Chinese friends often had different understandings of their place in a family because they have different understandings of what a family is. I knew that my Chinese women friends were more likely to start dating with an eye to marriage than my Western women friends.
And yet. I hadn’t stopped to think about what it might mean to say, “I love you,” in Shenzhen because that feeling has been so fundamental to how I have defined myself. Nor am I alone because one of the define features of modernity in the West has been the way that individual passion for god or a person or an ideal defines a fully human life. Consequently, I have assumed that love was not only a universal feeling, but universally important without stopping to consider that (1) it may not be universal even in the West or that (2) even if it is universal, forms of expression are certainly not.
After these conversations, I began listening to the use of 爱 in conversations and media broadcasts. I now think that 爱 means something closer to “appreciate” or “enjoy” or “desire” or “am grateful for”. More interestingly, I think 爱 allows Shenzhen Mandarin speakers to establish a site of individuality or personality. Who and what they love allows them to have something that is personal. Importantly, I also think 爱 is a much less socially important emotion (possibly because of its individualizing function) than are other sentiments, such as loyalty and trust and long-term commitment.
All this to say, I think that Shenzhen Mandarin speakers say I love you in order to create an individualized self. This self is recognized as being distinct from and often in opposition to the more important social and/or collective self. Anecdotal evidence follows.
(1) Accomplished children generally thank (in order) – their parents, teachers, classmates, and audience for supporting them to succeed, after which they add the line, “I love you all.” （我想感谢爸爸妈妈，感谢我的老师，感谢我的同学，感谢观众朋友；我都爱你们!) Given that that gratitude is hierarchically ranked and explicitly differentiated while爱 is general, this use of 爱 seems to signal that all the support excites or makes the speaker happy.
(2) One of the main ice-breaker conversations that Shenzheners enjoy is about hobbies or 爱好 – literally love-like (好 is a fourth tone noun in this phrase).
(3) 爱 is used to describe foods and activities that people enjoy – he loves to eat sweets (他很爱吃甜品); she loves to play tennis (她很爱打网球). Interestingly, this use of爱 seems in contrast to fear or 怕 as in the expression – he’s afraid to eat spicy food (他很怕吃辣的); she’s afraid to get sun tanned (她很怕晒太阳). In this context, it’s easy to see that this is not fear of boogeymen fear, but rather fear as dislike or something that challenges a sense of self.
(4) Once when my husband and I were having difficulties, I complained to a friend and told her how I intended to handle the situation. My friend responded, “It’s great that you dare to love and dare to hate (你敢爱敢恨多好).” In retrospect this use of 敢 seems to indicate the personal and marginalized aspect of爱.
(5) Likewise, I have been repeatedly told that Chinese women do not “become obsessed with passion (痴情),” but are loyal (忠) and faithful (贤).
(6) Indeed, a true friend is someone who is revealed over a long time (日久见人心), the person who is still by your side when those who love to eat and carouse with you (酒肉朋友) have gone their merry way.
To return to the question of what’s love got to do with it, clearly not as much as one such as I – western, feminist, using love to establish a life – would like to think. Hence, the “creepiness” of Chinese women who declare their “love” after several dates, when in fact all they might be saying is “I like you” and “Given the fact that I’m dating, it means I’m looking for husband material and I think you’ll due.” That said, once married, “I will be faithful and due my duty to you, my parents, your parents, my friends and yours – in short, I’ll live a socially responsible, respectable, and meaningful life.”
Now it may be that part of reform and opening China will be the increasing importance of 爱 in defining, constituting, and giving meaning to individual lives. But maybe not. And I don’t think matters because there are so many, many ways to be fully human and I’m learning to love – rather than fear – the diversity.
size 36 C and counting
I have been thinking about the purpose of human human adaptability. To what ends and how should we craft human lives? The context for my speculation has been the constant construction and reconstruction of Shenzhen, where I have watched the landscape constantly morph and mutate as if it were an organism with a life of its own and not a collaborative human project; all that is solid melts into air. Today, I am wondering: what kind of bodies are co-evolutionarily suited to this landscape?
Lately, in Shenzhen, human bodies, especially female bodies have been changing even faster than the skyline. Discussions about women’s breasts reveal the range of emotions and level of bodily change out there. Anxious discussions about milk powders and early sexual maturation (“precocious puberty”) frequently appear in newspapers. The most startling was the claim that milk powder caused 4-month baby girls to grow breasts, even as celebratory discussions of Gong Li’s voluptuous figure have been ongoing for years. In between these two extremes fall hospitals like Sunshine (阳光医院 in downtown Shenzhen) that specialize in cosmetic surgery to provide any woman with the perfect 360 figure and debates about the perversions there of.
The diversity of these breasts have me wondering to what extent our ability to manipulate the world and our bodies has distracted us from the real work of figuring out who and where we are (pun truly unintended! I only caught on rereading post). If women only needed to interact with sexual partners and hungry infants, I could understand how “water drop (水滴)” shaped breasts might enable us to become fully human. However, the crafting of an individual’s purpose occurs over an entire life through interactions with many different people. Thus, whatever the immediate benefits of cleavage (or six packs or firm buttocks…), it seems short-sighted and limited to confuse sporting / touching a set of 36 C breasts with human development.
The construction and reconstructions of Shenzhen suggest not only that human minds can imagine and build a world, but the forms themselves indicate how deeply we share a yearning for transcendence. Each building stretches deeper into the heavens, the roads connect more and more places, boundaries burst with new activities. Each human being is attempting to become more beautiful.
My musing about these new bodies the has been in terms of an ethical telos. Being human means that we are completed – perfected, if you will – through maturation toward a distinctly human purpose. This development constitutes human transcendence and must be embodied. Thus, I am not making an argument against the pleasures of the flesh, but seriously asking if we have confused what we can do with what we ought.
the sea of desire is never filled
On Sun, Mar 7, inheritance-shenzhen will offer a program of artist talks given by women artists working in the PRD. We hope to generate dialogue between and about different generations of artistic work. Please come!
Artists:
Phoebe Wong – Head of Research at the Asia Art Archive
Doreen Liu – of Node Architecture
Duan Jiyuan – conceptual artist from Guangzhou
Mrs Teng – director of the Shenzhen womens society of artists
Mary Ann O’Donnell – artist-ethnographer
Time: Saturday, Mar 7, 3:30 – 6:30
Place: No 104, Block 10, Tangxia Community, Hua Xia Road
Metro: Shi Jie Zhi Chuang (C)
广东省 深圳市 南山区 华夏路 鹤塘小区 10,栋 104号 地铁: 世界之窗
mirror, mirror – thoughts for the new year
I have been a curious lightening rod for Sino-American perceptions of each other, especially with respect to the meaning and importance of Shenzhen in all this global restructuring. I have confounded gendered stereotypes because my body signifies an elite position within global hierarchies. As a white, upper middle class American woman, I have been expected to enjoy and choose from the best that the world offers, which is apparently not to be found in Shenzhen. Or if in Shenzhen, I have been expected to stay only for the time it would take to complete a project and then return to where I belong. This past trip to the US, I discovered that my life choices had become mainstream in profound and (often) distressing ways.
The first time I went to China (1995), I stayed three years before I returned to the US. My ability to speak Chinese and decision to study cultural transformation in Shenzhen (rather than Beijing or perhaps Shanghai) shocked most inhabitants. Indeed, they consistently urged me to head north to conduct valuable research. More tellingly, when I went shopping or stopped at a telephone kiosk, venders and recent migrants (even from Beijing and Shanghai) frequently mistook me for either (a) English by way of Hong Kong or (b) Russian by way Window of the World. Once they realized that I was actually American, the same vendors immediately proposed that Yang Qian was (in order of plausibility): Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Singaporean, and Hong Kongese. Only with great reluctance (and then disturbingly cheerful surprise), they said, “You’re Mainland Chinese!!!” At which point, they asked where we had met in America.
Once I started making annual trips back to the US, however, I realized that my decisions to live and study in Shenzhen were equally shocking to mainstream Americans, who had not heard of the SEZ, its importance in reforming Chinese society, or the scale of what was happening just north of Hong Kong. When I was in West Lafayette, IN, pursuing a Master’s at Purdue (circa 1990), an undergraduate student asked me what the point of studying Chinese was if I couldn’t use it to find a job. Indeed, as late as Spring 2000, members of a job selection committee at a liberal arts college asked me, “What’s so international about Shenzhen?” and then hired someone who studied urban life in Beijing.
The past five years, I have noted how more and more young international professionals are coming to Shenzhen – to work, to invest, to conduct research, and to create art. In Shenzhen, I am no longer strange, but an expected feature of the urban fabric: the foreign investor / English teacher, and also the foreign intellectual, who now appears regularly in Shenzhen’s many international events. Only in conversation, do I still manage to surprise Chinese interlocutors. Likewise, this trip, several incidents suggest how deeply aware not only of China, but also Shenzhen my U.S. family and friends have become. In Seattle, Natasha’s five-year old daughter, Roman is studying Chinese in an immersion program and could speak and write some Chinese. Meanwhile, Natasha and I brainstormed possible collaborations in Shenzhen. On the plane from Seattle to Houston, we met a young college graduate, who chatted in Beijing accented Mandarin and was constructing a multi-national life. In Southern Pines, NC, my two-year old nephew, Emanuelle watches Nihao Kailan and enjoys saying xiexie.
And yet. All this mainstreaming seems to be quickly congealing into stereotypes that perpetuate the kinds of ignorance that shaped early perceptions of my presence in Shenzhen. Most Chinese and Americans continue to believe that (a) the US offers a better life than China and that (b) the only reason one would go to and remain in Shenzhen is to become rich. The most glaring example of this kind of thinking is that those in positions to deny visas (to me in Shenzhen) and entry into the US (YQ when we come back) continue to suspect that there is something not quite right about a mixed couple, who have chosen to live in Shenzhen (rather than, for example, West Lafayette, IN). And yes, they act on these impressions. I am still not eligible for a Chinese green card because eligibility is based on investment or Chinese blood, rather than marriage. Immigration officers still bully YQ when we enter the US because we have chosen to create a life in Shenzhen.
All this to say that China and Shenzhen seem to have been mainstreamed in ways that conform low expectations – get in, make a buck, get out, rather than in ways that might encourage new ways of being global citizens. Moreover, all these bucks continue to sustain illusions of American supremacy, not only because more and more of China’s young elites bring their dreams, talents, and money to the US, but also because many who go to Shenzhen do so looking (and therefore) only finding economic opportunity. Thus, both US and Chinese officials continue to read YS and my lack of visible economic progress as suspicious activity.
I’m happy my nephew can say xiexie. I wish he was also being taught that the appropriate form of courtesy is to jiaoren – to call older people ayi and shushu, or nainai and yeye and that too many xiexies often seem overly formal (at best) or sarcastic in Mandarin contexts. Such are my thoughts as we enter the Year of the Tiger.
Hear me roar.
the meaning of work and the pursuit of 幸福
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…
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.
starter teapot
72 hours into the rain, rain go away and I am taking pictures of the starter teapot that Xiao Chen recommended, rather than go outside.
Xiao Chen had told me that if I “raise/nurture (养-yang)” a teapot then I will develop affection for it (发展感情). Even if it’s a relatively cheap teapot, like a 20 rmb machine producedteapot or a 180 rmb handmade starter (pictured), the act of caring for the teapot will become affection for it. Lo and behold, it’s true. A week into the process and I’m considering naming my teapot, Terrance T. Pot, or something equally ridiculous.
To make my tea, I first rinse Terrance with hot water, then add the leaves, which I wash twice, before I pour myself a cup of fragrent pu’er tea. I don’t discard the rinse water, but pour it over Terrance so that it will become 润 (run), a word which may be translated as moist, or smooth, but might be usefully thought of as “flush” as run also describes the characteristics of well-cared for skin. With each rinsing, Terrance’s color subtly changes and I find myself fascinated by the new colors and different textures; I even note the gradual change in temperature, from too hot to touch to cool smoothness.
This long weekend of intense communion with my teapot and I now understand how is it possible to develop feelings for an online pet – just check in with it every now and again and 养 it. In fact, it is also possible to buy various clay “pets” for your tea set. To yang a tea-pet, give it frequent tea-baths, much as you would a beloved teapot.
Throughout Shenzhen, many have hobbies that are, in fact, yang-ing an inanimate object. I have friends who take care of jade objects by frequently handling them; the oil on their skin nurishes the jade, which like a teapot also becomes run through care. Others prefer to yang a living creature – a plant, a pet, or even a mistress.
What and how one yang-s is culturally coded and recognized; it is a way of creating an identity. Cultivated people yang things like teapots, jade, potted plants, and tropical fish. Many spoil dogs of various kinds, giving them names reminicent of childrens’ nicknames, Precious and Treasure and Baby. Others yang projects and relationships. Signicantly, the number of mistresses that a man can yang is a symbol of his ability (能力).
There are, of course, deeper implications – caring for a goldfish, or your house, or small patch of earth will lead to love for your goldfish, your home, and your world. Parents, of course, yang their children, who in turn will yang their parents in old age. I believe that this is precisely where 玩儿 (wan’er/playing) seems to diverge from yang. Wan’er is just for fun. In fact, it’s possible to say 养着玩儿 or “nurishing for fun”. In this sense, a person or an object – like a teapot – is just a plaything.
rumor has it
Shenzhen inhabitants basically tell two kinds of stories about where they came from – 老家 (laojia / hometown) stories, which wax nostalgic for the warm human relations of their villages and 内地 (neidi / hinterland) stories how bad the situation is back in the interior of China. Yes, hometown and neidi stories can be about the same place, but usually a hometown story is about a specific place and a neidi story is about a general condition.
In all origin stories, whether nostalgic or resentful, Shenzhen is the foil. On the one hand, unlike a hometown, Shenzhen is said to lack 人情 (human sentiments). It is difficult to make a living here because people will exploit and take advantage of you. Hometown stories explain why someone is unhappy – usually lonely and alone – in Shenzhen. On the other hand, although realizing one’s dreams in Shenzhen is said to difficult, nevertheless it is possible; in neidi stories, what comes across is the impossibility of realizing one’s goals back home. Neidi stories explain why the unhappy are still in Shenzhen.
Yesterday, I heard an extreme and disturbing neidi story. Continue reading
Shenzhen Noted 