Tag Archives: response

Breaking the Ice

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So, episode 2 of 沧海桑田 is 破冰. What was the ice and how was it broken? A few notes, below.

Episode 2 begins with shots of thick ice on the Huai river, the narrator metaphorically speaking about the frozen space between two shores. Not only an obvious (and simultaneous) reference to the Sino-British border (on either side of the Shenzhen river) and the Taiwan Straits, but also a description of how the planned economy made the lives of Anhui farmers difficult. A relevant reminder: the reforms initiated in Shenzhen began with Wan Li (万里)’s efforts to liberalize agrarian production in a part of the country where it does snow. Continue reading →

沧海桑田：The transformation of Shenzhen Villages

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For those wondering, is there a documentary on Shenzhen villages out there? The answer is yes and its 15 hours long! CCTV and SZTV produced 沧海桑田：深圳村庄30年,  a 30-episode television documentary to commemorate the SEZ’s 30th anniversary.

Not unexpectedly, the documentary’s ultimate happy end is urbane Shenzhen. Nevertheless, each of the 30 episodes does raise issues worth talking about and also gives current Party takes on these issues, which is always useful information. In fact, that take may be the point; the commemoration of the SEZ’s 30th Anniversary included a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of pre-reform Baoan society and history, reminding us that the villages no longer exist as such. What remains are ideological and economic struggles over the properties held by [former village] stock-holding corporations that have not yet been fully integrated into the Municipality’s urban apparatus.

That said, however, there is also the question of what a truly integrated Shenzhen society might look like. And consequently it is interesting and hopeful to think that the economic questions may also force re-evalution of who belongs in the city.

So, how are those ideological battles being waged in the contemporary SEZ?

Continue reading →

capitalist crises, news induced ADD, and making sense of the world

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I’m reading Bateson reading Margaret Mead:

Dr. Mead’s contribution consists in this—that she, fortified by comparative study of other cultures, has been able to transcend the habits of thought current in her own culture and has been able to say virtually this: “Before we apply social science to our own national affairs, we must re-examine and change our habits of thought on the subject of means and ends. We have learnt, in our cultural setting, to classify behavior into `means’ and `ends’ and if we go on defining ends as separate from means and apply the social sciences as crudely instrumental means, using the recipes of science to manipulate people, we shall arrive at a totalitarian rather than a democratic system of life.” The solution which she offers is that we look for the “direction,” and “values” implicit in the means, rather than looking ahead to a blueprinted goal and thinking of this goal as justifying or not justifying manipulative means. We have to find the value of a planned act implicit in and simultaneous with the act itself, not separate from it in the sense that the act would derive its value from reference to a future end or goal. Dr. Mead’s paper is, in fact, not a direct preachment about ends and means; she does not say that ends either do or do not justify the means. She is talking not directly about ends and means, but about the way we tend to think about ways and means, and about the dangers inherent in our habit of thought.

Lovely.

And on to thoughts inspired by the ever relevant Steps to an Ecology of Mind.

Roughly nine months ago, Shenzhen news media reported on the quicksand building incident (楼陷陷事件) and then a month later on the Foxcomm Suicides (富士康跳楼事件). Character by character, 楼陷陷 means “building trap trap,” however I’ve translated as “quicksand buildings” because the term referred to buildings that were literally sinking into reclaimed land in Houhai, Qianhai, and the Baoan Center District. At the time, both incidents received much Shenzhen press, although Foxcomm ultimately eclisped quicksand, both in Chinese and English. Indeed, I haven’t noticed any English press on the quicksand building incident and would appreciate links and/or references.

There are many possible explanations for the focus on Foxcomm rather than quicksand. Continue reading →

the importance of moral worlds

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moral worlds matter. not simply because they teach us how to be human, but also (and precisely) because they set the terms by which we treat other humans. thus, not unsuprisingly, we use our moral worlds to identify other humans and thereby place them in relationship to ourselves.

like all western bloggers about experiences of and thoughts on living with / among / against chinese people, i care about chinese moral worlds because those terms are the point of departure for our interactions. call it homecourt advantage. for example, a few days ago, one of my neighbors approached me to ask if i would teach her daughter english. i replied that i didn’t teach outside of a school. she concluded, “well then, maybe you can be friends.”  with your 13 year old daughter? hmmm. Continue reading →

shenzhen smog 2010.1.28

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view from my window

several hours ago, a heavy smog descended on shenzhen. this smog irritates my throat and eyes, but i can’t identify a smell. at the time, several colleagues mentioned that it smelled like someone was burning something.

the ongoing diminishing of shenzhen’s air-quality has been a persistent theme in this blog. i can honestly say today is the worst day i’ve seen here. nevertheless, at work, most talked about the smog as if it were excessive, but “normal” as in “within expectations”. as i walked home, children were playing in huanggang park, people were chatting, and the traffic moved as usual.

does anyone else know what has / is happening? i tried surfing in chinese but haven’t seen anything. i did, however, come across a blog entry that classified shenzhen’s air quality as “relatively bad” and suggested that people limit their outdoor activities!

i also managed to come up with a timeline of worsening smog (灰霾) conditions in shenzhen:

2009 there were 115 smog days, apparently 39 fewer days than the 154 recorded in 2008.

2007 there were 158 smog days in shenzhen, but the city nevertheless got a “good” air quality rating;

2003 there were 131 smog days and the same article stated that the smog days have been increasing since the 1990s as there were only 8 hazy days in the 70s, and 58 in the 80s.

all this and suddenly the nytimes discovers that shenzhen is one of the top 31 places to visit in 2010. on the list, shenzhen is #20 and apparently getting “greener”! that said, the same article also managed to mention the nanshan kempinski without mentioning the houhai land reclamation area, so clearly the author’s focus was more the affordable luxuries of dongmen and the recent proliferation “legit” massage parlors than it was on environmental transformation. nor did the article mention that shenzhen is the capital of chinese theme parks. presumably shenzhen’s self promotion as a “chic” tourist city of “splendor and happiness” is finding a wider audience!

thinking food: images from the houhai overpass, 2002-2010

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this post is a brief contextualiztion of  china lab’s  landgrab city exhibition for the shenzhen-hong kong biennale 2009. the exhibit draws attention to the the ways that cities are imagined without reference to the countryside and food production. it also usefully brings china into international conversations about urbanization.

The countryside is a vital but frequently overlooked category in the contemporary discourse around spatial policy, and its role with respect to the future of urbanism is more often than not neglected. Landgrab City is an attempt to visually represent the broader spatial identity of the 21st century metropolis; it proposes a new spatial definition of the city and thereby a more complex understanding of urbanism, one that no longer considers city limits as the boundary of its remit, but instead looks beyond – even across international borders – to the spatial, social, economic and political implications of the planet’s rapid urbanization.

i support efforts to think about food – its production, distribution, unequal consumption – are all critical to how shenzhen is imagined, experienced, and reproduced. nevertheless, this exhibition disturbs me because it discusses shenzhen as if the city were one wealthy enclave, rather than an amalgamation of enclaves -rich, poor, and destitute, which abut and constantly disrupt one another.

shenzhen has sold itself and reform in precisely the terms that china lab uses to describe the city’s “reality”. unfortunately, by taking shenzhen’s self-promotion as fact, rather than promotional fantasy, china lab overlooks  how rural migrants inhabit and  transform shenzhen. this silence distresses me because the spatial, social, economic, and political consequences of shenzhen’s modernization are not implied; they are facts of life for many migrants.

so a very simple point:

In reality, of course, these agricultural territories are not actually clustered around Shenzhen, as in the installation, but scattered across China and contiguous regions.

counter point: a five minute walk from the land grab project, agrarian squatters have persistantly grabbed, evacuated, and reoccupied  a portion of the houhai land reclamation area to grow food, which they eat and sell. the differences between overpass then and now are now are instructive because they illustrate both the persistance of shenzhen’s rural poor as well as their increasing destitution.

the map below locates the land grab project with respect to several generations of agricultural squatters at the houhai overpass.  pictures of the squatters and their gardens, here.

the houhai overpass is located at the intersection of houhai and binhai roads. in the map, the squatter areas are located in the southeast quadrant of the intersection, coastal city in the southwest, and the land grab in the northwest. these areas are roughly a five minute walk from each other. in the map, the blue areas used to be underwater; the brown areas were not.

of memories and the public sphere

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This is a longer version of a response to Elliong Ng’s post on Sensitive Anniversary, Edited Memories, which takes up the Peking Duck’s lament:

I find it heartbreaking that here, in what 20 years ago was the vortex where it all took place, there remains in the minds of the young no image of the men and women who died in the crackdown, no stories of the bravery or even of the daily turn of events, the “Goddess of Democracy,” the sort-of hunger strikes, the meeting of Wu’er Kaixi wearing his pajamas with Li Peng, etc. Instead, it’s basically a void, interrupted with a few government talking points and state-issued photos, like those of pre-”Liberation” Tibetan serfs with their limbs hacked off by evil landowners. And I say, What can I do? And I answer, Write it down, and do your tiny, microscopic bit to keep the memory alive.

I think the question of what older people want the next generation to know and how we want them to know are interesting questions because there are important differences between establishing and nourishing a vital public sphere and sharing memories with our children and their friends. Most of us reminice with people our own age, rather than with those of us younger than ourselves. In contrast, we rely on social institutions to teach some version of history – schools, the news media, paperback novels, and hope that our children and their friends will come to some understanding of events. Continue reading →

anywhere but here

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Recently, Lyn Jeffrey pointed to an article in the Christian Science Monitor on the reverse brain drain, where elite US trained Indian and Chinese scientists are opting to take their children back home for  a higher quality education.

In Shenzhen, parents place their children in international schools and pay for all sorts of cram schooling because yes, they want them to receive a higher quality education.

The question of where a child will receive a better education seems to me to be about the institutionalization of educational values as much as it is a grass is greener situation. Continue reading →

Delta or Estuary? What’s in a Name?

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Googling for information about environmental conditions in Shenzhen, I noticed that the distinction between delta and estuary has facilitated a disturbing separation between conversations about economic miracles and ecological disasters in Southern China. When I googled Pearl River Delta, I stumbled upon articles about economic development. In contrast, when I googled Pearl River Estuary, I came upon articles about the seriousness of our situation.  

Here’s the rhetorical rub: Ecologically, deltas and estuaries co-evolve. However, through linguistic convention, the words delta and estuary refer to different aspects of this process. The word delta draws our attention to what’s happening on land, while the word estuary reminds us what happens in places where fresh and salt water mix. In other words, how we locate Shenzhen – either in an estuary or on a delta – has already determined whether our conversation will most likely be about environmental or economic issues.

So, by emphasizing the Delta in conversations about South China, what do English speakers leave out? The fact that in an October 19, 2006 press release, the United Nations Environment Programme announced that the Pearl River Estuary was a newly listed dead zone, where nutrients from fertilizer, runoff, sewage, animal waste, and the burning of fossil fuels trigger algal blooms. The most common algal bloom in the Pearl River Estuary is “red tide”, a colloquial way of saying HAB – harmful algal bloom of which the most conspicuous effects are the associated wildlife mortalities among marine and coastal species of fish, birds, marine mammals and other organisms.

What else do we English speakers miss? The ongoing houhai land reclamation and associated siltation, which is damaging coastal Mangrove forests. In the panel Gilded Coast from Prosthetic Cosmologies, I used images from the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio to draw attention to this process.  The SVS images were taken in 1988, 1996, and 2001. Taken in December 2008, a recent Earth Snapshot from Chelyis shows how more has changed in the past seven years. The Chelyis image also contextualizes the SVS images within the delta/estuary. Compare the levels of siltation and environmental transformation below:

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More importantly, the Cheylis explanation identifies both Guangzhou and Hong Kong, but not Shenzhen. This omission is disturbing not only because Shenzhenhas been the most active land reclaimer in the region, but also because it pre-empts inclusion of Shenzhen – as well as Dongguan, Foshan, Zhongshan, and Macau – in conversations about how to both clean-up and enrich the region. (This omission dovetails into dim sum with the Swiss writers, who were shocked by how developed Shenzhen actually is. I keep asking myself: how do westerners miss Shenzhen? And it keeps happening…)

Incidently, the Chinese character 洲 (zhou) further muddies rather than bridges waters between English and Chinese conversations about the environmental consequences of economic development. The two parts of zhou are: the three-dot radical for water and  州 (zhou), a sound component which is composed of the pictograph for river with three dots. According to my dictionary, a  洲 is a continent or an island, so a delta/estuary is actually a three-cornered continent island or 三角洲, while the character is two-thirds full of water. This means googling 珠江三角洲 brings up a different mix of economic and environmental articles than does an English attempt.

snark, masculinity, and representations of shenzhen

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I was belatedly reading “Digging a Hole all the Way to America“, an esquire article on Shenzhen, when I suddenly realized how many of the articles about Shenzhen are written by men, who don’t seem to know anything about China in general and Shenzhen in particular. Instead, the articles consist of reproducing sarcastic stereotypes about the city, without contextualization and/or documentation. So on his trip to Shenzhen, Colby Buzzell watched migrant workers, mused about his Vans being made in China, talked with foreign men in Shekou, visited Working Girl Street, compared the quality of his made in America bicycle with the made in China thank God was stolen bicycle he bought in Shenzhen, and then returned someone’s hospitality by griping about how much he dislikes karaoke. The only person who accorded respect in his article was a Chinese interlocutor who told him what he expected to hear: most young people don’t know about 6.4 and Shenzhen people only care about making money.

I’m not sure why sarcasm–or snark as the case may be–sells in the conventional media. I do know that in Buzzell’s article, sarcasm functions not only to distance the reader from Shenzhen, but also to establish his authority to write about a city he clearly doesn’t understand. Indeed, sarcasm is a rhetorical devise that excuses the author from learning about the city through more conventional routes. Why should he bother interviewing historians of the city, reading published materials about the city, arranging a visit to the factories, and hiring a qualified interpretor, for example, when the city is so obviously beneath contempt? Nevertheless, Buzzell managed to write nine pages without any sign of investigative journalism. A simple been there done that sufficed to represent China’s 4th city. It was as if the Shekou expats’ sexist racism inspired the form and content of Buzzell’s article, which in turn does little more than justify learned and continued ignorance about contemporary China.

The repetition of sarcastic tone, superficial facts, sexist comments, and the wow factor in reports about Shenzhen has me wondering what about this rhetorical mode appeals to American authors and audiences. Who do we think we are when we mock what we don’t understand? Mockery is clearly a rhetorical devise for establishing dominance and asserting one’s superiority. Indeed, it is one of the most effective forms of verbal abuse, serving to dismiss other people’s perspectives and experience by asserting one’s own perspective and experience as the absolute standard.

Sarcasm allows Americans to maintain a sense of superiority in a world that is clearly changing in ways and directions not necessarily to the benefit of the United States. Perhaps this is the point: the world is changing and we don’t understand what it means for us. What kind of world leader would China be? Indeed, a sense of fear permeates Buzzell’s and like-minded articles. It as if America cannot remain American because more and more classical Americana is made in China, generally, but Shenzhen specifically. In this reading, any Chinese success harms the United States and any sign of Chinese failure helps us; suddenly, the best defense of America becomes an uninformed offensive against Shenzhen.

Sigh.