Tag Archives: globalization

firecracker aesthetics

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Yesterday was 初二 or the second day of the lunar new year and firework play continued with children of all ages setting off bright red crackers and sparklers and colorful blooms.

In the early afternoon, I walked along the City River, where over sixty years ago, the PLA liberated Tianjin. And here’s the point: Walking past aligned rows of apartment buildings,k grey lots of orderly trees, and the straightened riverbank – indeed, the sky seem slotted against the horizon – I suddenly understood the necessity of fireworks. Not only do colorful flames shine bright against the muted landscape, but also disrupt the relentless and massive grid that organizes this spaces.

Rumor has it that the Tianjin Fire Department charged 100,000 rmb for a license to sell firecrackers this year, up from 50,000 from last. I’m not sure what Shenzhen Municipality charges because I didn’t think to ask. But here, in a winterscape of star,k light and modernist squares, I craved red flames and the power to soften hard lines endlessly looming.

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civilized departures

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The other day saw two friends off to Xiamen. I had been expecting crowds and unpleasant jostling, but instead found the bus station well organized and people departing without problem. Apparently, the Shenzhen version of the national “Civilized departure, peaceful spring movement (文明出行，平安春运)” campaign is going well.

To put Shenzhen’s estimated 10 million arrivals and departures in perspective, Guangdong province’s estimated spring movement is 141 million trips from Jan 19 to Feb 27. Halving that total means an estimated 75.5 million people will be moving in and around Guangdong.

Once again, I don’t know how to imagine this scale of movement. I don’t even know how one would go about counting heads. I think that numbers this large (75.5 million is 1/2 the population of Russia; Shenzhen’s measly 10 million halves to five million or more than the population of Houston) must be of world significance, but offhand I’m not sure exactly what that significance is.

All this to say that at many levels, the scale of the transformation I am witnessing from my perch in Shenzhen confounds me. I grew up thinking about population in terms of thousands; even NYC had less than 10 million when I was a young’un. I note increasing traffic jams, insufficient places for high school students, and the radical restructuring of Shenzhen Bay and associate it with increased stress, growing inequality, and environmental degradation. But. What does it mean if we do not choose to live otherwise?

Today, a friend and I spoke about what an intervention might look like. She said that according to Chinese understanding, the best time to intervene is when a mistake happens, branding the event into the person’s mind. “For example,” she offered, “the other day I was trying to get on the bus carrying my camera and supplies. I asked two teenager girls to let me through. I was trying to be polite because I didn’t want to bash them with my equipment. But one of them sniffed and said, ‘I’m not fat.’ Strange. She thought me asking her to move meant I thought she was fat. At the time I wanted to say something, but then thought, forget it. Let her learn from society.”

“So we intervene one by one?” I asked.

She sighed and explained, “If more people were well-intentioned, it would be a beautiful world.”

In fact, one by one is how we do it. And maybe the point isn’t to finish, but to keep trying.

Shenzhen’s third language…

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If the languages that appear on ATM machines are any indication of how a society imagines its others, what are we to make of the fact that Arabic has appeared on some newly installed Shenzhen ATM machines?

I’d been thinking that it might have had something to do with the fact that roughly 8 months ago, China became the biggest importer of Saudi oil. But maybe not. According to non-random conversations with several friends (1) East Asian foreigners (Korean, Japanese, the other Chinas) are expected to read Chinese, and (2) Euro-descended foreigners are expected to speak English, after all the meaning of “外语 (outside language)” in everyday discourse is “English”. As in “I don’t speak 外语 (foreign language = English)”. This means that (3) Shenzhen’s third language needs to be another large, representative language of many speakers. And although Russian might have also been an interesting choice, it is a Euro-language and therefore counts as “English”. Moreover, given the way colonialism has reworked continental lingua francas , most peoples now speak some variant of a Euro-language (English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and other variants of “English”), leaving Arabic a clear favorite for Shenzhen’s third language and providing us with an interesting reworking of “three worlds” theory.

Thoughts?

the more things change…

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I am currently reading Washington Square (Henry James) with students and had one of those “this time on steroids” moments. From the opening paragraph, “In a country in which, to play a social part, you must either earn your income or make believe that you earn it, the healing art has appeared in a high degree to combine two recognised sources of credit. It belongs to the realm of the practical, which in the United States is a great recommendation; and it is touched by the light of science–a merit appreciated in a community in which the love of knowledge has not always been accompanied by leisure and opportunity.” It’s Shenzhen. Only in contrast to 1840s NYC, in millennial Shenzhen, students are encouraged to learn math and become engineers or accountants, rather than doctors.

We know this story. Most migrants come to The City from poor rural farms to make their fortune, but they may also have come from less vibrant small towns; these migrants have created their world and are proud of what they have made; they believe in taking advantage of opportunity; they believe themselves to be more forward-thinking than hometown people (and indeed they may actually be); they expect their children to do better.

In fact, folks in Shenzhen constantly remind me that the city is an immigrant city, but I often forget how similar its history is to NYC, albeit on steroids, 250 years later. Or London. Or Chicago. Or LA. Or Mumbai. The story of capitalist urbanization has been a story of the transformation of rural migrants into the urban proletariat and the expansion and relative enrichment of the capitalist class – wealth sucks up, even if there’s more stuff and fewer trees than there once were. Just the other day, an American passing through Shenzhen told me that what America needed was an infusion of good ole fashioned immigrant hunger. “Just look,” he said pointing out at Shenzhen, “how well it’s working here.”

In the Eighteenth Brumaire Marx notes, “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

And there’s the rub. Now that we’re well beyond farce, what do we call global urbanization?

the 2011 universiade

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This year, Shenzhen hosts the 2011 Summer Universiade, which I gather (from the FISU website) is olympics for college students. The 2011 Winter Universiade is being held in Erzurum, Turkey from 27 Jan – 6 Feb, 2011.

As I gear up for a year of college athletics hype, I have two brief comments and a question.

First, the Erzurum and Shenzhen websites are remarkably similar, including countdown, strange anime mascots, and news about the city. So thinking that yes, boosterism fuels this Universiade business as much as joy in youthful athletics.

Second, I had no idea about the Universiade until I left the United States because we have college sports, which are linked to University boosterism; at this level of competition, US Americans cheer for our school rather than our country.

Third, is Erzurum an up and coming Turkish city? In other words, is Erzurum using the Universiade to do what Shenzhen is doing, i.e, using an international collegiate sporting event to assert the city’s international status because the “real” international events (Olympics, World Expo, and Asian Games) went to other cities (Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, respectively)? And if so, might this mean that the intended audience of the Erzurum Games, like the Shenzhen Games, is actually the local population. “See residents,” the government is saying, “we’re as global as the country’s first-ranking cities.” Please advise.

what does it mean to be a foreigner in shenzhen?

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Yesterday I was a judge in the semifinals of the First Shenzhen Expats Chinese Talent Competition. An interesting experience both because the event itself expresses the Municipality’s determination to globalize and because it reflects the increasing presence of foreigners in Shenzhen. Indeed, the fact of the event points to the new symbolic visibility of foreigners in Shenzhen and the importance of the foreign to Shenzhen’s official representation of itself both at home and abroad. Specifically, the City organized the Competition as part of a search for a foreigner who can both represent Shenzhen’s foreign community (within China) and be a bridge between China and the World. Thus, who wins and how that winner is marketed will tell us all sorts of interesting things about the changing (or possibly solidifying?) symbolic valence of foreigners in Shenzhen.

According to Paul Shen, Executive Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Shenzhen Daily, which along with the Office to Promote English organized the event, there are now 480,000 foreigners in Shenzhen, excluding Taiwanese and, of course, Hong Kong residents. Half a million foreigners in Shenzhen, at least another half a million Taiwanese and Hong Kongese compatriots, in addition to the previously estimated 14 million Mainlanders in Shenzhen. Parenthetically, we can but hope that the ongoing census will give us some sense of the diversity that actually constitutes Shenzhen.

The eleven competition participants came from Norway, Korea, Russia, Indonesia, Columbia, Ghana, Toga, France, New Zealand, Malaysia, and the United States. Ages ranged from 6 and a half to married with children. Technical skills also varied enormously as the Malaysian and Indonesian participants were overseas Chinese, while the Korean, Norwegian, and American competitors were students in Chinese schools, and the rest were adults who had come to Shenzhen for business purposes and were learning Chinese accordingly.

Now, judging other foreigners’ various levels of Chinese disconcerts me because there are so many standards, most obvious of which might be glossed as technical skills – fluency and accent and control over advanced linguistic patterns come immediately to mind. However, there are also more pragmatic standards to consider. Significantly, pragmatic criteria for determining what constitutes linguistic competence are less measurable than the merely technical; interpersonal skills, cultural competence, and knowledge of appropriate historic contexts are abilities that are differently linked to technical prowess. Most foreign language programs (both in China and the United States) evaluate and test technical skills, while I tend to stress the importance of pragmatic skills, in part because my technical skills aren’t so great (yes, when flustered or angry or excited my tones are even less stable than they are when I’m concentrating), but also in part because the ability to appreciate technical skills itself falls into the cluster of pragmatic talents that differentiate speakers.

I have been fortunate to participate in Shenzhen’s performing arts circle and thus have heard technically excellent Mandarin and Cantonese; with an interest in and translator of Chinese literature, I have also read fabulous poetry and stories. I continue to watch movies and theatre and go to poetry readings in my native English and have preferences and standards for evaluating the quality of someone’s English. All this to make a rather banal point, most Chinese, like most Americans are fluent in their native language, but they are not bards. Consequently, I rarely decide to interact with someone simply because they are competent speakers of English or Chinese. Instead, I make friends based on how and what someone has to say – personality and insight, poetry and conviction appeal to me more than do accent and grammar, even when grammar itself is the precondition for performing personality or expressing opinions.

At the competition, one of the Shenzhen Daily student reporters asked me if I was looking forward to the Universidade next year? Had I been thinking more clearly, I would have answered that I’m looking forward to December’s Fringe Festival and next year’s Architecture Biennial. However, I wasn’t thinking, so I said, “No, because I don’t care about sports.” And that’s my point, however obliquely stated. Nationals from many countries constitute the Shenzhen foreign community. Each of us has different reasons for living here – economic, familial, educational, and personal. That we have emerged as a topic of municipal concern reminds us (again) the extent to which we (all humans, not just holders of foreign passports) do not live merely for ourselves, but rather in and through and for the webs and minds and expectations of those around us. A Batesonian moment this competition: human beings co-evolve and thus how we engage each other is the city – politics in the broad sense of social ecology.

education rumors

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this is a brief gathering of and musing about rumors i have recently heard about how much money (a few, but clearly influential) shenzhen parents are willing to spend on their child´s education.

at a teashop: daughter is at a u.s. university, which happens to be a $60.00 cab ride into the city, where she can buy good food to cook in the dorm kitchen, rather than eat in the cafeteria. if daughter goes into the city even once a week, its probably an additional $200 a week for trip and food. the mother considered a worthwhile investment for two reasons: (1) daughter isn´t yet ready to drive in a foreign country (safety first) and (2) cafeteria food isn´t as nutritious as homemade chinese food. truthfully, i understood the reasons, even if my financial threshold is much lower.

at an italian restaurant: family worked very hard to get son into a private high school in the u.s. the allure of this particular high school is that a high percentage of graduates go on to the ivy league. with preparation, tuition and travel between u.s. and shenzhen and other stuff that son needs to be comfortable, the family spent 1 million rmb to make this possible. this one had me trying to figure out where all the money had gone. even if i estimate tuition and boarding to be $50,000 that still leaves about $100,000 unaccounted for.

on a bus: there are many people trying to get investment green cards in california (at least 1 million u.s.) because then they will enjoy discounted rates to the u.c. system. this investment will also give the child something to do, once she graduates from college.

what becomes clear in these stories is how important a child´s education is for the expression of social value. indeed, through these stories, parents and others debate what it means to be a family and a global citizen. these families are debating: how much is too much to spend on an education? and why is it important to get a good education even if there is no immediate return on investment? in other words, yes these are huge sums of money, but it is money invested in children, who remain our future. so there is a particular understanding of what is necessary for the future to be better.

given how hard it is to earn these sums in china, what becomes painfully clear is that a top education represents the ¨good life¨ and many shenzheners want this life very, very badly, if not for themselves at least for their children. and this future is clearly american. in every story i´ve heard (yes, self selected sample, not even pretending random), the u.s. exemplifies both the kind of future these parents want for their children as well as the kind of education they feel will make that future possible.

moreover, these rumors interestingly link up with the desire that infuses the study of english in shenzhen. everyday, cabby´s, janitors, college students, and friends tell me that their lives would be significantly better if they could speak english. for a long time, i misheard the desire in the rush to study english. i kept hearing, ¨want to make more money,¨ which is true as far as it goes. however, listening to the rumors of the cost of an education, i finally understood the point: these are people who want out of their current situation and see the foreign as the way. or rather ¨english¨ names the skills that will allow them transition into a new and presumably better lives.

at this moment, shenzhen education desires dovetail with american fantasies of how chinese investment can save the u.s. economy. uncomfortable and unhappy where we are, we seek elsewhere as if on the journey we could become otherwise, leaving our troubled selves behind.

calligraphy in nyc

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This is a post about the relative ghettoization of China studies within the U.S. academy and its concomitant marginalization in U.S. discussions about wither the post Cold War global world. I approach the topic not in search of lofty insights, but with practical intent; how do we learn to talk cross-culturally when most of the time we don’t have enough experience to make comparison meaningful?

Short answer: we need to cultivate wisdom, rather than pursue knowledge. Long answer meanders through musings on practice theory, calligraphy, and globalization. Continue reading →

in nyc this summer

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i am in nyc for the summer and will be blogging about stories i hear about shenzhen, here. i’m curious about the pattern and frequency of knowledge about / experience of shenzhen because globalization seems to me a question of uncanny immanence. we think tend to think that globalization is obvious – a korean zen center in the lower east side or a parc guell in yantian district, but then, suddenly, during the circle talk, i learned that a teacher’s brother is based in hong kong four months of the year and yes, spends time in shenzhen. there, in the lower east side, among all that obvious globalization hovered immanent connections and spectral possibility.

and a housekeeping note, which follows from being in nyc and the joy of being able to blog without a proxy and concommitant time lags. i am playing around with blog format. hopefully, by the end of the summer, i will have a new look and more integrated tag system / virtual filing system. then i can return to shenzhen and subverse posting. unless, wordpress is unblocked…

mirror, mirror – thoughts for the new year

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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.