Tag Archives: nantou

Jiujie / Nantou / Xin’an Old Town

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Years ago, I published becoming hong kong, razing baoan, preserving xin’an, an academic paper on urbanization as the ideology informing the construction of the Shenzhen SEZ. Part of that paper included an analysis of Nanshan District’s decision to create a walking museum at Nantou, the County Seat of Xin’an from the Ming Dynasty until the CCP moved it to Caiwuwei, in Shenzhen Market. The museum didn’t survive into 1998 and Nantou settled back into urban village life – migrant workers renting space in handshake buildings, small scale manufacturing taking place both at home and in low tech factories, and bustling streets of vendors, shops, and open air markets.

Yesterday, I walked Nantou and discovered Universiade traces. The roads that connected the buildings in the walking museum had been paved with grey bricks and the buildings abutting those streets (well all two of them) had been given “traditional” facelifts – a faux grey brick facade and eves. Moreover, the museum buildings have been reopened to the public! So the universiade upgrade of Nantou included Shenzhen’s ongoing push to open small museums in the urban villages.

Here’s the rub: Houses and streets beyond the scope of the museum remain as they were. Also, the gate god, which used to inhabit the old Ming gate to the city has been removed. All that remains of that living tradition are two holes on either side of the gate, where incense has been stuffed in. And yes, that’s an upgraded pedestrian overpass at the entrance to what remains of the walled city. Impressions of revamped and still unvamped Nantou, below.

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settled in?

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Am now moved into new home in Shekou. Yesterday, rode the Shekou line to Window of the World, changed for OCT East and arrived for coffee at OCT Creative Park all in about 30 minutes. Very convenient. Nevertheless, half an hour was more than enough time to notice and set me wondering about one or two, well three actually, discordant notes.

Do: The Shekou line advertising is playing to the cultural Nantou theme. Those who know a bit about Shenzhen’s history, know that Nantou is the oldest city in the area, having been a salt yamen 1,000 years or so ago.Know that there was (and still is) a small temple to those Gods that bless Cantonese Opera singers. Moreover, Reform began in Shekou and the first Chinese themeparks (strictly speaking) were built in OCT, Nanshan; Shenzhen University is also here. So, the Shenzhen Subway company has illustrated these themes from Nantou’s cultural history. Wanxia, for example, is morning tea and Dongjiaotou has a Cantonese singer. An image of Nvwa illustrates Shekou’s importance in Reform and Opening; Windows of the World is the Eiffel Tower.

Alas, those who know this history also realize that this historical trail ran along “old street” from the west gate of Jiujie to Shekou. They also know that know that there was no direct path (except a mountain trail over Nanshan Mountain or on a boat around the peninsula tip) from Shekou to Chiwan. However, the Shekou Subway rewriting of this cultural history is on the order of land reclamation and, in fact, the subway does not connect Shekou to Nantou, but instead at Houhai (and more about Houhai below) turns east, heading through Science and Technology Park South though Mangrove Park to Windows of the World. Thus, the Subway Station History of Nantou appropriates and displaces the cultural ecology of the area. Wanxia, for example, is a local village and yes, you can have morning tea there, but Dongjiaotou was a riparian port, where trade goods from Zhongshan and other parts of the Delta were shipped to and from Nantou. Today, Dongjiaotou is the site of The Peninsula Estates, high end real estate development that winds around a genuinely old and decaying, already being “reclaimed” part of Shekou.

Re: Within this postmodern rewriting of Nantou’s history, Houhai is now a subway station and no longer a sheltered backwater. I have commented upon the Shenzhen tendency to raze mountains and lychee orchards and then name malls and housing estates after the no longer extant land formation. Land reclamation naming practices follow apace. Not only only has Nantou’s cultural history been rewritten as a series of Subway Stations through what used to be Houhai Bay, but also that Bay is now just another subway stop.

More importantly, Nantou’s cultural history was a history of backwater fishing, oyster cultivation, and riparian trade between small, village owned docks. A two-step sequence of appropriation is at play. First, the actual socio-economic base of local history has been destroyed. The last oyster fishing folk were relocated in 2006. Thus, in order to live here, one needs to be part of the new economy, which includes real estate development and working in more abstract cultural industries such as academia and tourism. Second, local history is now being deployed to add “flavor” or “local interest” to rich outsiders who are inhabiting Shenzhen. And real estate promoters can get away with this because most of those moving into Nantou don’t know the history of the area.

Mi: I also noticed that on the “local street map” which hangs in our station, our housing estate is conspicuously absent. There still remains much construction behind us, although I suspect that come Universiade, our own Europe [Shopping Mall for those living in Dubai style condos] will open. Here’s the point: with the opening of the Shekou Subway our housing estate is now part of the historic backwater. And as those of us who have watched the development of Nantou know, the purpose of backwater has been to reclaim it for ever-higher end development. Once all the reclaimed land has been filled in, our short walk to the Subway makes our housing development a prime target for upgrading and us for resettlement. Upside to looming displacement: we aren’t the only affordable housing development not on the map and maybe someone else will be targeted first. More upside: negotiations to raze a development usually take longer than the actual razing an old development and building a new development. We probably have several happy years ahead of us.

So yes, we are as settled as anyone in Shekou, where the landscape has been reshaped, cultural history is being rewritten, and the sands of prime real estate shift beneath our feet.

玉历宝钞：return of the repressed, reworked for the current age

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old museum entrance

Originally uploaded by maryannodonnell

Recently I have noticed that buddhist iconography is seeping into local shrines, which have been growing stronger this past decade. At the Daxin Tianhou Temple, for example, Guanyin (boddhisattva of compassion, but also the Goddess of conception) and 天花娘娘 (Tiānhuā niángniáng the Goddess of pox -cow, small, and vaccines thereof, who also heals disease in general and is somehow related to conception) have joined Tianhou on the alter. Also, popoular Buddhist texts and sutras are being distributed in local shrines and temples. In fact, the Shenzhen Hongfa Temple in Fairy Park is actively publishing and presumably delivering these tracts. Other sutras are published by very local printers, whose addresses include place markers such as “side alley”. Continue reading →

the gift of ruins

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doubly noted

Originally uploaded by maryannodonnell

Friend Frank Meinshausen has stopped by on his ’round the world journey. We first met Frank four years ago, when he translated Hope (Chinese > German) for a staged reading at the Schaubuhne, Berlin.

Yesterday, we walked through Zhongshan Park, one of my favorite Shenzhen greenspaces.  At the center of the park are the ruins of the former Ming Dynasty city wall that once enclosed the County Seat of Xin’an County, the adminstrative predessor to Baoan County, which in turn predated Shenzhen Municipality.

So obscure and uncared for is the ruined wall that vines have overgrown the first stone marker and a second has been placed at the base of a tiled staircase, which rises sharply and ends as suddenly as it began. Sundry trails emerge from the park and disappear into the undergrowth, connecting the Ming Dynasty to the rising city of Shenzhen. We walked the narrow path, which traced the boundary of a world that has become as elusive as crumbling fistful of dry earth. We climbed the molding, vaguely imperial concrete viewing platform that abruptly interrupted our steps. We listened to birdsong and inhaled the fragrence of magnolia.

Further flights of romatic fancy, here.

月亮湾： remnants

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gate, nanyuan village

the nantou peninsula juts into the pearl river delta just above hong kong. the houhai land reclamation project takes place along the southern coast, stretching east toward mangrove natural preserve. historically, the southern coast was unprotected from taiphoons and pirates, and so the nantou villages huddled along the yueliang harbor (月亮湾) on the northern coast of the nantou penisula. each village had it’s own pier, where fishing boats anchored. a narrow road that stretched from the county seat at nantou market (today “nine streets”) to shekou linked each village to its neighbor, and then curved around nanshan mountain toward shekou and then chiwan. the road was divided up by gates, which were once locked at night, but now stand as reminder of previous loyalties and social worlds.

in the eighties, after village lands had been appropriated (征用) by state and newly established shenzhen ministries, the villages were left with plats of land(宅地) for each male villager, his sons, and grandsons as well as land for collective economy. this land became the basis of the new villages. now, in nantou, this system of giving out plats to people with extant land as well as to their sons and grandsons, who had not yet built homes, resulted in a particular landscape. on the one hand, there are identifiable sections of new village of colorfully tiled 3 to 8 story buildings. these areas were built on farmland, which was planned in that each eligible villager received exactly one hundred sq meters. pressed up against each other, these buildings occupy all of the space, except for a narrow alley in between each building. indeed, they are so close, neighbors can reach across the alley and shake their neighbor’s hand. on the other hand, there remain old buildings, which the owners have not yet razed and replaced. these buildings are now used for commercial storage or as small workshops.

the new villages as did the old villages, once nestled along yueliang wan. the point of this entry is simply that yueliang harobor has now been successfully reclaimed. the first street, which winds along the former coast is called, ironically enough, qianhai road (前海路). another, larger road yueliang harbor road now stretches along the much straightened coast. as the harbor has been filled, the villages have been surrounded by upscale housing developments, creating familiar “basins” on nantou. specifically, the city has surrounded the countryside, hidden it from view.

south of the nantou penisula villages, cars rush along nanxin road toward five-star hotels and 30-story condo buildings. north of the villages, cars speed home on qianhai road. indeed, for several years now, nantou has been considered a white-collar haven. inside the villages, shenzhen’s original residents live on one floor of their handshake homes, renting the rest of the space, including old buildings to migrants, who can’t afford to live on either nanxin or qianhai roads. within the narrow alleyways of the new villages, original shenzhen peasents and rural migrants from the rest of china have recreated rural chinese markets within the belly of shenzhen’s capitalist beast. i walked east from nanyuan village toward guimiao road, passing through nanyuan, beitou, xiangnan, and duntou villages. contradictions posted here.

九街：an ethnographic post-script

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remnant gateway to the xin’an fairy town walking museum

one of the earliest articles i published was “becoming hong kong, razing baoan, preserving xin’an: an ethnographic account of urbanization in the shenzhen special economic zone” (cultural studies 15(3/4), 2001, 419-43). i argued that hong kong appeared in shenzhen urban planning as both the origin and telos of modernization. as origin, hong kong capital, know-how, and connections jump-started manufacturing in shenzhen. as telos, hong kong’s glossy skyline provided a model for urbanization. at the same time, contemporary hong kongers were integrated into guangdong society through narratives of hometown and tradition; according to this story, everyone in shenzhen and hong kong were all descendants of xin’an county natives. in this way, hong kong was inscribed into the history of the prc and hong kongers into local history.

hong kong was originally part of xin’an county, and this fact shows up in hong kong histories. however, xin’an county ceased to exist as an administrative unit of guangdong province in 1913, when the nationalist government renamed it baoan county. consequently, histories of shenzhen identify baoan as the city’s rural predecessor. thus, various levels of shenzhen government have found it necessary to stress the common spatial origin of the two cities precisely because hong kong and shenzhen have distinct temporal origins.

at the time i was writing up those earlier fieldnotes, the slippery twists of socialist nostalgia fascinated me. a shared origin – xin’an county – structured this nostalgia, where hong kong’s postwar history (1950-1979) became the past that shenzhen (rural baoan) would have had, if not for cold war politics that isolated the county from global markets. indeed, locals offered hong kong’s prosperity as evidence that socialism had delayed modernization in shenzhen. in order to prove that xin’an county was the origin of both shenzhen and hong kong, it was necessary to engage in acts of historic preservation – at the tianhou temple in chiwan, the pengcheng fortress at daya bay, and old nantou city.

in anticipation of the return of hong kong to chinese sovereignty in 1997, the nanshan district government collaborated with an overseas chinese investor to restore some buildings in “nine streets”, creating a walking museum. nine streets is the contemporary name for nantou, a market town that had been the xin’an county yamen. nantou was the yamen where, after the conclusion of the first opium war in 1842, representatives from the qing and british empires met to sign the papers that made hong kong island a crown colony. indeed, nantou was the xin’an county seat for roughly 600 years, from the ming dynasty until 1953, when the communist government moved the county seat to shenzhen market, which would in turn give its name to the new special economic zone in 1980.

the idea behind the walking museum was to demonstrate the historic links between shenzhen and hong kong. thus, for example, the nanshan district government designated nine streets the nantou old city (南头古城) historic area, which was the actual name of the market town. in contrast, the museum was called xin’an fairy town (新安故城). ironically, the gateway for the museum still looms in front of the nantou city wall.

from the museum’s opening, few people came to explore the restored pawnshop, opium den, brothel, gaol, and yamen. instead, most went to the restored temple to guandi (关帝), the god of wealth to burn incense and pray. at first, the temple was explicitly used as the gateway to the museum, and visitors could purchase tickets there; museum staff tolerated but did not encourage supplicants. however, nine street residents soon dominated temple and, during my latest trip to nantou, the museum had closed and the temple had a resident monk who was reading fortunes in the god’s shadow. rooms that had once held exhibitions about shenzhen and hong kong’s common history had been transformed into alcoves for new gods.

another historic transformation: when i was doing the research for that long-ago paper, i had been unable to gain entrance to an old orphanage, which had built by italian missionaries at the turn of the 20th century and was located in jiujie. however, on this trip, it was possible to visit because it had become the center of the patriotic catholic church of shenzhen. the deacon lamented that the church had been razed and they were now using the orphanage instead. i was struck by the building’s similarities to macao’s churches.

i invite you to take a walk through nine streets, once upon a time the yamen of xin’an county. note that the temple was moved outside the city wall in order to attract visitors. museum designers also intended to make the old ming-era gate the first element of the walking tour.