the other day, yang qian and i walked from tianmian to the zhongxin plaza. we covered roughly two kilometres in slightly over one hour, stopping along the way to look at the memorial to sars heroes (lots of high-tech medical research and caring nurses), pose in front of bus stop advertisements (in this sense, irresistable), and check out what was happening curbside (an octopus floated in a tank and a man repaired a bicycle). we then stepped quickly past the women, who were using peddle sewing machines, like my grandmother used to use and my mother inherited to alter clothing, right there in the middle of our playground. and there’s the rub. shenzhen hasn’t zoned inequalityout of sight and mind, except during politically sensitive moments, when the poor are swept away. normally, the poor push back, crowding even those of us who like to think ourselves concerned. and we are concerned. just not all the time. just not that hot saturday afternoon when we wanted to play. so we put the camera away and ducked into an air-conditioned coffee shop, where our summer fun ended with a math lesson: one cup of coffee = hemming five pairs of jeans; one smoothie = six; a piece of cheesecake and one of walnut = five again. priceless.
Tag Archives: neoliberalism
shadow people
i’ve been thinking about shadow people.
when the sun shines in shenzhen, it blasts through the city, and those who can take refuge in air-conditioned offices, malls, teashops, houses. those who have no air-conditioned refuge, sit in the shadows of trees and buildings. as i walk through the city, my camera searching for symbols, i often overlook them. and yet. they nevertheless people my walks through shenzhen–looking at me, looking away, resting. when our eyes meet, i turn away, ashamed to take the picture. their skin is usually deeply tanned, black, too black, as a hua, the woman who gives me a weekly facial says.
i freckle in the sun. accordingly parts of my body that don’t get regular sun time, are pale, fishbelly white, as my brothers used to tease. a hua likes my fishbelly. she sighs and says wistfully how great i would look if i could just stay out of the sun. i remind her that after forty odd years of walking outside without an umbrella, odds are most of my freckles won’t fade. she sighs again. what a waste.
the shadow people work odds and ends jobs: collecting and sorting trash, pulling carts of discarded electronic products to the second hand market. i come across older women sitting against the wall of an underground passageway, waving a hat to cool themselves. many bike to and from these odd jobs, spending the day and much of the night in the streets, unprotected from the sun except for the shaded edges of the city. even wearing hats, long-sleeved shirts, and slacks they have been roasted dark, well done. ugly, a hua says, comparing her caramel colored arm to my fishbelly.
squint and you may see them.
May Day
Yesterday was May First, International Labor Day. China celebrates international workers by taking a week off (May 1-7). In fact, we only get three actual days vacation. In order to make up the extra two days, we work the weekend before our long vacation. So work a seven-day week, then play for seven days. These adjustments can be somewhat jarring to those accustomed to weekends always off. More importantly, however, not everyone is off. Migrant laborers are still at work, serving those who have time off. May Day it seems now celebrates white collar workers, who take vacations with their families. This rather banal insight bears repeating. May Day has become a time when office workers and middle management rest from their labors, signalling the shift from socialist to neo-liberal values in the People’s Republic.
I am not the only one to notice or even comment on this shift. Indeed, tracking the transformation of Maoism has become one of the hot topics throughout academia. That’s why it’s important to note that this process has meaning both inside and outside the PRC. It’s not about the Chinese, but about how all of us live together. What does it mean to think globally and act locally? What kind of world might that be? Just recently a Chinese academic told me that various cultural bureaus now encourage the study of Western, rather than Eastern, Marxism. Apparently, there’s much to learn from those who theorize Revolution; less to learn from those who tried it. A sobering thought as I head off on vacation.
和谐深圳：building a harmonious society
Yesterday, I was walking in one of the new sections of Houhai. On my left, behind the walls of an elite gated community, children frolicked in a recently completed swimming pool. On my right, migrant workers hung out at a corner kiosk of a construction site shantytown. The juxtaposition of these two spaces, common throughout Shenzhen, symbolizes the class structure that has enabled the construction of the city. On the one hand, urban residents (whether from other cities or long term Shenzhen residents) occupy the new buildings and spaces—upscale housing, high-rise offices, and shopping malls bulging with designer goods. On the other hand, rural migrants build these spaces, inhabiting temporary structures that vanish at the end of a project. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see children playing or women cooking in front of a row of construction site shanties. Unlike the enclosed lives of the gated community, shantytown lives spill into the street, disrupting the flow of traffic. Then, they vanish and the street takes on the “normal (正常)” appearence of a residential neighborhood.
When I first came to Shenzhen, well-meaning urbanites repeatedly warned me that life in Shenzhen was “disorderly (好乱)” and “complex (复杂)”. Moreover, they explicitly attributed urban crime to outsiders (外来人), who were ineligible for household residence in Shenzhen and therefore thought to lack “emotion (感情)” for the city. In fact, one of the more interesting themes running through conversations about Shenzhen has been whether or not a person can feel attached to a place that isn’t their hometown. Much is at stake in this question: how and when do residents self-identify as “Shenzheners” rather than as sojourners from other places? But back to questions about disorderly and complex living conditions. Ten years after my arrival, urbanites continue to issue warnings about walking in Shenzhen. And although I have never been robbed (I have “lost” several bicycles, but that’s another matter), my friends continue to worry for my safety. They are convinced that foreigners present a ready target to unscrupulous outsiders. When I ask if they feel safe in the city, they usually reply, “yes”, but then add, “you can’t be too careful”. And I wonder if this “you” means me-in-particular or one-in-general…
Signs of an underlying anxiety also permeate the built environment. In addition to taking precautions before going out, Shenzhen residents build gated communities, enforce community walls with barbed wire, and hire security guards. Security walls are also built around construction sites. Recently, I have noticed advertisements for private eyes (私人侦探) throughout the city. These advertisements are spray painted on walls throughout the city, as well as onto sidewalks and telephone booths. I’ve posed my found objects with these signs of anxiety–a first attempt at a dialogue with the built environment Shenzhen about terms of inhabitation. Some of these signs of anxiety are now online.
Officially, Shenzhen has not commented on the question of public safety. However, there have been indirect references to the matter; Shenzhen’s leaders are vigorously promoting the idea of “harmonious society (和谐社会)”. This slogan also links up with national concerns. Under Jiang Zemin, the Party emphasized a policy of “using morality to govern the country (以德治国)”. Hu Jintao’s administration has continued to deploy revamped Confucianism to exhort citizens to participate in capitalist reforms, offering the slogan “harmonious society (和谐社会)” as a collective goal. Given the class differences and concomitant social tensions that characterize even walking down the street in Shenzhen, “you” feel the importance and desirability of such a society.
Shenzhen Noted 