Long ago and far away, I wondered when History would enter Shenzhen’s bildungsroman. And now that it has, it’s interesting to see how deeper settlements have emerged as roots for contemporary Shenzheners. The original SEZ–now the inner districts (关内)–especially Luohu (Dongmen) has become the city’s connection to Hong Kong. Indeed, it is still where you go if you want to speak Hong Kong Cantonese and eat delicious Cantonese and Chao-Shan style foods. In the outer districts, “Longgang” (and I’m using it in its circa 1990 designation, rather than picking through the new districts) is home to Hakka traditions, which are housed in the area’s great compounds (围屋、世居). In Bao’an (and yes, as a cultural homeland, we’re talking about the sliver of villages that stretch north-south between the reclaimed west coast (now Qianhai) and Bao’an Boulevard), ancestral halls are flourishing and traditions like lion dancing have been elevated to national immaterial culture status (上川黄连胜星狮舞). The Huang alliance comprises eight troups, extending from Shanghe to Fuyong.

What I’ve noticed is that this geographic distribution assumes different historical subjects which are all mushed together into some kind of “Shenzhen” identity. The implicit subject of history in Luohu, for example, are the cross-border entrepreneurs (个体户 mainly from Chao-Shan area) and their Hong Kong clientele (many who also originally hail from Chao-Shan). This first generation came in the early 1980s and transformed the old market into a gritty cross-border playground a la Tijuana. In Bao’an, the villages (now communities under a street office) have cultivated and paid for the continuation of their traditions, including pencai (盆菜) banquets, the birthdays of divinities and founding fathers, and celebrations at various scale. In contrast, in the Hakka areas, various levels of government have assumed responsibility for the compounds and are using them to promote new kinds of high culture. Pingshan Art Musuem, for example, includes the Dawan Compound (大万世居) as a satellite exhibition hall, while Longgang District has transformed the Hehu Compound (鹤湖新居) into the base of its cultural think tank, hosting outdoor lectures underneath shade trees.

So, thoughts du jour are more random associations that still make a kind of sense. Shenzhen’s culture and history are being reworked in ways that both deploy local cultural geographies and map along the city’s historic interest in establishing a new material and spiritual culture. In Luohu, the early Special Zone is re-emerging in new forms of (admittedly cleaned up) cross-border consumption; Bao’an is emerging as the locus of South China Sea diaspora connections (the lion dance, for example, is a major competition in the region), and Longgang compounds form a material platform for high end civilization, where the city’s “new guests” can strut their cultural stuff.