Tag Archives: shenzhen identity

princeling genealogy and advanced guanxixue

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Normally, I am not a fan of imperial court television dramas first because the family dynamics of dog eat dog don’t appeal and also (and primarily) because I can’t keep track of all the players. Even with a scorecard, the nuances of multiple and overlapping connections between protagonists and lesser characters evade me. There are, for example, reportedly over 400 main characters in Dream of the Red Chamber. What’s more as an American, I like watching the action. However, as far as I can tell in an imperial television drama nothing of substance ever really happens — a marriage here, a conquered nation there, perhaps, but we never see it. Instead, the drama of an imperial court melodrama unfolds through charting various levels of family ties and in turn the revelation of who respects those ties, who abuses them, and who ignores what those ties mean. In other words, family protocols reveal personal ethics — national affairs are an effect thereof.

Take, for example, a brief sojourn into Bo Xilai’s family circle. I’ve already mentioned that his father was Bo Yibo and that his son, Guagua is know for his extravagant lifestyle. Bo Xilai’s second wife, Gu Kailai is a Beijing lawyer slash Princess. Gu Kailai’s father and Bo Yilai’s father-in-law, Gu Jingsheng (谷景生) was one of the key leaders in the December 9th [1935] Movement (一二九运动) to organize resistance against the Japanese invasion. Imprisoned for twelve years (from the Anti-Rightest campaign through the Cultural Revolution), Gu Jingsheng was appointed Vice Political Commissar of the Guangzhou Military Region after his rehabilitation, leading troupes in China’s brief Vietnam War, when Deng Xiaoping secured his place among PLA leaders. In 1981, Gu Jingsheng was appointed Second Secretary of Xinjiang, the first Secretary of the Xinjiang Production Brigade, and first Standing Member of the Xinjiang Provincial Politboro.  Just a few days ago, Bo Xilai’s brother-in-law, Lt. General Gu Junshan (谷俊山), Vice Minister of the People’s Liberation Army was removed from office. Speculation is that the removal is connected to the Wang Lijun fiasco and associated corruption charges.

All this to say, the Bo Xilai Wang Lijun scandal has rekindled my anthropological interest in genealogy and its obvious connection to guanxixue (关系学). And yes, it seems that Bo Xilai’s family background is more and more the story, regardless of what he or Wang Lijun may or may not have done. Meanwhile, Shenzhen announcements have begun to remind us that in 1979, when Xi Zhongxun, father of China’s future leader Xi Jinping was Guangdong’s governor, he proposed the establishment of the Shenzhen SEZ. And in that shimmering moment of imperial court Princeling drama, Deng Xiaoping is simultaneously remembered and erased from Shenzhen history, as local leaders try to position themselves and the SEZ as close to the inner party family as they can.

Coaster Raid Biennale Retrospective

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Last night, Gigi and Michael of Riptide Collective hosted the opening for Coaster Raid Shenzhen’s Biennale Retrospective. Witty and fresh the Retrospective will be up for the final week of the Biennale and is well worth a visit. Venue:

市民中心B区南门，多功能厅东侧, 地铁市民中心站B出口

Civic Center – East Hall – Area B South Gate, Subway: Civic Center Exit B

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How should we judge the success of Shenzhen’s cultural industry?

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According to released statistics, in 2011, Shenzhen’s cultural industry accounted for 8% of the SEZ’s GDP, with a total 87.5 billion (875亿) yuan of goods and services. More importantly, cultural industry in Shenzhen grew at a rate of 20.5%, making it one of the strongest sectors of the local economy. Dafen and OCT Loft are often promoted as exemplars of successful cultural industry. Nevertheless, I don’t know how to interpret these statistics because when I visit some cultural industry sites — Dawang and 518, for example, I’m underwhelmed. begging the question, how universally successful is Shenzhen’s cultural industry or do these statistics more accurately reflects the determination of and concomitant investment by the government to push the economy in a certain direction?

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Today, for example, I visited the Century Handicraft Culture Plaza (世纪工艺品文化广场), which was one of the earliest attempts to transform Shenzhen’s economy from industrial manufacturing to creative industry. Continue reading →

Sexing the Greed, or How We’ve Gone from “Marrying Shenzhen” to “Can a Woman Get Married in Shenzhen?”

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Surfing 天涯深圳, I came across a brief post by an author who claimed that her friends had urged her to leave the city because

“A woman can’t marry in Shenzhen. The most desperate are those who’ve been here form more than two years. There are more and more leftover women in Shenzhen and it’s a big problem (在深圳嫁不掉。其中一个在深圳待了两年的人更是发感慨，深圳剩女越来越多，是个大麻烦)”.

Clearly, this is a small blip in the much larger national discussion of “leftover women (剩女),” which (according to 百度百科) designates upwardly mobile, successful women who are still unmarried as they approach their 30th birthday. The over-30 crowd, it goes without saying, are desperate or resigning themselves to being single for the rest of their lives. The term as well as the debate are obviously misogynistic. More distressingly, however, like the phrase “naked marriage (裸婚)”, the expression “leftover woman” sexes the greed that has come to characterize Socialism with Chinese characteristics as if by fixing what’s wrong with women we could fix what’s wrong with society.

It’s a scary logic. Continue reading →

listening to firecrackers

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I’m in Tianjin, listening to the firecrackers that go from dusk well into the early hours of the morning. Traditionally, people set off firecrackers from New Year’s Eve through the Lantern Festival. Firecrackers also provided an opportunity for Tianjin friends to distinguish themselves from Cantonese people because “northerners love firecrackers more than southerners”. In fact, they said, the further north you go, the more festive the towns as firecrackers don’t stop.

I don’t actually know how much of my friend’s claim about northern enthusiasm for pyrotechnics is true. I do know that early on, Shenzhen attempted to outlaw firecrackers. In fact, I remember buying illegal firecrackers and setting them off at the coast. We drove with a truck full of illegal poppers to houhai land reclamation area, snuck out, and set them off. This year and last, however, I’ve noticed stands selling firecrackers because — according to a friend — the SZ Municipal government finally accepted the fact that it was safer to sell legal firecrackers and regulate production than the alternative.

I’m also told that people set of firecrackers just to “burn money”. Last year, the economy was good and people celebrated by “burning money”. However, this year I’m told that there are fewer people willing to buy firecrackers because of economic difficulties. Nevertheless, everyone I’ve talked with has set off firecrackers or played with sparklers; we bought a box of fireworks and watched them light up the sky for all of five minutes. New Year’s — relatives and friends emphasize — is the People’s holiday. In contrast, on National Day, only the government willingly burns money and, my friend joked, those fireworks are of different quality.

train station blues

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The Spring Transport (春运) continues. The railway has moved waiting areas outside the station, and people with placards announce departures and lead travelers into the appropriate terminal. The place names — Chengdu, Wuhan, and Nanning — remind me how large the country and diverse Shenzhen’s immigrant population.

I also visited the Luohu Commercial Center, where the English spoken by the various shopkeepers caught my attention. It seemed as if copied out of a stereotype of Hong Kong movie because it was so standardized, “Missy, copy watch. Missy, DVD.” In English, speakers shared the same accent, vocabulary, grammar, and inflections despite the fact that they spoke different Chinese dialects and had different levels of formal education. Some spoke Cantonese, others Mandarin, still others conversed in Hakka and I think I heard Chaozhou language, but the English had smoothed out into something recognizably “Luohu”.

So, I’m thinking about the way that situations — like immigrating to Shenzhen or working at the Luohu Commercial Center, for example — mold us into expected types, making it easy for our diversity to be discounted because rendered superfluous. I’m also wondering how we train ourselves to see beyond expected type, not only when interacting with others, but also when presenting ourselves because the differences actually make us interesting.

what has shenzhen’s significance been in post mao china?

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To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of Shenzhen, Shenzhen TV uploaded a survey on significant events in the SEZ’s early history. Of the 23 Shenzhen firsts, site visitors were asked to vote on the ten most significant. The list is interesting for a variety reasons. One, it demonstrates the importance of Shenzhen in restructuring Chinese society after Mao. Two, it reminds us that many taken-for-granted elements of capitalist society had to be introduced and cultivated. Three, it reminds us that much of what once made Shenzhen “special” is now “common” and many recent policy decisions must be seen as efforts to regain competitive advantage (in the absence of preferential policies). Four, it shows the voting results, allowing visitors to get a sense of how others have evaluated this history. Below, a synopsis of the list.

1. On June 8, 1983 the Shenzhen Baoan County Cooperative Shareholding Company issued “Shen Bao An”, the first stock issued since the founding of the PRC. Continue reading →

BOOM! Shenzhen

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Gu Yun (she of the lovely biennale impressions) has taken photos of Boom! Shenzhen. Below are images from the show.

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Boom! Shenzhen

In 1979, Shenzhen was a rural area, organized into collective fishing villages, lychee orchards, and oyster farms. From 1979 through 2010, the Municipality’s estimated population grew from 300,000 to over 13 million people, its GDP exploded from $US 308 million to over $US 149 billion, and agricultural land vanished, being replaced by international ports, industrial parks, residential areas, shopping malls, and green space. Indeed, Shenzhen’s boom redefined the scale and intensity of rural urbanization within China and set new standards for developing nations looking to modernize.

Boom! Shenzhen has five elements, which implode the idea of a timeline to contextualize the lived, environmental, and philosophical meanings of the SEZ’s short, yet volatile history. Continue reading →

…and then it became a city workshops (the third window)

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I have had the pleasure of participating in the “…and then it became a city“ workshops (活动照片), bringing the film series curated by David van der Leer to Shenzhen’s general public. The film series provides six answers to the question, “When do planned towns stop being new and turn into actual cities?” as filmmakers explore urban tipping points in Chandigarh, Brasilia, Gabarone, Las Vegas, Almere, and Shenzhen.

The workshops have a simple format. A screen has been installed in a city bus, creating a “third window”. As the bus travels through Shenzhen, visitors simultaneously view Shenzhen (outside the bus windows) and the city onscreen(through a “third window”). The juxtaposition of two new towns creates useful dissonance. Suddenly, the shared peculiarities of new towns become salient and cities that within their home context are decidedly atypical, abruptly make sense within the context of global modernization. For example, like folks in Shenzhen, people in Chandigarh live in large-scale concrete housing complexes, people in Botswana need to call ahead to be picked up because no one is familiar with new addresses, and people in Brasilia have found new ways to inhabit massive plazas and ongoing roads. Then, having viewed the films, we bring biennale visitors to a location in Shenzhen to discuss the question with the general public.

For those in Shenzhen, workshops will run through December 28, so come and think about when planned cities become living cities (报名). Impressions of workshop events, below.

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2011 sz-hk biennale thoughts

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Shenzhen photographer, Gu Yun (谷韵) has taken lovingly poetic images of Biennale exhibits. I appreciate these images for their intimacy. The biennale has presented massive projects at a scale that seems analytic and abstract; in contrast, Gu Yun’s images reveal her steps to engage individual works close up and personal, as we sometimes say. Indeed, Gu Yun has me thinking about the revealingly personal work of viewing, digesting, and appropriating objects. Enjoy.

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