Tag Archives: shenzhen identity

第二届中国（深圳）国际文化产业博览交易会: Fat Bird in Shenzhen

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fat bird theatre logo
Originally uploaded by mary ann odonnell.

This weekend (May 20, 21), Fat Bird participated in the second China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industry Fair (May 18-21). Fat Bird’s inclusion mediated at least two of the paradoxes structuring cultural production in Shenzhen specifically and the PRC more generally. Fat Bird’s inclusion prompted members to design a logo for the troupe’s first official exposure in Shenzhen (see image left).

On the one hand, the Fair staged the tension between economic and political interests in cultural production. This was particularly the case in terms of regional and minority cultural forms. Ministries in the Guizhou Government, for example, negotiated contracts for performance troupes of local minorities. Likewise, Ministries from the Zhengzhou Government sold traditional Chinese culture from pre-historic times through the Song Dynasty. In a city like Shenzhen, where there is no recognized “local” culture, Fat Bird’s presence demonstrated the possibility that a new city could produce new culture.

On the other hand,the structured contradiction between high and commercial art continues to embarrass Shenzhen officials and residents, who believe it is not enough for the city to make money on culture. Instead, they advocate for Shenzhen investment in non-productive arts like the ballet or theatre. Only then, they say, will the city fulfill its duel task to build both material and spiritual civilization. Fat Bird’s presence at the Fair was evidence that high (non-commercial) art is possible in Shenzhen.

Below, I take the reader on a selective tour of the Cultural Industry Fair, introducing the meaning of Fat Bird’s unexpected, but in retrospect overdetermined inclusion. This entry is actually part of the process of digesting what happened at the Fair. I will add more as it comes to me.

The first thing to take note of is the fuzzy line separating politics from economics at the Fair. The Ministry of Culture of the PRC, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the General Administration of Press and Publication of the PRC, the Guangdong Provincial Government, and the Shenzhen Municipal Government host the Fair. The Shenzhen Press Group, Shenzhen Media Group, Shenzhen Circulation Group, and the Shenzhen International Cultural Industry Fair Company, Ltd. sponsor the Fair. This division of labor reproduces the division between politics (hosts) and economics (sponsors). The hosts use the Fair to promote particular goals, while the sponsors provide the financial management necessary to stage the Fair.

This division of labor points to an ideology and practice in which the economic is understood as an expression of political will. In this sense, in producing the Cultural Fair, the Shenzhen International Cultural Industry Fair Company, Ltd. is not only doing business, but also (and more importantly) helping the central government achieve the goal of developing the national economy. The organization of displays at the Fair reiterated this logic, wherein the themes for each hall express goals that have been set by the government, and individual exhibitors pursue this goal.

Thus, the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center has 9 halls. During the Culture Fair, each hall was used to display those sectors of the culture industry that the government currently promotes. Successes of Chinese Cultural Industry were displayed in Hall 1; Education institutions had stalls in Hall 1A; Hall 2 was dedicated to Conceptual Design; Media Technologies and Digital Imaging was located in Hall 3, while Media Technologies and Printing were in Hall 4; Visual Arts were displayed in Hall 5; International Performance Arts were located in Hall 6; Chinese Language Publishing occupied Hall 7; the most popular exhibition, Comics and Games were located in Hall 8; and in Hall 9 were the Industrial Arts.

A second effect of this fuzzy division is that within the Fair, provincial and municipal governments also operated as cultural companies. That is, in addition to hosting the Fair, Guangdong Province had its own display, as did Tibet, Zhengzhou, Guizhou, Hong Kong, and Macau. This equation of regional governments operating as cultural businesses explains Guangdong’s governor, Huang Huahua’s emphasis on tourism as the motor (spirit) of cultural industries; the Fair modeled a tour of potential cultural tours. Indeed, while being shown the fair, the governor asserted that, “Culture is the spirt of tourism. The success of the Culture Fair will stimulate the development of tourism and other third sector industries, improve the distribution of regional industries, and help strengthen production.”

In fact, regional government/culture businesses made out quite well. (I’m not sure what to call these amalgams of political and economic interest. If anyone out there knows of or might suggest a name, I’d appreciate it.) In a column titled “the sellers won, the buyers smiled”, the May 20, 2006 edition of the Special Zone Daily reported that the following contracts were signed at the Fair: The French “Disney” (as Futuroscope Theme Park is known in the Chinese papers) signed contracts with Guangdong Province for roughly 4 billion rmb (500 million US$); Guizhou signed contracts to attract and develop cultural industries totalling 7 billion rmb (875 million US$); Guangxi signed contracts totalling 3.7 billion (462.5 million US$), Henan signed contracts totalling 1.1 billion RMB (130 million US$). Located in western Shenzhen, Overseas Chinese Town, itself a place/government/enterprise also signed contracts for 600 million RMB (48 million US$).

This leads to a third point about the fuzzy line between politics and economics at the Culture Fair. The Fair itself provided the stage for all this contract signing. This suggests that the real business took place elsewhere between representatives from Chinese governments and foreign businesses. The cooperation between multi-national firms and bureaus within the Chinese Government is a pattern of development that we have seen before, as when Chinese President, Hu Jintao visited Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates in Seattle this spring. The Fair itself, therefore, seemed more a display of the success of the government in promoting cultural industries, rather than a place where commerce might grow. In fact, during the weekend, many parents bought tickets to bring children to see the various cultural exhibitions, especially the Comic and Games exhibit. If there was any business going on at the Fair, it seemed more a case of businesses building a network of face-to-face contacts that might grow into a contract signing ceremony at next year’s fair.

This emphasis on display took several forms. First, exhibitors called attention to their displays through the use of bright colors and loud music. Second, exhibitors made their displays mobile with handouts and costumed players, who moved throughout an assigned hall, directing visitors to a particular display. Third, a television or screen was the focus point of each display, so that visitors could see the cultural product, whether it was a performance or a new technology. Forth, each display became an enclosed space, reproducing some kind of idealized space. Walking through these spaces, I felt disoriented and unable to focus on any one display. And I rarely saw people stopping, unless they were playing computer games or resting and not looking at anything in particular.

Below are pictures of Hall 6 (left) and the Shanxi Exhibit (right).

So Shenzhen provided the space for the Fair. Shenzhen companies produced the Fair. Shenzhen digital art companies displayed their wares at the Fair. Shenzhen advertizing companies produced many of the exhibits at the Fair. And Shenzheners bought tickets to attend the Fair. Yet Shenzhen did not have any recognizably “cultural” displays–no traditional theatre troupes, no local minorities, no ancient ruins to sell. Instead, Shenzhen had a series of poster boards, which displayed examples of cultural events that had been held in Shenzhen. Here, the government focused on international and domestic troupes that had performed on Shenzhen stages, including the Bolshoi and the National People’s Theatre.

The Ministry of Culture also printed a Shenzhen Art map, which directed people to cultural sites in the city, including the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, various museums, and District level cultural centers. The map also references several “folk” sites, such as the Tianhou Temple in Chiwan, the Hakka compound in Longgang, and the Pengcheng city in Longgang. These signs of pre-reform culture have all been turned into museums. However, none of these sites appeared in the in the Cultural Fair.

Shenzhen thus found itself facing an interesting and from the outside seemingly unnecessary cultural “lack”. The kind of cultural industry that went into producing the Fair thrives in Shenzhen, but it still doesn’t count as “culture”. Instead, older, high modernist ideas of an opposition between mass (commercial) and high art continue to define the cultural sphere in which the Municipality competes for national recognition. At the same time, government officials don’t recognize local history as cultural heritage. Instead, they continue to assert that there was “nothing” here before the reforms of 1980. This double denial of cultural resources in Shenzhen created a crack through which Fat Bird could not only enter, but also be invited to attend the Cultural Industry Fair.

Importantly, Fat Bird’s status as a legal entity points to the fact that troupe members have support in the government. Moreover, Fat Bird’s friends are precisely the people who bemoan the City’s lack of high culture. Not that this translates into specifically economic support for the arts, but it does mean that at moments in which culture is featured, these friends find ways to help Fat Bird. Accordingly, we were given the use of the rest area in Hall 6. We were also allowed to perform “This Body, These Movements” on the Hall 6 stage. All other participants had to pay for exhibition space and for time onstage. So even though no money changed hands, we looked at this as a chance in which Fat Bird actually “earned” a commission for our work.

Below are pictures of Fat Bird founder, Yang Qian standing at the Fat Bird site (left) and Fat Bird members performing (right).

Fat Bird used this opportunity in two ways. On Saturday, May 20, we held a workshop in our space. The space was created through four points: a sign that said Fat Bird Theatre, a sign that announced workshop times, a ladder where we hung the backdrop for “This Body, These Movements”, and a display of photographs. The workshop format was modeled on previous workshops. However, we asked members of the audience to write two character (one word) evaluations of the performance on a sheet of paper. Journalists mentioned that it was one of the few sites in the Convention Center where it was possible to focus on what was happening. On Sunday, May 21, we walked around the Fair and looked for ideas for new pieces. Next weekend, each participant will show a piece created out of the their tour and understanding of the Fair. The working title of this piece is the same as the title of the May 20th workshop: Cultural Expression.

Given the ideology structuring the layout of the Fair, the title “Cultural Expression” is more than a little ironic. To the extent that all exhibitors could be understood as expressing political will in economic terms, Fat Bird’s presence staged one of the fundamental contradictions of post-Mao reforms. On the one hand, we did not disrupt the Fair. On the contrary, our display was sponsored by the government. The government could be seen as sanctioning our work, even as our presence legitimated particular claims about cultural production in Shenzhen. On the other hand, Fat Bird’s was the one non-economic display at the Fair. This was the moment in the performance that most of the audience appreciated (especially because most complained they didn’t understand the performances themselves). Many thanked us for demonstrating the possibility of non-commercial art. They also lauded our efforts to follow our dreams.

“This is how I want my daughter to live,” one mother told us.

Now, I don’t know if she really wants her daughter to stop studying for the college entrance exams to perform with us. I suspect she was voicing a desire for a society in which her daughter could pursue artistic dreams without incurring serious social repercussions. Right now, she lives in a world where last year 8 to 9 million people took the college entrance exams and only 1.4 million were placed. More often than not, that level of competition precludes following one’s artistic bliss, as students study the arts to improve their transcripts rather than their lives. So, I think this exchange called attention to a desire to re-interpret the current political will in non-instrumental ways, which would place human creativity at the center of society.

As I look at the four pictures added to this entry, I realize again how difficult it was to see at the Fair. Neon flattened to grey. That has to be where my experience started. In fact, by the second day, I noticed that participating in the Fair not only exhausted me, but also made me irritable. In part, I have placed these photos together to draw out the differences between Fair space and Fat Bird space. However, I also think I have placed these images here, rather than setting them off in a gallery, because they don’t look interesting to me. I think I took these pictures while looking away, rather than trying to see what was there, what might inspire creativity, what might be otherwise.

Six images from found objects were shown at the Culture Fair.

The official site of the 文博会 provides both Chinese and English language news coverage of the Culture Fair. For those looking for equally, but otherwise biased images and information, it’s a good place to start.

blooming despite

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Generally, walls of some kind not only separate construction sites from the street, but also provide a space for particular kinds of public discourse on and about Shenzhen. On these walls, development firms announce the future building, private eyes advertise their services, and the rare graffiti artist paints a picture. Construction teams tend the walls around important projects more carefully than they would the walls around lesser projects. Workers regularly touch up these walls, projecting an image of neat, orderly, and respectful construction. Guangdong plants, however, have little regard for edges and flourish even at concrete foundations. Please view these inadvertent blooms at: http://pics.livejournal.com/maryannodonnell/gallery/0000gy09

shenzhen’s place in the heart

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Over the national day holiday, I went to Yan’an and Xian. Yan’an, of course, resonates throughout Party history, while Xian “makes you proud to be Chinese”, as a friend said before I left. Both are located in Shaanxi Province, center of the central plains heartland, which for millennia has defined belonging to various Chinese polities (or so it seems in retrospect.) It was my first visit; after ten years in Shenzhen, I finally complied with my friends’ exhortations to make a pilgrimage to “authentic” China.

Now, I have been to Beijing, even lived for a while in the capitol, but that brief stint was not enough to convince my friends that I have understood the cultural verities that define their homeland. All this to say that Shenzhen isn’t considered part of China, not ancient China, certainly not mythic China, not really even modern China, which is typified by Shanghai’s cosmopolitan facades. Instead, Shenzhen exists as a strange aberration—a necessary concession to global forces, but not really Chinese. Or at least this is what I have gathered from conversations about the limits to my research project. According to friends, it is possible to study the political-economy of reform and opening in Shenzhen, but not to learn anything meaningful about China’s culture.

On our way to Yan’an, we stopped at the Yellow Emperor’s grave and lit incense. The grave is located in a lovely area, with old, old pine trees and birdsong. Chinese Emperors have always understood the importance of burial fengshui, I was told, and this theme would repeat itself in Xi’an and its outskirts, where terracotta soldiers and bronze horses protect the first Qin Emperor’s grave. But first to Yan’an, where we stayed in a three-star hotel.

In the mythic landscape of Mao Zedong’s rise to power, Yan’an symbolizes many things—how the peasants gave refuge to communists fleeing Nationalist persecution; how the communists persevered for years before liberating China; the establishment of Mao Zedong Thought as a Chinese supplement to Marxist-Leninism. We visited a Song dynasty pagoda, which throughout the Cultural Revolution represented the Yan’an years and thus remained undamaged by Red Guard fury. We also went to Yan’an years museum and followed the progress of WWII from the point of view ill-equipped peasant soldiers holed up in caves.

Beyond these myths, however, Yan’an has represented rural poverty and the collective will to build a socialist utopia. Stereotypically, Yan’an peasants lived in caves with few amenities. They were malnourished, uneducated, and determined to give their children a better life. Yet, red tourism has brought wealth to some in the area, while others continue to live in relative poverty. Busloads of tourists come for a day, rarely longer, to look at where Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Zhude lived and planned the revolution, but we walk past crumbling courtyards and dingy residences. Today, those peasants in search of a better life, I am told, are better off working in Shenzhen factories, where at least they can earn a wage, rather than place their hope in agriculture. When I ask why no one wants to be a peasant, my friend gestures to the decrepit and unsanitary housing, asking rhetorically, “Would you want to live here?” And of course the answer is no.

From Yan’an back to Xi’an by way of the Hukou waterfall, an important national symbol. I’m sure on a warmer, less windy, certainly drier day, I would have appreciated watching the Yellow River surge from the central plains toward the eastern coast. However, on that particular day, I cowered in the lobby of the large hotel that has been built right next to the waterfall and even so, I left with a head cold. My friends, however, were undeterred and photographed themselves standing right at river’s edge, smiling through the spray of icy water. It was, as they reminded me, the first and possibly last time they would come. I agreed it was a rare opportunity, but except for a perfunctory walk past the falls, remained inside.

In Xian, the college classmate of a Shenzhen friend had agreed to show me the city, and over the next three days, humbled me with her generosity. He Lei picked me up at the hotel every morning at 9 a.m. and then brought me to the most famous sites, purchasing all tickets and picking up the tab at every meal. When I tried, rather lamely to pay, she scowled and promptly ripped the bill out of my hand. Xian born and raised, she wanted me to love the city as much as she does. Indeed, the grandeur of the terracotta soldiers and refined beauty of Huaqing hot springs provided a backdrop for her enthusiasm. When I reported back to my friend, she nodded knowingly.

“People back home still care about people. They’re not selfish like in Shenzhen.”

“So why did you come?”

“I don’t know anymore, either. At the time, I wanted to try something new. To see more of the world.”

“And now?”

“Now? Now I live in Shenzhen and dream about retiring back in Xian.”

He Lei pointed to another aspect of that hard truth, which is less extreme than that governing daily life in Yan’an.

“Most Xian people live in substandard housing. They don’t earn very much money. So they have to leave. But nobody wants to. Xian makes you proud to be Chinese.”

That then, perhaps, constitutes the fragile but all-too-vexed thread that sutures Shenzhen to the central plains. People not only want to improve their material standard of living, but also to preserve where they came from because they define themselves through the love they feel for their hometown. So they come to Shenzhen, this place that is “not authentic China” in order to get back.

Even on those days it didn’t rain, the sky remained overcast, and that grey infuses all the pictures I took while in Shaanxi. For a sense of a place considered by many to be one of Shenzhen’s most radical antitheses, please visit: http://pics.livejournal.com/maryannodonnell/gallery/0000e49d.