Tag Archives: rural urbanization

Digging a Hole in China

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This afternoon I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the Digging a Hole in China (事件的地貌) exhibition, curated by Venus Lau. the exhibition features a range of works that were produced from the mid-1990s forward, roughly a decade after the idea of land art had been picked up by Chinese artists and only a few years after Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 Southern Tour, where he confirmed that China would continue to liberalize its economy. The stated goal of the exhibition, which positions itself between China and the West is,

[T]o expose and analyze the discrepancies between this genre of work and ‘conventional’ land art understood in the Western-centric art historical context, thereby probing the potential of ‘land’–as a cultural and political concept–in artistic practice.

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post-industrial villages

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Last year, the last of Foshan’s famous pottery kilns was decommissioned, leaving the city poised at the edge of a complete renovation–from a dense network of markets, township and village owned industrial parks, and new villages into something bright and shiny, an amalgamation of high-rises, offices, and malls,  where products that are no longer produced in Foshan can be purchased by people who suddenly find themselves positioned to become a next generation of “urban village” landlords.  Continue reading →

shatou renovations. again

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So, as the Xiasha Kingkey project finishes up, another urban renovation project begins in neighboring Shangsha. Below, impressions of the Xiasha plaza, the Kingkey complex along Binhe Road, and the state of unmaking in Shangsha.

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“abet” means “we are here”

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Just discovered the Ethiopian girl band Yegna, who aim to address issues such as forced marriage (the Amhara region has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world), isolation and teen pregnancies to a national audience, teaching self confidence to girls and young women.

The 5-member group was formed in April, 2013 as part of the internationally funded Girl Hub scheme, which also operates in Nigeria and Rwanda. Girl Hub is a corporate initiative and the band itself is spoken of as a “brand”. The five members are: Teref Kassahun (nicknamed Melat, aged 26), Lemlem Haile Michael (Mimi, 26), Zebiba Girma (Emuye, 22), Eyerusalem Kelemework (Sara, 27) and Rahel Getu (Lemlem, 22). Watching the video for award-winning “Abet” provides a crash course in the subject positions open to young girls in Ethopia. It also shines with hope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvFDJjPcWEo

yumin village: changing meanings of “farmer housing”

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Just recently got my paws on “The History of Yumin Village (渔民村村史)”. Yumin Village, of course, was the village that Deng Xiaoping visited in 1984, during his first inspection trip to the SEZs. Xi Jinping followed up with a visit in 2012. So yes, this village has played an important symbolic role both in the ideological construction of post-Mao society and in representations of  pre-reform Shenzhen Bao’an County. What struck me as I flipped through the pages was how this transformation can be readily represented in the changing typology of “farmer housing (农民房)”. Continue reading →

what is a natural village?

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Important footnote or dissertation? Inquiring minds want to know, what is a natural village? Continue reading →

tantou: these are not mcmansions

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This past week, I joined members of ATU on a research trip to Kaihua County, Zhejiang. ATU is a Shenzhen-based NGO, and their mission is to bring critical attention to architecture and urban planning practices. Most recently, they have decided to intervene in rural development in order to ameliorate the problems of bringing urban planning and its ideologies into rural areas. Continue reading →

guangming office: historic questions of translation

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Speakers of North American English such as myself often fall into linguistic rabbit holes when reading official Chinese documents. My confusion arises from what both Western Marxists and Chinese Party members might call “historic questions/ problems of translation (翻译的历史问题)”. Thus, although their are semantic overlaps, a city is not a 城市, an office is not a 办公室, a community is not a 社区, and a collective is not a 集体 because the respective geographies of the USA and PRC have been formed through vastly different cultural ecologies and property regimes. Continue reading →

cold war guangming

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Today, I am trying to figure how to think about a series of historically discrete events that in retrospect clearly aligned the landscapes of Hanoi, Houston, and Shenzhen. Continue reading →

the violence of rural (re)construction (5): lessons from shenzhen

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So what am I learning about Shenzhen through my engagement with Meizhou forced evictions and the young people who are trying to figure out how to articulate new relations to their Hakka past and rural injustice? Continue reading →