Tag Archives: musing

What’s your experience?

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Yesterday, a journalist interviewed me about differences between US and Chinese education systems. The heart of the matter was how might Chinese students apply successfully for US university and college admissions. I blah-blahed for a while – on the different social functions of testing, on the relative importance of excelling in one subject, rather than having good grades in all subjects, and on the advantages of finding an environment that fits the student, rather than choosing a college based on how famous it happens to be in China. Thus far, a rather ordinary interview. Or so I thought.

At the point when I was blathering on about how the ideal function of a US college education was for students to figure out their intellectual interests and then professionalize at the graduate level (as opposed to many other post-secondary systems, where professionalization happens at the undergraduate level because many countries track students into the humanities or sciences as early as high school), the journalist sighed (?!) and said, “You’re really idealistic.”

I’ve heard this. Frequently. It’s as if idealism was a bad, bad thing. My stock answer du jour is, “In the context of the US college system, it’s practical to assume that students will change majors once or twice, may transfer to another school, or could take time off to follow other passions. It’s safe to say, most will stumble into a job after college and then professionalize on the job (and even more likely professionalize through a series of jobs) with a possible detour through grad school.

“That’s just it,” the journalist jumped in. “In China we don’t have so many choices. It’s even worse when you reach middle age. Then the job chooses you. Living for one’s passions is a luxury that Chinese people don’t have.” And then he added the zinger designed to end the conversation, “You don’t have this experience of living for other people because you’re not Chinese.”

Bracketing the fact that the journalist was younger than me and I haven’t yet admitted to middle age-dom, his rebuttal was similar to other responses (especially from parents) that I’ve heard. What’s interesting to me is what makes my response seem “American”. On the face of it, the journalist’s rebuttal assumed that realism means getting a secure, high-paying job right-out-of-college. This seems to me a pretty standard response to capitalism as we know it wherever we happen to live. Specifically, I think Chinese and American parents share this definition of realism, especially about their children’s college education, because they are anxious about what will happen to their children once launched and they know that it’s harder to make a living in an uncertain economy.

Making college “about” getting a job is actually magical realism (of an albeit cross-cultural kind), rather than hopefully and practically idealistic. Imagine parents stirring the pot of destiny, thinking, “If I can control what college my child attends, then I can protect them from unemployment, debt, and exploitation. My child will never experience the humiliation of unemployment and the sadness of insufficient medical care.” Fingers wiggle, green smoke appears –Poof – “You won’t ever have to suffer the arrows of outrageous multi-national fortunes.” In contrast, it seems to me that protection from the injustices of an economy out-of-control (and I think that’s a constant state of being, rather than a momentary aberration) is more likely to come from discovering and nourishing passions that will make our lives more meaningful, and by extension, make the world more beautiful than it is to come from placing one’s faith in name-brand schools and top-ten jobs.

So I return to the question of what made my understanding American, rather than optimistically idealistic within a global context. I believe my American-ness hinged on the journalist’s belief that “Chinese” people live for other people and “Americans” live for themselves. Unsurprisingly, I’ve also had this conversation with other Chinese friends. When it’s pointed out to me that “Chinese” people live for others, the examples tend to be about sacrificing oneself for the greater good. – 牺牲你一个，幸福千万人 and 舍小家为大家 being two recent contributions to the debate. When I counter that I’m not opposed to living helpfully, I just don’t see how my unhappiness (and even death should sacrifice go so far) would improve the world, I have heard, that this is precisely the cultural difference that they are talking about. The sacrifice of a few for the many does lead to greater happiness. If I had the experience (体验 – which I understand to emphasize embodied knowledge of the walked-a-mile-in-a-man’s-shoes variety) of living for others I would know in my bones that this was true.

And yet. Throughout the public sphere, Shenzhen inhabitants butt in line to get on the bus, cut off other drivers to make a U-turn, and push themselves in front of me to buy breakfast buns. Why don’t the activities of lining up and waiting for one’s turn count as “living for others”? This kind of living for others I do quite well. However, my Chinese friends tell me these behaviors are examples of 素质 and 文明 – breeding and civilization. In contrast, living for others is about one’s relationships to 自己人 – one’s people. On this explanation, “living for others” defines degrees of intimacy; it is not about one’s relationships with strangers. So two points. First, what makes me American is an unwillingness to participate in forms of intimacy that are defined by a willingness to sacrifice myself for my family and friends. Second, in those contexts defined by a lack of intimacy, what makes one Chinese is full throttle “living for oneself” and giving over to one’s (unlimited) desires.

It seems to me that in defining cultural difference between Chinese and Americans, it’s more important to establish where and when self-expression (defined as giving over to one’s desires) is socially acceptable, rather than positing “selfless” Chinese and “selfish” Americans. Certainly, many Chinese have experienced the liberating effects of Shenzhen in terms of being unconstrained by the desires of family and friends back home. Indeed, this lack of constraint is what makes Shenzhen seem “un-Chinese”. My experience has been that the more friends I make, the more is asked of me in terms of social commitments. So that despite a zero intimacy starting point, I have been and continued to be socialized according to Chinese norms that are tempered with the “knowledge” that I am American and hence of the selfish ilk.

What’s your experience?

images from sitka

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path leading to Salmon River Estuary

As promised, images of Sitka and the surrounding environs. Myths take root here.

thoughts from beijing

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Two Days in Beijing written on July 18 and 19

1. Embodied knowledge

Yesterday morning, Yang Qian and I came to Beijing by way of the Tianjin temporary train station, a hot, smoky, and crowded structure located in the semi-mangled space behind a Carrefour strip mall and a construction site. Two years ago, workers threw it together out of inexpensive bricks and cement; city officials designed the provisional station to be dismantled as soon as the new station opens on August 1. We approached the station along a clogged side street, walking past backed up traffic, stumbling over discarded bricks, and tripping when our suitcase wheels got stuck in a pothole. I bumped into a man who had paused to light a cigarette. We rushed through the main door, up rickety stairs, and into the airless waiting room, where several hundred people loitered restlessly.

I felt a drop of sweat run from my armpit to the crease of my elbow. Yang Qian used a tissue to wipe his forehead. A family squatted several feet away, playing cards. A cigarette dangled from the father’s lips as he considered his options. After decisively throwing down a five of hearts, he sucked deeply on the cigarette, pinched it between the index and middle fingers of his right hand, and removed it from between his lips, exhaling bluish smoke. His gaze turned to his son, who squinted at the cards carefully arranged in his hand. Two young women sashayed past us toward a concession stand. They wore sleeveless tee shirts, low-riding jeans, and spiked four-inch heels. Matching gold belts set-off flat stomachs and narrow hips. Several people slept on newspapers spread across the concrete floor, their heads cushioned on backpacks, their bodies arranged protectively over large, plastic bags. Another phone rang and I heard someone scream, “I’m at the train station, I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Can’t be helped.”

“Tomorrow.”

The train boarded five minutes before departure. The crowd abruptly surged toward the platform door, carrying us through the narrow door, down metal stairs, and onto the sleek white commuter trains that connect Tianjin to Beijing. Our first-class tickets brought us into air-conditioned coolness. We stretched comfortably into our seats and within minutes fell asleep, only waking as the train pulled into Beijing station.

2. Spatial awareness

In Shenzhen, Tianjin, and now Beijing, I have been staying in new developments: City Square, Ruijiang Estates, and Fuli City, respectively. While in Tianjin, I was struck by the lack of amenities that have become standard in Shenzhen these past five years, including large malls, coffee shops, yoga studios, and clean restaurants. The apartments in Ruijiang Estates were large and comfortable. However, the shops downstairs were small and sold inexpensive necessities like soap and salt and beer, while the services provided were limited to standard haircuts. In contrast, the absence of inexpensive breakfasts and markets defined the Fuli City complex, where coffee shops, malls, Thai and western restaurants, as well as expensive spas and salons surrounded us. Our place in Beijing was two subway stops away from the China Television Building. Remnants of the capital’s socialist neighborhoods crumbled silently behind glass and steel towers that showcased sports apparel and Armani suits, gold jewelry and summer bright accessories, and we only discovered them by accident, when our evening walk detoured through a back alley.

Last night met a good friend at Jing Wei Lou (京味楼), a restaurant located near Zhongnanhai. We got on the subway underneath the CCTV Building station and off at Tian’anmen West (north exit), where across the street, the new National Theater shimmered in the evening haze. We walked past the red walls of Zhongnanhai and turned north at the next intersection. Traditional hutong’s still define this area, which serves China’s leaders, tourists, and locals who want authentic local flavors. Jing Wei Lou serves ordinary Beijing dishes—sesame toufu, peanut and cashew spinach, zhajiang noodles, stewed intestines, dai fish—of extraordinary flavor and reasonable price. In other parts of the city, like Fuli City, food of similar quality easily costs four times what it does at Jing Wei Lou. Indeed, in Fuli City, we often ate at chains simply because they were significantly cheaper than unique restaurants. Apparently, many leaders use Jing Wei Lou as their working canteen and so taste and price reflect market conditions.

3. Temporal consciousness

I am differently aware of time in Beijing, where I have fewer distractions than in either Tianjin or Shenzhen: no internet connection, no urge to walk around in the afternoon sun, no relatives to hang out with, no yoga studio, no prepaid service at a salon, no membership at a swimming pool, no interviews to conduct, no deadlines to meet, no books to read, no movies to watch…In Shenzhen, appointments structure my engagement with the city grows out of shuttling from my home to work to the yoga studio to a restaurant to an interview and back home to write an article or blog post. In Tianjin, family obligations organize my time. I eat breakfast, hang out, eat lunch, take a nap, watch some television with my sister-in-law, talk with my mother-in-law, eat dinner, and then go out for a movie or a coffee or a dessert with my niece. In Beijing, I still think about eating and going out and taking pictures, but there are no immediate social consequences to my decisions and so how I feel at any given moment shapes my day. Am I hungry? Bored? Thirsty? In the absence of definitive feelings, I grow lazy, flipping through my dictionary or sitting at my computer writing blog posts that will be uploaded only after I return to Shenzhen.

This afternoon a five hour trip to Chengde with a good friend and a new friend.

thoughts from tianjin

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This entry was written in Tianjin on July 17.

These past two days, I have been in Tianjin, visiting in-laws. I also met Joel and Jessica of China Hope Live. My trip here has me thinking about how habit informs what we can see and experience. I left Tianjin more strongly convinced that there are many Chinas, not simply scattered over the country’s official territory, but also flourishing within the country’s diverse municipalities.

The first two impressions I had of Tianjin were of lack—no blue sky and not many tall buildings. Clearly, I was looking at Tianjin through eyes accustomed to seeing Shenzhen, where smog is the exception and glass skyscrapers the new norm, especially in Luohu, where I have been living. Moreover, these observations included unreflective judgments: (1) Shenzhen is cleaner and therefore better than Tianjin and (2) Shenzhen is wealthier than Tianjin and therefore more contemporary. Both judgments confirmed that my decision to live in Shenzhen was correct.

Only after a bit of acclimatization did I begin to see Shenzhen through what Tianjin might offer. In particular, one of the most important aspects of leaving Shenzhen is that it enables me to place Shenzhen within national trajectories, rather than within and against Hong Kong trajectories. This balance is one of the most difficult things to maintain when thinking about Shenzhen, which is both a Cantonese and a PR Chinese city. Histories of Shenzhen need to be written from both Hong Kong and Beijing, otherwise it is too easy to overlook either the role of policy or that of international capitalism in the construction of Shenzhen. Below are ways of thinking Shenzhen through impressions of Tianjin.

First, a literate rather than simply oral take on local history, as well as ongoing efforts to interpret that history with respect to national history. In Shenzhen, I usually hear the line “there is no history here ()” as self-serving justification for ongoing development and attempts to transfer landuse rights from village corporations to the state. However, in Tianjin the idea of no history is differently nuanced. On the one hand, Tianjin was one of the most important Chinese cities both before 1949 and during the Mao era. As in Shenzhen many important events have taken place here. On the other hand, many of Tianjin’s older residents went to school both before and after 1949. Indeed, Nankai University is located in Tianjin. These older residents can both discuss Tianjin with respect to Chinese imperial history as well as reframe the Chinese Revolution. Thus, unlike in Shenzhen, where local residents have experienced the effects of policy decisions, in Tianjin, some local residents have been recording, contemplating, and evaluating past events for over 100 years. In this sense, Shenzhen has history as a memory, while in Tianjin it is possible to use written histories to supplement oral history. Indeed, much intellectual work in Shenzhen entails documenting the present for future interpretations. Suddenly, the importance of “making history” seems more urgent in Shenzhen, and the concomitant responsibilities heavier if only because there are people writing history in Tianjin and so few of us in Shenzhen.

Second, time in Tianjin shows up the historic specificity of both forms and evaluations of globalization. In contrast to Shenzhen, where globalization is celebrated as the means of unmaking the mistakes of socialism, Tianjin’s colonial enclaves once proved the moral failures and social injustices that constituted Western imperialism. Indeed, one way to frame both Tianjin and Shenzhen history as moments in the history of the People’s Republic would be to look at the histories of these two cities as different efforts to use Western capitalism for Chinese ends. Another take would be to compare and contrast how foreign capitalists invested and inhabited these two cities. The dormitory system seems a wonderful place to begin such a study. Another would be to look at patterns of immigration. Still another might be to trace the conceptualization and construction of foreign enclaves, which have been reproduced in Shenzhen, not as concessions, but rather as neighborhoods that cater to foreign tastes, including private homes, English language schools, and leisure. Finally, one could also examine how Tianjin functioned and Shenzhen has functioned to prepare young Chinese to go abroad are remake China’s position in the world.

Third, the way that the Shenzhen experiment has and has not been picked up and redeployed outside Guangdong. While in Tianjin, I noticed the presence of China Merchants (招商集团) and Vanke (万科集团). It would be interesting to track these transformations through the presence of Shenzhen people in Tianjin, as well as Shenzhen financed projects. I know several Shenzhen architects and developers, who have projects in Tianjin. In Shenzhen, I hear about these projects, but have never visited them.

This trip has reminded me how travel helps counteract the mental numbing that all too often accompanies the repetitions of my daily routine. In the hazy light of a Tianjin morning, it seems even more necessary to organize my life to facilitate clear thinking, or if not completely clear thinking, to organize my life to make apparent the sedimentation of thought. Pictures of Tianjin index this process.

Today, after breakfast, we leave Tianjin and head to Beijing for the weekend.

emplacements

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i’ve moved up from the second floor of building two, tianmian garden estates to the sixteenth floor of city square, an upscale residential / business apartment complex just next to the shenzhen-hong kong border. the differences between my two apartments speak to how lifestyles has become an important aspect to the construction, definition, and maintenance of class positions in shenzhen. specifically, the buildings themselves facilitate the cultivation of different bodies. very different kinds of lives.

key differences:

(1) tianmian gardens is located in an urban village (tianmian), next to the new central business district, just west of the old border between “downtown” shenzhen and what used to be “the suburbs”. in contrast, city square is an independent residential building, located right next to the border, indeed, i can see the luohu train station from my window. in addition, city square is not part of a larger project, instead it is an independent residential building. for example, i now live just next to a multi-story sauna and bath club. in other words, tianmian gardens was built through rural urbanization and city square as part of urbane urbanization (for definitions of these terms see this entry.)

(2) tianmian was planned and built between 1998 and 2001 (the tianmian city office building and garden skylight hotel were finished in 2004). city square was planned and built between 2004 and 2006. this difference is important because it reflects two different moments in shenzhen real estate. before 2005, shenzhen real estate was primarily affordable housing. at the time, millenium oasis represented luxurious living in shenzhen. however, post 2005, shenzhen real estate prices suddenly exploded. as a result, developers have been upping the luxury ante in order to maintain profit margins.

(3) the two apartments share the same basic layout–subdivided box. however, city square is smaller, but more luxuriously appointed. also, the kitchen in city square is larger, occupying a larger percentage of space than its counterpart in tianmian.

what strikes me in the two apartments is the orientation of the two apartments. tianmian was clearly designed for daily living, middle management worker. however, given the rent in tianmian gardens, the one and two bedroom apartments were regularly rented as office space. indeed, i lived across the hall from a dentist. in contrast, city garden is designed for upscale young chinese and international business people; city square also provides service apartment rentals.

also, city square is located across the street from the mix-c mall (in the west) and caiwuwei village (in the east). i’ll say more about caiwuwei in another post, what i want to emphasize in this post is that it’s possible to buy western food in the mix-c. all kinds of cheese and granola and chocolate bars are available, along with nicely packaged and accordingly overpriced soy milk and other chinese food products. in contrast, in tianmian it was possible–but only possible–to buy fresh vegetables, fresh meet, and chinese food products at relatively cheap prices. these foods and prices are available in caiwuwei.

more interestingly, its not simply that the furnishings are higher end in city square, but also that the health club in city square facilitates the cultivation of skulpted and shiny bodies. yesterday, while drinking fresh carrot juice in the 9th floor health club, i felt like i was living in a korean soap opera. one after another, young and toned bodies, clothed in the latest fashion walked past on their way to the weight room and swimming pool. one headed to a private pilates lesson. it’s like being at my new yoga studio.

this move has reinforced my impression of ongoing stratification and differentiation in shenzhen. time and place. these bodies are less noticeable in tianmian, but i also think that even five years ago there were fewer of them, before the construction of city square and like complexes. time and place, indeed. i now live amongst the young upwardly mobile and most-sculpted class of global managers.

thoughts on multi-culturalism

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two events this week that have me thinking about the global mix in shenzhen.

event number one: a group of elementary teachers from xishuangbanna (yunnan) visited the school. this was interesting on several counts. first, they arrived in “native” costumes which they wore the entire week. as far as i could tell, they weren’t wearing traditional clothing, but actual costumes that one would wear on stage to perform one of china’s 56 ethnic groups. these costumes included christmas garland and plastic flowers to adorn the women’s hair. nevertheless, several of the han teachers told me that this is how ethnics dress, even when working in the fields. when i expressed sceptism, it was as if i had challenged something fundamental about being chinese.

“no, you don’t understand,” one of the teachers said, “they really are this simple and honest [my translation of the constant use of “朴实” to describe our guests].”

then, at dinner, the han official who led the delegation admitted that the yunnan minorities prefer to wear western clothing. he added that he constantly encouraged them to maintain their tradition in the face of modernization. now why ethnic minorities should be any different from the han, who don’t wear traditional clothing except when waitressing or making an artistic statement, i don’t know. however, i sensed that the official and his han audience felt an intense yearning for the minorities to be traditional.

so, during picture taking, the han all wanted their pictures taken with the minority teachers in costume. indeed, the han teachers borrowed the minority teachers’ hats for the pictures. for their part, the minority teachers wanted their picture taken with me, who wore chinos, a bright shirt with scalloped sleeves, and a hot pink scarf.

second, two fifth graders got into a fistfight because a mainland student called a korean student “hanguolao (韩国佬).” the teacher who reported this event to me was shocked.

“i thought our school was innocent and naive [my translation of “天真，简单” to describe children],” she said.

i was more surprised by her shock and obvious distress than i was by the fight. not surprised by the fight because (a) i’m a foreigner and so have more understanding of how foreigners experience chinese stereotyping than do chinese, (b) i read my students’ journals and know that many students have naturalized their mutual resentments through cultural difference, and (c) some little boys do try to resolve problems by fighting.

i was surprised by the teacher’s shock because i hadn’t realized how separate many of our teachers remain from the foreign students and teachers at the school. our student population is half foreign (including hong kong and taiwanese students), and there are eleven foreign teachers at the school. yet, it seems many of the han teachers really have no idea about the strangers in their midst. (this is of course the inverse on the foreigners who have no idea where they are!)

the xishuangbanna visit has me wondering about the ways in which we deploy stereotypes to bring coherence to new experiences that might otherwise open new understanding. for the xishuangbanna delegation as well as for the school’s teachers, this visit was something new. however, tourism to xishuangbanna informed how the minority teachers self-presented and were received. this emphasis was confirmed in the songs and dances that the teachers performed during their stay. most of the songs had already been translated into mandarin, and the dances were all “typical” of a generalized minority rather than specific to any one minority.

the fighting boys have me wondering about what lessons we are actually teaching our children. both knew the character “lao” was less human than “ren”. both experienced themselves as culturally distinct even though both had been classmates for several years, communicating in native mandarin. and neither had been taught more appropriate ways of handling conflict other than name calling and punching.

the other thing that i’ve noticed is that with the influx of foreigners and more ethnic minorities in shenzhen, there is emerging a more coherent sense of what a stereotypic shenzhener is: primarily mandarin speaking but fluent in cantonese; hip and urbane; aware of europe and america rather than the rest of asia. indeed, as far as i can tell, hong kong is no longer the shining star it once was and shenzheners are aiming to build a city that is vaguely western. previously, the fact that most migrants were han chinese from other provinces (or cities in guangdong) meant that most residents self-identified through hometowns. however a generation later, their children have a sense of themselves as belonging to an overarching chinese community that is defined mandarin (and therefore most do not think of themselves as being from guangdong), urban culture, and global dreams. this new identity is being simultaneously defined against stereotypes about rural china, guangdong, ethnic minorities, and large number of asian sojourners, whose presence is everyday stronger.

in lieu of a methodology

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i’ve been thinking about the implicit methodology structuring entries to this blog. usually i go out on somewhat directed walks (where haven’t i been in a while? what’s new in shenzhen? being the two most common questions i ask myself. a third: what’s nearby that i can visit in the hour i have before a meeting…). i take pictures, i talk to people i meet, i play with the images, and then post with commentary. the commentary grows out of the infrastructures that have enabled me to inhabit shenzhen. my apartment in tianmian, my positions at green oasis and shenzhen university, the circle of friends i’ve cultivated. there is no longterm plan, rather a sense that the unfolding of the city will itself bring what is important to light.

i actually enjoy the process. and yet.

lately i have been trying to organize these thoughts into something resembling an academic presentation. re-working the pictures, re-membering the walks, and re-contextualizing the conversations present interesting challenges and ethical conundrums. it’s not so much what i didn’t ask or didn’t do; these absences seem somehow fillable. it’s rather that which cannot be printed which haunts me. thirteen years after arriving in shenzhen, i’ve learned to distinguish between what can be said and printed, what can be said and not printed, and what can’t be said, but lumbers about the conversation anyway. i am also acutely aware of the limits to my ability to make distinctions because i don’t know all that much. consequently, i’ve come to realize that much of my blog is an effort to get around or blur or stretch those borders into a different kind of understanding that may or may not fit into what i think an academic presentation “should” be…

thoughts on rainy days

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for those not in shenzhen, you are probably blissfully unaware that 4 typhoons have landed nearby over the past several weeks. this means it has rained almost everyday this month. and not little tiny avoidable raindrops, but heavy raindrops that blow horizontally and thus bypass even the largest umbrella. so i haven’t been able to get out and take pictures.

i have, however, been wandering around some of shenzhen’s new hotspots and am struck, once again, by the difference a decade makes. it really is a different era here from ten years ago. yesterday, i saw the latest harry potter in a small, intimate theatre with 40 fat reclining sofas (and mediocre popcorn. the children next to me had the sense to bring kfc.) today, i went to yoga class in wonderful studio with truly wonderful teachers, some who have practiced in india. i then had dinner with a friend and her son at a japonese restaurant. if memory serves, ten years ago i avoided movie theatres because they were often haunted by men who watched with a date chosen from the ladies lined up outside the door. there was no yoga anywhere. and we ate mostly cantonese food; sometimes food from other parts of china, but ten years ago, the cuisine had a definate regional bent.

it’s as if suddenly all the talk about building a global city has come true. the socialist dreamers who came in the 1980s and early 90s have successfully built a city for a middle class that has only recently emerged.
indeed, all the recent cultural activity is no doubt part of this massive yuppification of shenzhen.

or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that those socialist dreamers have built a city for their children, who really do belong to a different world. it is however an open question as to why they belong to a different world. friends who look to japan and korea say it’s possible to be both traditional and modern; china has failed because of socialism. at lunch two days ago, a friend (now in his early 50s) said that people born after 1970 don’t have any tradional characteristics. he blamed the cultural revolution for cutting off contemporary china from its roots. that’s why, he said, china is modernizing like this.

like what? i asked.

without history. shenzhen is the perfect example of new china because it doesn’t have any culture or history. but it’s not even the best copy of the west. china is a fractured (分裂) society. we have no standards to guide us. japan and korea, he continued, have managed to preserve tradition and modernize.

his comments made me re-think the question of master narratives. not the fact that master narratives are imaginary and therefore not real in a material sense. after all, rarely does reality conform to what we think. but rather the fact that without a master narrative it’s hard to make value judgements; why is x better than y? tradition seems to me a legitimate answer to that question. socialism once provided another answer. today, my friend is trying to figure out what happens when all the master narratives have been shown untrue; what can the people believe? how will they recognize the good life? and in what kind of world is shenzhen a desired way of life?

thoughts from kunming

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artist area, kunming

Yesterday, I arrived in Kunming to spend some time with my old friend, Sasha. We are staying in a factory area that is being converted into an art area, with studios, restaurants, and cheap overnight housing. Just around the corner is an art center set up by a group of Scandinavians.

When the cab driver dropped me off here he sighed and asked, “What are the workers going to do?”

And that’s part of the question that’s posed by the abrupt transformation of Shenzhen factories into upgraded productive areas, like the creative technologies in Xiasha, design offices in Tianmian, and bohemian art facilities in OCT loft: even if it isn’t the artists’ fault that factories are closing and moving to new areas, what are the workers going to do?

I find this question, along with questions about the salience of a workers’ revolution muted in Shenzhen. Or perhaps its more accurate to say, the questions seemed forced because there’s little (left) in the environment that directly references what gentrification has meant for workers’ quality of life or how the Shenzhen experiment grew out of issues raised by the revolution.

Historical forms of silencing or glossing over the question of working class politics in Shenzhen include:

1. Shenzhen workers are defined by their exclusion from the city. This exclusion is an overdetermined effect of hukou policies, urban design, and Shenzhen social protocols. First, migrant workers do not have Shenzhen hukou and are therefore technically not “Shenzheners”. Second, factories workers either live in dormitories or new villages. This means that they are either unseen (in the case of dormitories) or subsumed under the category of local villager (in the case of new villages). Third, if a migrant worker has earned enough money to move into white collar neighborhoods, that person is considered a Shenzhener. The key here is that, except for local villagers, everyone living in Shenzhen migrated to work. The class distinction between office and factory work is the pivot on which rights to belonging in the city hinge.

2. Shenzhen’s traditional “workers” were Baoan farmers, who have yet to embody either the revolution or reform. For most Chinese and foreigners the classic Chinese worker was defined by socialist industrialization during the 50s and 60s in cities like Harbin, Shenyang, and Dalian; the forms of industrialization that have taken place since 1980, do not fall under the same rubric and therefore have also produced a different understanding of workers. Indeed, post Mao urbanization has entailed transforming rural areas and rural people into cities and urban residents. In this process, the actual class relations defining industrial production get recast as “cultural”.

Specifically, after Liberation, Baoan County was designated for rural production. This meant that during the Mao years, villagers were not factory workers, who represented the socialist vanguard. Under Deng, Baoan county was elevated to the status of Shenzhen Municipality. As such, the ideal Shenzhener has been an urban, white collar worker. In other cities, like Kunming, the shift in social importance from factory to office workers represents a re-valuation of class relations internal to the city itself. Rural migrant workers and traditional factory workers embody different forms of lower class urban possibility. However, in Shenzhen, this contradiction has not actualized as such because there were never factory workers here. Instead, Shenzhen actualizes an intensification of the relative ranking of rural and urban lives. In this sense, Shenzhen’s recent history has been consistent with Maoism in ways that prevent urban residents from reflecting on the injustices that have come along with reform.

3. Shenzhen buildings have a half-life of seven years. It takes active searching to find, photograph, and categorize traces of history, both socialist and local. During the eighties and nineties Shenzhen produced electronics and textiles and toys and shoes and what-not, those factories have since been razed or transformed. In the SEZ itself, the few factories that remain are being upgraded into cultural industries centers like the design center in Tianmian or commercial areas like in Huaqiangbei.

A visit to a city like Kunming where it is still possible to find Stalinist architecture on a main street or still functional factories downtown highlights the Shenzhen impulse to erase all traces of manufacturing, instead projecting an image of already actualized upper middle class city that was never build on production. A city of two classes–white collar workers and their servants and servers. With manufacturing located offsite out of sight and their for out of mind.

The ironies and the difficulties that entangle workers and artists (even before complete capitalization of the Chinese economy) are perhaps represented by “The Materialist (唯物主义者),” a statue by Wang Guangyi (王广义) that stands in front of the Gingko Elite (翠湖会) shopping center. Want Guangyi’s work was once banned in the PRC because it combined socialist and pop cultural symbols. His resistance to the socialist state increased his marketability among Western collectors. That his work is now public culture in Kunming suggests both the extent to which China has changed as well as the need for reminders of why the revolution was and continues to be necessary.

The commodification of culture defines contemporary gentrification in Shenzhen. The difference I am noting is how the process remains built into Kunming’s urban space, while in Shenzhen this process is a glorified municipal policy to create a city in keeping with global standards. Although I could be wrong. However, the presence of the Scandanavians suggests a different kind of reliance on government funding for art.

In addition to manifesting socialist history through remnant buildings, Kunming also has monuments to the revolution. We visited the Yunnan Army Training School, just near Lake Cui. The large compound seems a popular tourist site, and I saw two brides posing for pictures within the compound space. Inside was an installation that wrote Yunnan’s Double Nine (重九) uprising into national history, indeed, an installation that positioned Yunnan at the forefront of the revolution. When I later asked some Chinese friends, they said they new about the War to Save the Nation (护国战), but not the Double Nine, which even had its own flag.

So points of comparison with Shenzhen.

stem cell therapy in nanshan

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what we don’t know about where we live.

it turns out that nanshan hospital, yes the nanshan hospital where i went for chinese medical treatments in the late nineties, the same nanshan hospital located just up the street from shenzhen university, where i lived and taught for years, is a center of stem cell therapy. indeed, it seems they recruit patiants abroad for treatments that they can’t get in their own country. an articlein businessweek introduces the controversy surrounding the work. or you can check out the shenzhen beike biotechnology website.

i’m sitting here stunned. not by my own ignorance, which increasingly feels like my most loyal companion, nor even by this version of shenzhen’s rush to an international future, which has been the city’s raison d’tre for over 25 years now, nor even, truth be told, by the ways the beike company seems to be exploiting these stories; testimonial advertizing is one of the traditions of my native land. no, i’m simply stunned. i don’t know how to comment on these stories, their existance, they way they circulate, how they are used. i’m grasping for a theory to explain what seems to be happening and the theory isn’t coming, or isn’t there to call up.

perhaps i just don’t know where to draw the ethical line. i don’t know if i’m for or against untested therapy. if for it, i know i’d support universal access, rather than letting the market determine access. if there’s not enough money or stem cells for everyone who needs treatment to get it, does that mean the treatment should be stopped until equal access is possible?

in the meantime, i turn to the comforts of close reading. one of the more fascinating aspects of this whole process is the role of the internet. patients have blogged and blog about their experiences, including pre-treatment conditions, what the treatment is like, and post-treatment improvements/regressions. the stories themselves are moving–from hopelessness to hope, and the courage that moves them. and yet. i’m stunned.

you can find a blogroll of these testimonial blogs at the beike site. i first stumbled upon these blogs through richard’s venture, a new blog. many of the patients use blogspot, which is blocked in the mainland, but if you’re reading this and in the mainland, you know how to get around the firewall. if not, does anyone know of chinese-language sites about beike? or is it a company that is designed to bring foreigners to china, kinda of like the adoption centers in guangzhou? another international practice that leaves me stunned.