Tag Archives: musing

the cultural work of tests

Posted on by


grafitti-3

Originally uploaded by maryannodonnell

the gaokao is over and shenzhen feels more relaxed. it’s as if the entire city has sighed and thoughts turned to summer. of course, the zhongkao still hovers darkly, but for the rest of us, life is good.

this gaokao season, i’ve been thinking about the cultural significance of tests and testing because so many students have asked me about the SATs and TOEFL. these students are particularly interested in perfect marks and, in order to achieve those scores, are willing not only to spend weeks of their summer locked away in cram schools, but also to retake the tests 5, 6, and yes 7 times. inquiring minds want to know: why is a perfect score so important? Continue reading →

shenzhener identity, reconsidered

Posted on by

This post about razed Shenzhen childhoods is inspired by an ongoing conversations with Melissa and several other post-80 young women (80后女性).

Melissa came to Shekou in the early 80s, attending elementary and middle school before going abroad. As I have indicated in other posts, Old Shekou and Old Shenzheners were different. Melissa was part of the Old Shekou group, those who came with China Merchants to establish the Shekou Industrial Zone between the years 1978 to 1988 (the year of the Shekou Tempest). In contrast, “Old Shenzheners” were those who came to build Shenzhen in the early 80s, when “Shenzhen” referred to the area from the Dongmen commercial area to the Shanghai hotel (at the western border of Huaqiangbei).

To paraphrase Gregory Bateson, the differences between an Old Shekou family and an Old Shenzhen were differences that have made for different lives. Melissa’s story is that of growing up with the Shekou spirit, which was progressive and liberal. I have written much about Shekou because Old Shekou people hoped to build a new society and it was, if anywhere in was in Shenzhen, Utopian. In contrast, Old Shenzhen (especially through Liang Xiang) has been more explicitly associated with the rise of the city’s explicitly materialist cultural.

Nevertheless, despite the opposing ideological significance of 80s Shekou and Shenzhen, I’ve spoken to several young post 80s women with similar life histories – came with parents to Shenzhen / Shekou in the 1980s, read books in parks, went for walks along the beach, enjoyed the city’s clean environment and small population, and did a lot of studying in high school before leaving for college (either abroad or Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou).

Interestingly, all speak of the same 近乡情怯 experience, which seems to have started as an inarticulate feeling toward the end of the 1990s and has grown into an expressed and discussed sentiment in the new millennium. The Shekou / Shenzhen that they remember are very different from the contemporary city. Shekou in particular has become a vexed symbol of past dreams. Today, Shekou is relatively backward, but more importantly has been absorbed into the surging mass of urban Shenzhen. At the same time, the city’s parks are smaller and more exotic (how many imported palm trees does one city need?), the skies are grayer, and the streets are now considered unruly enough that families don’t feel comfortable allowing middle school daughters to wander off by themselves. In other words, these post 80s women, whether they still live in Shenzhen or elsewhere, speak of a growing alienation from the city.

Ironically, their’s is precisely the generation that many once predicted as who would be true “Shenzheners” – people who identified with the city, rather than with their hometowns. People who would have an unproblematic relationship to Shenzhen as their “hometown”. This was in fact the generation for whom the city was built. Continue reading →

magic moments

Posted on by

shenzhen buses have televisions, which broadcast pre-recorded programs which coble together news reports of major events (such as the expo in shanghai), as well as produced clips of famous skits (小品), imported western comedies (home video moments of children jumping and cats in baby carriages), strange competitions (in which restaurant staff compete to set a banquet table the most quickly), and top ten music video countdowns (which are often repeated and always interrupted midway to announce bus stops).

i understand these programs to be negotiations of the tension between ongoing propaganda campaigns (it was on a bus that i first heard of the campaign to conserve water in shenzhen, for example) and approved-yet-profitable popular culture (the buses also provide advertising blitzes for movies and pop singers). that is, these bus programs are useful indications of both what the party thinks shenzhen people should be thinking and what actually engages shenzhen people’s minds. consequently, when these programs added clips of magic tricks – card tricks, woman sawed in half tricks, vanishing boat tricks, multiplying cheer leader tricks – to their programming, i began wondering about when and why the manipulation of appearances had become so popular in a city that is explicit in its support for and origin in science.

[side note: shenzhen was an explicit realization of the four modernizations. as such, it has used scientific (科学) to describe what in the u.s. we would call “rational” as in “rational development (科学的发展)” and “rational management (科学的管理)”. “scientific” is also a term of commendation, as in: she does things in a rational/scientific way (她做事很科学).]

so what follows is speculation on why magic in shenzhen, now. Continue reading →

a character is a universe

Posted on by

today, i met chang hongcai, a calligrapher. teacher chang’s studio is located in liuxiandong (留仙㓊),an artist colony of sorts. the liuxian village head has rented out (at cheap cheap prices) an entire six story factory to a group of artists, who use the building as studio space. importantly, these artists are not struggling emergents, but established artists whose work is shown throughout china and the world. teacher chang, for example, is a highly respected calligrapher whose work hangs in some of china’s top museums.

we talked about many things – tea, the book of changes, and taichi – but all topics departed from and returned to calligraphy as the essential philosophy of china. according to teacher chang, how one holds the brush, each brush stroke, the actual meaning of the character, all this together forms a universe. he used the character “one (一)” to develop his point:

to write a proper yi one holds the brush with the entire body, arms loosely held as in taiji, one’s qi flowing. the brush stroke itself (and it is one fluid motion) actually follows the contours of the symbol for yinyang, stretching beyond the limits of a line and returning into infinity as the brush circles, pauses, and then quickly flicks back into itself. according to teacher change, the process of writing is itself chinese philosophy; calligraphy cannot be rushed, but must be cultivated, like breathing.

teacher chang also spoke of 势 (shi) or immanent tendency of a stroke. his explanation of 永字八法 (the 8 methods in the character yong) focused on how each stroke was in fact in motion. a heng, for example, was pulled like a bow and a gou was kicked back, strongly and decisively. a stroke that just ended because the brush was lifted, was a stroke that had been cut off, was empty. fullness came from the motion of the stroke, which had its own rhythm and spirit. in fact, when teacher chang helped me see a character, he emphasized the moving brush such that it seems possible to understand shi as traces of the calligrapher’s spirit; her body, her hand, her knowledge, her state of mind, her understanding of the world – all this comes together in the stretch and flick of ink on paper.

practicing calligraphy helps us center the mind and cultivate a good attitude because the idea that “a character is a universe” reminds us that we constantly (re)create the world. indeed, that is all we ever do.

low carbon lifestyles…

Posted on by

the current dearth of sexts hasn’t stopped chinese text message snark. the latest mocks poverty and environmentalism:

现在无房无车无妹子的三无宅男，有了一个新称号——低碳哥。

there’s a new nickname for men without a house, a car and a girl — low-carbon bro.

of note, the “three withouts” in this message are possessions – a house, a car, and a girl. once upon a time in shenzhen, “three withouts” referred to status: no shenzhen hukou, no job, and no home… so an interesting shift in nomenclature. we seem to have gone from seeing the importance of status to seeing the disgrace when one lacks possessions. it could also indicate the extent that those without status are no longer seen at all and the new butts of these jokes are not the truly dispossessed, but unemployed college graduates.

fat bird winking…

Posted on by

one of the more useful of chinese colloquialisms remains “one eye open, one eye shut (睁一只眼闭一只眼)”. it means knowing what’s going on, but ignoring it. for example, last night fat bird performed an abridged version of “happy academy” for the leaders of shenzhen university (well those few who accepted an invite). the play’s more controversial parts (castration as part of the scientific method, for example) were edited out for that particular performance. however, every other day this week, the original version has been performend as written, with drag queens and castration complexes abounding.

the thing is, no one is surprised by any of this. among the performers and the audience there exists an implicit common sense to calling the abridged version the “official version” and showing it to officials, while calling the original version “the rehersal version” and showing it to everyone else.

i haven’t thought enough about this to hypothesize what the cultural logic of one open eye might be, but in terms of practice, the open eye falls somewhere between “managing/ overseeing (管)” and ignoring (不理). indeed, one of the cultural compentencies of successful shenzheners is know which activities will be strictly regulated, which ignored, and which of those can exist in the hazy space between.

theatre is one of the spaces where there is more room for winking; newspapers and television programs are much more strictly regulated than (in order of increasingly lax regulation) radio stations, novels, and theatre, especially in the context of a university performance, which is not open to the public (except by word of mouth invitations). in other words, the more popular a cultural medium is, the less likely for officials to walk past with one eye closed.

population updates (of a sort)

Posted on by

third day back in shenzhen and i chanced upon one of my favorite conversations: speculation about shenzhen’s actual population and how these figures are generated.

based on conversations with real estate developers and housing agents, as well as published reports and blog postings, i’ve been guestimating shenzhen’s population at around 14 million. recent articles also place shenzhen’s population at 14 million, with 2 million residents with hukou and 12 million without.

according to yesterday’s cabbie, he heard a china mobile advertisement that claimed they had an audience of 16 million. to his way of thinking, this meant that shenzhen had a population of at least 16 million. he then mused that it was likely that shenzhen had “more” than 16 million. he figured: (a) anyone without hukou registration wouldn’t come to the door to respond to the census; (b) only people working at tax-paing work units can be properly counted; (c) many people have more than one child, and the extra (超生) children may be registered in other cities; (d) censors can’t actually make it to every single residence in shenzhen, so they have to depend on what people say, which means there’s error built into the system even before they begin counting; and thus (e) for the sake of a more reliable estimate, they should pad their figures by “several (几)” million.

two points: first, we don’t know how many people live in shenzhen and the rate at which people are coming to live in the city. should urban planners be aiming for 30 million by 2020 (based on the idea that the population has been doubling every decade)? second, where can we go for reliable information? is estimated audience size more or less reliable than published accounts?

reliable population data matters because it is thet basis for decisions about how many roads to build, how much water and electricity to supply, where to build schools and hospitals. in other words, a working definition of urban quality of life is at stake in this data. perhaps more importantly, there seems to be little consensus on how one might usefully guestimate all the people living outside tax-paying channels. this is an acute problem in shenzhen (and much of guangdong, more generally), where a significant majority of the population is self-employed. consequently, even as it is difficult to make informed decisions about the scale of public services in shenzhen, urban planning is made even more difficult by the fact that there has been little accounting of / for those outside the system, which leads to questions about public policy and welfare.

all this to say, urban planning questions are questions about who has rights to the city and the level of responsibility a city government has to provide a minimum quality of life for all residents; questions, that is, of what it means to be a citizen. so yes, the production of reliable population data is a question of citizenship and urban justice because equitable planning is the political expression of our commitment to each other.

go figure.

p.s. for a sense of how shenzhen’s population is represented on the english language web, i popped over to wikipedia. shenzhen was not listed in the article on chinese population and demographics. this information was based on the 2005 census, which estimated shanghai’s population at a mere 10 million! in the list of most populous cities worldwide (2009 data), shanghai had burgeoned to almost 14 million, while beijing came in at slightly over 10 million. shenzhen was again conspicuously absent from the list. nevertheless, in the article about shenzhen (once again in wikipedia), according to shenzhen’s official population (including people without hukou, but apparently not including the homeless and squatters, who have occupied shenzhen’s edges, including the areas under bridges) is listed at 14 million.

what’s the point of college?

Posted on by

last night, went to cameron indoor stadium to watch the lady blue devils defeat the nc state wolfpack. well, we watched the first half and then returned home. mascot basketball at halftime was a bit much, even for my father who was thrilled to be there because (rumor has it) cameron is a shrine of sorts. certainly, yang qian found the pageantry fun. in contrast, nico (by way of italy) was somewhat nonplussed: how is such a display possible? he seemed to wonder and this was only a women’s game?! yes, those were students camping outside the stadium to purchase tickets for men’s home games, which do sellout. every time. i mentioned that in “utopian verses” wang anyi described her sense of alienation and acute loneliness when attending a university of iowa football game. nico nodded wisely, but remained silent.

watching a duke basketball game with two non-americans made me viscerally aware of the distance between the cultural meaning of “preparing for college” in the u.s. and china. Continue reading →

coastal thinking

Posted on by

this past weekend, i was in seattle visiting friends and revisiting my past. yes, the older i become, the greater the twists and turns of who i thought i was and who they thought i was and the distances between all that thinking. mahsheed reminded us that scientists (of the empirically experimental sort) contend that memory is 70% recreated and 30% actual content. however, little is known about how and why that particular ratio or how and why some information is shunted onto one side of the equation or even how recreated memory is plotted… yes, this is the basis of my anthropological musings.  i’ll see your “hmm” and raise you three.

hmmmmm.

caveat given, i’ll move onto thoughts inspired while walking in seward park.

moss on fern green

walking in seward park (as it was when i walked along the salmon river, oregon a year ago), the ferns, red cedars, and douglas furs viscerally reminded me that i was in a coastal ecosystem. mud cold water seeped into my shoes, pulsing bark tempted me to raise my eyes, and a great blue herron stilled my circumnavigation of washington lake.

in contrast, while walking in shenzhen, i find it difficult to remember that we inhabit an estuary. i walk through smog and landscaped greenspace, note new buildings and speculate about economic boomings of one sort or another. i frequently read about mudflat wetland protection, the deep bay oyster industry, marine pollution and mangroves. all this to say, shenzhen’s ecological status strikes me as an abstraction, a category of thinking rather than an experience immanent in the environment itself. thus, my mind invokes “estuarine ecology” as a critical standard by which to hypothesize what might have been and imagine what could be. 

the difference is where lived – right brain or on a path at dawn. now, what to make of it?

greek with chinese characteristics – yuanling 1

Posted on by

this weekend, i walked yuanling (园岭), one of the first industrial and residential areas to be developed when shenzhen was officially special.

printing factories still operate in the shrinking industrial area park, however, those that have not been razed for upscale housing development have been and/or are being upgraded to storefront for warehouse like stores for ornate furniture and luxury bathrooms.

it sobers me to think that only ten years ago, this area was a vibrant industrial park, the realization of a particular understanding of modernization, when production and manufacturing were the at the core of shenzhen’s economic development strategy. suddenly and abruptly, individualized consumption has been enshrined as economic productivity in the (literal) wreckage of those past ambitions.

when i first came, shenzhen speed was defined in terms of accelerating 100 years of western modernization into a few decades. but all this instant upgrading has me wondering just how fast is an economic cycle anyway? and what comes next? restructuring and economic depression? pics of upgrades, here.