Tag Archives: globalization

field of dreams, shenzhen

Posted on by


unfinished, unoccupied timeshare, the fountain resort

managed by swiss-garden international, the fountain resort (深圳金海滩：假日星苑度假村) overlooks xichong bay in kuichong village, longgang. i suspect, but have yet to confirm that the resort was built as many international resorts in the southeast asia are–to attract both upscale locals and foreigners with hotels and timeshares on the beach. nevertheless, several years after construction, only the hotels are being used. except for one or two houses that have been occupied by a family and temporary workers, the other timeshares are unfinished and unoccupied, abandoned before occupation. and yet. the gardens are immaculate, expectant. when i asked the older resident if he was lonely, he said no because he lived with his wife, son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. what about neighbors? i continued. they come on the weekends, he replied. i thought but didn’t add, it’s saturday and we’re alone here.

if you build it will they come? recent photos here.

ostriches in shenzhen

Posted on by

the ostriches came to shenzhen by way of the united states, “where,” the farm manager told me, “american scientists spent over twenty years experimenting in order to breed an ostrich that could live out of africa.”

开平碉楼: fortified homes

Posted on by

the other day, i went to zili village (自立村), li yuan (立园), and chikan town (赤坎镇) in kaiping city (开平市), one of guangdong’s famous 侨乡 (overseas chinese homeland). as a tourist destination, kaiping is famous for its towers, known as 碉楼, which were fortified structures designed to protect families from local bandits. according to anthropologist zhang guoxiong (张国雄):

“Before the Ming Dynasty, presentday Kaiping lay at the administrative intersection of three
counties, Enping, Xinhui and Xinxing. This situation enabled local bandits (土匪) to flourish
and hide out there. Public security was a mess. Liangjin Mountain in Kaiping was just such a
nest for local bandits, whose activities reached the towns of Chikan and Tangkou. Kaiping’s
predecessor was Kaiping Dun. During the Ming, the character “dun” refered to a military
installation. We can imagine that the central government had dispatched a garrison to Kaiping to
manage the problem of public security. They hoped this would be a place of unhindered traffic,
and that peace would be restored. Kaiping became a county during the first year of the Shunzhi
reign (1643). It was precisely to counter these social problems that the are was called Kaiping
(开平), which meant “restore peace (开同敉平)”. From this we can see, public
security problems were endemic to the area (loose translation from his book 开平碉楼)”.

these problems continued through the late qing and into the nationalist period. local architecture reflected the need to build for safety from bandits. however, the infusion of money from overseas chinese changed and intensified this kind of protective building. from the mid nineteenth century on, men from kaiping began immigrating to the united states and canada. significantly, because exclusion acts prevented them from bringing their families with them, they sent remittances home, often with the specific intent to build a safe tower, where their families could live. it is estimated that from the mid-nineteenth century over 3,000 towers were built, with intensive construction happening from 1912 until 1937, when nearly half the towers were built (1,490).

in fact, the remittances themselves became the cause of increased piracy. from 1912 until 1930, roughly the same period as the most intensive episode of tower building, there were 71 reported instances of bandit attacks in kaiping, including three attacks on the county seat and kidnapping the county magistrate.

early chinese immigrants to the united states worked for low wages in dehumanizing conditions. indeed, chinese migration satisfied american needs for low wage workers without attempting to give workers the benefits of american citizenship; in chinese, the remitances were called “血汗钱 (blood and sweat money)”. all this to say, kaiping people found themselves quite literally in a global crossfire between local bandits and north american immigration policy; there was no safe place for them and their families, together.

indeed, global politics continued to shape the possibilities of kaiping family life. the cold war brought with it u.s. attempts to undermine asian communist leaders, especially mao zedong. beginning in the early 1950s immigration restraints loosened, culminating with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. these changes allowed for the migration of kaiping family members, most of whom abandoned their towers for chinatowns and suburbs overseas, despite the fact that the communist party had actually succeeded in pacifying local bandits.

today, kaiping’s fortified homes seem disconcerting monuments. to departure. to social unrest. to history’s ironies. to ostensive luxury. the towers, the tiled floors, the defensive infrastructure, including weapons, the intricate wood carvings, the marble tables, the obvious wealth boarded up and hidden behind concrete walls and rusting metal shutters distressed me; a fortress can’t protect a dream.

on jan 31, 2002, the state administration of cultural heritage of the people’s republic of china (the awkward and official translation of 中华人民共和国国家文物局) nominated the kaiping towers for inclusion in UNESCO’s world heritage project. they have also uploaded a website that brings together tourist information, annecdotes, and historic analysis about the towers and the overseas chinese who built them. please visit.

赤湾: selective naturalizations

Posted on by

relatively isolated from the rest of shekou, the geography of chiwan has recently undergone massive restructuring as outgrowths of containers replace mountains as the defining feature of the landscape.

shenzhen port consists of nine terminals: shekou, chiwan, mawan, yantian, dongjiaotou, fuyong, xiadong, shayuchong and neihe.

刺激：craving stimulation

Posted on by

today i went to hong kong to order books for the school, after which i met up with a friend for lunch. both of us are in our early forties and have established home lives and jobs, as do many of our friends. lately we end up talking about our desires for excitement or stimulation. she told me a story about female friends who go into shenzhen for an evening with male escorts, known as ducks (the complement to the female escorts known as chickens). others, it seems, are turning to recreational drug-use. certainly the popularity of night clubs speaks to a pulsating need for something…

my friend noted that when she was younger, her parents were too busy making ends meet to worry about whether or not the environment was stimulating them. she, however, often has time on her hands to think about how her life could be better, or more interesting, or more romantic, or more something… she says this is the biggest change of the past twenty-five years. a child of the cultural revolution, she grew up in a world defined by necessity, but now, she says, it’s about personality and taste.

what is this unidentified need? what are we craving? we talk about taking lovers, visiting exotic places, changing jobs, but end up spending, and spend is the operative word, a great deal of time shopping, dieting, skulpting our bodies, and then going to restaurants to talk about our purchases, our calorie intake, and our shape. in all honesty, i look better than i did five years ago. physically, i feel better. yet nonetheless part of me steps to the side to observe what we’re up to; i call this ethnography. i write about our various activities and how we talk about them in order to clarify my experience and what it might mean, but lately i’ve noticed that simply writing up after the fact doesn’t resolve the craving that sometimes rides me, rides us as we move through shenzhen and hong kong, going about business as usual.

i want something. i once thought i could find it by coming to china, but here too, this yearning burns, so at those moments when craving results in devestating loneliness, i think, i’ll go back to the states and that something will be there. or maybe i shouldn’t have come to shenzhen, maybe it’s waiting for me in thailand. maybe i shouldn’t be teaching, maybe i should be writing a book. something else… of course, in more lucid moments, i realize that desiring is a state of being, not a place. i also understand that the object of desire shifts as quickly as i find satisfaction. so i’ve come to take comfort in lunches with friends who like me are wanting; that moment of mutual recognition at least is something.

第二届中国（深圳）国际文化产业博览交易会: Fat Bird in Shenzhen

Posted on by

fat bird theatre logo
Originally uploaded by mary ann odonnell.

This weekend (May 20, 21), Fat Bird participated in the second China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industry Fair (May 18-21). Fat Bird’s inclusion mediated at least two of the paradoxes structuring cultural production in Shenzhen specifically and the PRC more generally. Fat Bird’s inclusion prompted members to design a logo for the troupe’s first official exposure in Shenzhen (see image left).

On the one hand, the Fair staged the tension between economic and political interests in cultural production. This was particularly the case in terms of regional and minority cultural forms. Ministries in the Guizhou Government, for example, negotiated contracts for performance troupes of local minorities. Likewise, Ministries from the Zhengzhou Government sold traditional Chinese culture from pre-historic times through the Song Dynasty. In a city like Shenzhen, where there is no recognized “local” culture, Fat Bird’s presence demonstrated the possibility that a new city could produce new culture.

On the other hand,the structured contradiction between high and commercial art continues to embarrass Shenzhen officials and residents, who believe it is not enough for the city to make money on culture. Instead, they advocate for Shenzhen investment in non-productive arts like the ballet or theatre. Only then, they say, will the city fulfill its duel task to build both material and spiritual civilization. Fat Bird’s presence at the Fair was evidence that high (non-commercial) art is possible in Shenzhen.

Below, I take the reader on a selective tour of the Cultural Industry Fair, introducing the meaning of Fat Bird’s unexpected, but in retrospect overdetermined inclusion. This entry is actually part of the process of digesting what happened at the Fair. I will add more as it comes to me.

The first thing to take note of is the fuzzy line separating politics from economics at the Fair. The Ministry of Culture of the PRC, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the General Administration of Press and Publication of the PRC, the Guangdong Provincial Government, and the Shenzhen Municipal Government host the Fair. The Shenzhen Press Group, Shenzhen Media Group, Shenzhen Circulation Group, and the Shenzhen International Cultural Industry Fair Company, Ltd. sponsor the Fair. This division of labor reproduces the division between politics (hosts) and economics (sponsors). The hosts use the Fair to promote particular goals, while the sponsors provide the financial management necessary to stage the Fair.

This division of labor points to an ideology and practice in which the economic is understood as an expression of political will. In this sense, in producing the Cultural Fair, the Shenzhen International Cultural Industry Fair Company, Ltd. is not only doing business, but also (and more importantly) helping the central government achieve the goal of developing the national economy. The organization of displays at the Fair reiterated this logic, wherein the themes for each hall express goals that have been set by the government, and individual exhibitors pursue this goal.

Thus, the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center has 9 halls. During the Culture Fair, each hall was used to display those sectors of the culture industry that the government currently promotes. Successes of Chinese Cultural Industry were displayed in Hall 1; Education institutions had stalls in Hall 1A; Hall 2 was dedicated to Conceptual Design; Media Technologies and Digital Imaging was located in Hall 3, while Media Technologies and Printing were in Hall 4; Visual Arts were displayed in Hall 5; International Performance Arts were located in Hall 6; Chinese Language Publishing occupied Hall 7; the most popular exhibition, Comics and Games were located in Hall 8; and in Hall 9 were the Industrial Arts.

A second effect of this fuzzy division is that within the Fair, provincial and municipal governments also operated as cultural companies. That is, in addition to hosting the Fair, Guangdong Province had its own display, as did Tibet, Zhengzhou, Guizhou, Hong Kong, and Macau. This equation of regional governments operating as cultural businesses explains Guangdong’s governor, Huang Huahua’s emphasis on tourism as the motor (spirit) of cultural industries; the Fair modeled a tour of potential cultural tours. Indeed, while being shown the fair, the governor asserted that, “Culture is the spirt of tourism. The success of the Culture Fair will stimulate the development of tourism and other third sector industries, improve the distribution of regional industries, and help strengthen production.”

In fact, regional government/culture businesses made out quite well. (I’m not sure what to call these amalgams of political and economic interest. If anyone out there knows of or might suggest a name, I’d appreciate it.) In a column titled “the sellers won, the buyers smiled”, the May 20, 2006 edition of the Special Zone Daily reported that the following contracts were signed at the Fair: The French “Disney” (as Futuroscope Theme Park is known in the Chinese papers) signed contracts with Guangdong Province for roughly 4 billion rmb (500 million US$); Guizhou signed contracts to attract and develop cultural industries totalling 7 billion rmb (875 million US$); Guangxi signed contracts totalling 3.7 billion (462.5 million US$), Henan signed contracts totalling 1.1 billion RMB (130 million US$). Located in western Shenzhen, Overseas Chinese Town, itself a place/government/enterprise also signed contracts for 600 million RMB (48 million US$).

This leads to a third point about the fuzzy line between politics and economics at the Culture Fair. The Fair itself provided the stage for all this contract signing. This suggests that the real business took place elsewhere between representatives from Chinese governments and foreign businesses. The cooperation between multi-national firms and bureaus within the Chinese Government is a pattern of development that we have seen before, as when Chinese President, Hu Jintao visited Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates in Seattle this spring. The Fair itself, therefore, seemed more a display of the success of the government in promoting cultural industries, rather than a place where commerce might grow. In fact, during the weekend, many parents bought tickets to bring children to see the various cultural exhibitions, especially the Comic and Games exhibit. If there was any business going on at the Fair, it seemed more a case of businesses building a network of face-to-face contacts that might grow into a contract signing ceremony at next year’s fair.

This emphasis on display took several forms. First, exhibitors called attention to their displays through the use of bright colors and loud music. Second, exhibitors made their displays mobile with handouts and costumed players, who moved throughout an assigned hall, directing visitors to a particular display. Third, a television or screen was the focus point of each display, so that visitors could see the cultural product, whether it was a performance or a new technology. Forth, each display became an enclosed space, reproducing some kind of idealized space. Walking through these spaces, I felt disoriented and unable to focus on any one display. And I rarely saw people stopping, unless they were playing computer games or resting and not looking at anything in particular.

Below are pictures of Hall 6 (left) and the Shanxi Exhibit (right).

So Shenzhen provided the space for the Fair. Shenzhen companies produced the Fair. Shenzhen digital art companies displayed their wares at the Fair. Shenzhen advertizing companies produced many of the exhibits at the Fair. And Shenzheners bought tickets to attend the Fair. Yet Shenzhen did not have any recognizably “cultural” displays–no traditional theatre troupes, no local minorities, no ancient ruins to sell. Instead, Shenzhen had a series of poster boards, which displayed examples of cultural events that had been held in Shenzhen. Here, the government focused on international and domestic troupes that had performed on Shenzhen stages, including the Bolshoi and the National People’s Theatre.

The Ministry of Culture also printed a Shenzhen Art map, which directed people to cultural sites in the city, including the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, various museums, and District level cultural centers. The map also references several “folk” sites, such as the Tianhou Temple in Chiwan, the Hakka compound in Longgang, and the Pengcheng city in Longgang. These signs of pre-reform culture have all been turned into museums. However, none of these sites appeared in the in the Cultural Fair.

Shenzhen thus found itself facing an interesting and from the outside seemingly unnecessary cultural “lack”. The kind of cultural industry that went into producing the Fair thrives in Shenzhen, but it still doesn’t count as “culture”. Instead, older, high modernist ideas of an opposition between mass (commercial) and high art continue to define the cultural sphere in which the Municipality competes for national recognition. At the same time, government officials don’t recognize local history as cultural heritage. Instead, they continue to assert that there was “nothing” here before the reforms of 1980. This double denial of cultural resources in Shenzhen created a crack through which Fat Bird could not only enter, but also be invited to attend the Cultural Industry Fair.

Importantly, Fat Bird’s status as a legal entity points to the fact that troupe members have support in the government. Moreover, Fat Bird’s friends are precisely the people who bemoan the City’s lack of high culture. Not that this translates into specifically economic support for the arts, but it does mean that at moments in which culture is featured, these friends find ways to help Fat Bird. Accordingly, we were given the use of the rest area in Hall 6. We were also allowed to perform “This Body, These Movements” on the Hall 6 stage. All other participants had to pay for exhibition space and for time onstage. So even though no money changed hands, we looked at this as a chance in which Fat Bird actually “earned” a commission for our work.

Below are pictures of Fat Bird founder, Yang Qian standing at the Fat Bird site (left) and Fat Bird members performing (right).

Fat Bird used this opportunity in two ways. On Saturday, May 20, we held a workshop in our space. The space was created through four points: a sign that said Fat Bird Theatre, a sign that announced workshop times, a ladder where we hung the backdrop for “This Body, These Movements”, and a display of photographs. The workshop format was modeled on previous workshops. However, we asked members of the audience to write two character (one word) evaluations of the performance on a sheet of paper. Journalists mentioned that it was one of the few sites in the Convention Center where it was possible to focus on what was happening. On Sunday, May 21, we walked around the Fair and looked for ideas for new pieces. Next weekend, each participant will show a piece created out of the their tour and understanding of the Fair. The working title of this piece is the same as the title of the May 20th workshop: Cultural Expression.

Given the ideology structuring the layout of the Fair, the title “Cultural Expression” is more than a little ironic. To the extent that all exhibitors could be understood as expressing political will in economic terms, Fat Bird’s presence staged one of the fundamental contradictions of post-Mao reforms. On the one hand, we did not disrupt the Fair. On the contrary, our display was sponsored by the government. The government could be seen as sanctioning our work, even as our presence legitimated particular claims about cultural production in Shenzhen. On the other hand, Fat Bird’s was the one non-economic display at the Fair. This was the moment in the performance that most of the audience appreciated (especially because most complained they didn’t understand the performances themselves). Many thanked us for demonstrating the possibility of non-commercial art. They also lauded our efforts to follow our dreams.

“This is how I want my daughter to live,” one mother told us.

Now, I don’t know if she really wants her daughter to stop studying for the college entrance exams to perform with us. I suspect she was voicing a desire for a society in which her daughter could pursue artistic dreams without incurring serious social repercussions. Right now, she lives in a world where last year 8 to 9 million people took the college entrance exams and only 1.4 million were placed. More often than not, that level of competition precludes following one’s artistic bliss, as students study the arts to improve their transcripts rather than their lives. So, I think this exchange called attention to a desire to re-interpret the current political will in non-instrumental ways, which would place human creativity at the center of society.

As I look at the four pictures added to this entry, I realize again how difficult it was to see at the Fair. Neon flattened to grey. That has to be where my experience started. In fact, by the second day, I noticed that participating in the Fair not only exhausted me, but also made me irritable. In part, I have placed these photos together to draw out the differences between Fair space and Fat Bird space. However, I also think I have placed these images here, rather than setting them off in a gallery, because they don’t look interesting to me. I think I took these pictures while looking away, rather than trying to see what was there, what might inspire creativity, what might be otherwise.

Six images from found objects were shown at the Culture Fair.

The official site of the 文博会 provides both Chinese and English language news coverage of the Culture Fair. For those looking for equally, but otherwise biased images and information, it’s a good place to start.

shekou: symbols of globalization

Posted on by

Although my last entry about Bitao Alley focused on one architectural manifestation of globalization in Shekou, the most famous architectural sign of Shekou’s march to a global future is in fact the Minghua luxury liner.

Over twenty years ago, the Shekou People’s Government bought the Minghua from France and docked it in the port. At the time, the Minghua floated and Chinese guests had a sense of embarking on an international cruise. In 1984 Deng Xiaoping boarded the Minghua and, pleased with what he saw, wrote the four characters for seaworld (海上世界), which now grace the ship’s entrance. Throughout the 80s, the Minghua symbolized exotic consumption. Western restaurants and shops sprung up in the area around the ship; this is today’s Seaworld Plaza. However, by the 90s, the Nanshan District, Houhai land reclamation had spread along the coast, landlocking the Minghua. The ship fell into disuse and the newly created land next to it was turned into a golf practice field. At the turn of the millennium, Seaworld Plaza underwent an international facelift and the Minghua was restored as a luxury hotel and restaurant.

For Chinese visitors to Shenzhen, Seaworld Plaza is an important destination. They buy foreign knicknacks at kiosks, take their picture in front of the Minghua, and sometimes enjoy a foreign meal. Next, they walk along the ocean walk to take their picture with Nuwa, who saved humanity by mending heaven. The ocean walk is now also landlocked, but before, Nuwa stretched into heaven, the ocean at her feet. I confess that the mythological turn confuses me, not that I’ve asked anyone involved with the project what it once meant. According to legend, Nuwa first sutured the rent in heaven and then cut off the feet of the great turtle to support the four pillars of the universe. She also stopped the flood that had surged through the rent and finally drove away fierce beasts that had taken advantage of the chaos. Clearly a heroine. But I’m not sure what she’s mending in Shekou. The ocean? Communism? The separation of Hong Kong from the Mainland? Whatever the wound, landfill now stretches way past Nuwa, creating a new coastline and new room for the development of beachfront property.

The Minghua illustrates how spaces of sanctioned consumption have provided legitimacy for the globalization of Shekou. In particular, globalization has arrived as the consumption of Western culture. The beached luxury liner anchors the western restaurants and stores of Seaworld Plaza through the promise of global consumption. Indeed, for many years, Chinese tourists rented binoculers and looked toward Hong Kong across the water.

A friend once warned me against buying beach front real estate in Shekou, where, “Just as soon as they sell the last lot, they start over again, creating a new coast line.” Recently, however, Shekou’s newest coast has been turned into an upscale beach community, that echoes the western style of Seaworld. Unlike earlier homes that were built to entice western businessmen, these homes have been built for Shenzhen’s white collar workers, who now expect and enjoy a material standard of living often higher than that in Europe or the United States.

The irony, of course, is that the factories which have enabled consumption elsewhere in the world are a block away from Seaworld Plaza. There too one finds housing and urban villages that were built in the 1980s, when the Minghua floated. And that’s perhaps the point. These factories were to provide and ultimately did provide the means of Shekou’s globalization. Like the Minghua, these once-necessary buildings fell into disuse and disrepair in the 90s. Unlike the Minghua, however, these buildings were once sites of manufacturing. Today, they are one by one being rennovated to facilitate new forms of consumption as manufacturing gets pushed out of Shenzhen into Dongguan, which has recently appealed to me more and more. Someday soon I’m going on a photo-trip to Dongguan and look forward to reporting back. Until then, I invite you to take a tour through and around Seaworld Plaza, Shekou.

huanggang road: economies of scale

Posted on by

This afternoon I walked along Huanggang Road, which runs along a north-south axis, from the Hong Kong border (at Huanggang) to Shenzhen’s North Loop road. The North Loop connects up with Buji (one of Shenzhen’s manufacturing centers, located just beyond the SEZ’s border in Longgang District) and then on to Guangzhou by way of Dongguan. Although less well known than Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Dongguan is a major manufacturing center.

The point is that everyday, hundreds of semis pass back and forth along Huanggang Road, hauling containers full of goods from Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Guangzhou and then returning from Hong Kong for another load. I’m told that with turn around time at the border, its possible for drivers to make two trips a day. These containers are then loaded on to ships in Hong Kong and shipped throughout the world. (Just last week, I led a group of Shenzhen students on a study trip to England, where they amused themselves looking for souvenirs “made in China”.)

The drivers are licensed in both Hong Kong and Shenzhen, although the trucks are designed to drive on the left side of the road, British style. They rumble past housing developments from about 6 a.m. to midnight. At rush hour, they make Shenzhen’s already clogged streets even more impassible, squeezing traffic into the safety lanes and causing more impatient drivers into mid-stream k-turns to get off Huanggang Road. Bikers continue to weave fearlessly through the mess.

I have had difficulty representing these semis because they stretch beyond my line of sight, precluding a total image. Yet up close, they seem formless, sheets of metal that are themselves the reason the horizon stops just off the sidewalk. When not forming an inadvertent convoy, they growl past pedestrians, shaking the earth and burping up carbon monoxide. Commuters, waiting at Huanggang bus stops, cover their noses and mouths with their sleeves or handkerchiefs; some wear surgical masks, which they remove once on the bus.

It is at this level, that “global flows of production” have become tangible to me. I have been to the ports, where containers pile one on top of another, and have read reports about so much tonnage a year passing from China to the world by way of Hong Kong, but those figures remain too abstract. Crossing the street, inhaling carbon monoxide for several blocks, listening to the engines rev—these have made visceral the feel of mass production, the ways in which manufacturing, importing, and exporting goods are not simply a matter of economy, but also choices about the kind of world in which we want to live. The containers moving along Huanggang Road constitute my backyard.

These images of claypot on Huanggang Road remain awkward, out of balance, and I think its because my claypot and even three semis do not belong to the same representational scale. Reason enough to re-consider the world being made in China; my life plays out at claypot scale (in a manner of speaking) and yet I am trying to imagine, understand, and evaluate a world in which thousands of containers, semis, and ships pass by daily. If I can’t make this imaginative leap from where I am, what can I know about this world? More to the point, to what extent does the irritating lack of balance in these images actualize more than a cognitive inability to grasp where I am, but rather the impossibility of making semis part of a human world?