Tag Archives: squatters

shenzhen garbalogy

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coconuts

this morning as i walked the edge of houhai i stumbled upon another former settlement, where the squatters’ housing and kitchens had been razed, but then reconstituted in even more transient form–beds have been made inside the water pipes that are now being installed. signs of life: shoes, mosquito coils, and makeshift offerings. when i asked one of the women salvaging plastic wrapping from the site, she said that the settlement had been razed just this week. two more permanent fixtures remained–a pink shrine and a 42 stall traditional outhouse. the outhouse seemed relatively clean; perhaps it has been built in anticipation of the work teams that will soon move onto the site.

this is the second time this month that i have stumbled upon housing arrangements that have been hidden in plain sight on the border between housing built on the reclaimed land and newly reclaimed construction sites. just three weeks ago, while walking near the western corridor bridge, i came across a squatting settlement. the small pup tents were located along a sidewalk that was temporarily out of use due to construction. however, a hill and mounds of dirt in the reclamation site kept the settlement out of sight. i only came across them because i jumped the temporary barrier that had been installed, while a more permanent; it seems easier to go through concrete one was being built.

during a brief and admittedly superficial engagement with the other three anthropological subfields, i took several archaeology courses. i didn’t understand the joy of finding bicuspids, nor did i fantasize about going off to dig up the remains of lost civilizations. i did, however, like the idea of theorizing a life out of garbage, which william rathje initiated in 1973 with the tucson garbage project and popularized in 2001 with the publications of rubbish! the archaeology of garbage.

one of rathje’s points is that there are discrepancies between what we say we do and what are garbage reveals that we do. i’m not terribly interested in catching people lying; it seems unnecessarily stressful to constantly assess the degrees of truthfulness in any statement. nevertheless, i think that garbalogy might be useful when looking at how shenzhen has razed and continues to raze squatter settlements. officials maintain that shenzheners are building one of the most modern cities in china. the promise of modernity includes the promise of material comfort for all residents. however, the garbage that this process generates includes neighborhoods, family homes, and migrant livelihoods.

i like thinking about houhai through garbagology because it makes facts about squatters’ lives immediate and visceral, stubborn. it is difficult to talk one’s way around the image of a child who cut his head playing near his mother’s salvage cart. indeed, that child’s life measures the degree of truth in any statement about how globalization has been beneficial for shenzhen.

of plants and smog

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shenzheners are developing an environmental consciousness. indeed, the shenzhen 2030 development strategy calls explicitly for sustainable development. so now we encounter billboards to protect endangered species. the irony, of course, is that these billboards have been raised at the former new houhai coastline. about 10 years ago, the elephant would have been standing on the beach. 20 years ago, said elephant would have been up to its knees in water, possibly even deeper.


save endangered species billboard

moreover, only five years ago, if memory serves as well as i hope, the elephant would have been standing beneath “blue skies and white clouds.” these days, smog is an all too often topic of conversation in shenzhen. most folks blame the cars, and then quickly remark that cars are necessary, both for convenience and building the economy. all of us, however, lament that the environment has deteriorated so obviously, so quickly.

at the same time, shenzhen’s furious pursuit of garden cityhood proceeds. recently exotic plants abut the new roads and construction sites of the houhai land reclamation zone. although beautiful, these plants irritate me. unlike the once ubiquitous and local banyan tree, shenzhen’s palms and bushes and flowering trees don’t provide shade. they also require large teams of gardeners, who water the plants with an irrigation system that stretches along the ever changing coastline. these plants confound me. i wonder where their gardeners live and how much they earn; as far as i know, the blue uniformed gardeners in central park, live in dorms in the park itself, but there aren’t any dorms on the landfill, only temporary construction dorms. the extent of the irrigation system also has me wondering, given the city’s water shortage, who isn’t getting water if imported fonds are. and if perhaps, we’ve reached the final coastline.

this afternoon, on the landfill, i stopped to talk with several people. one, a migrant worker who had just came to shenzhen and lived in one of the nearby shanties, said that it was nice to walk on the coastline where the air was fresher. true enough. i actually breathed in salty air. a second interlocutor, was an old shenzhener, originally from ningbo, who like like me, enjoys photography. he showed me some of the pictures in his very nice camera–flowers, parrots, traditional architecture, and old village rivers.

“unfortunately,” he said, “shenzhen is a new city, so there isn’t much beauty here.” as i understood him, beauty referred to things natural and manmade that had a graceful harmony. he admitted that all shenzhen’s glass buildings were impressive, but not yet beautiful, unlike shanghai, where old sections of the city had been preserved and improved. his comments had me wondering if we wait long enough, shenzhen will become beautiful through age. although with all the upgrading and razing of older sections of the city, this path to beauty may not be the most efficient and shenzhen may as well just stick with its the newest is the most beautiful aesthetic. speculation aside, we agreed that the smog had become a serious problem that would become even more serious, “unless the government takes serious action.” as we separated, me to take more pictures of houhai and him to continue searching for beauty, he exhorted me to visit other cities, especially shanghai, “where the environment is really beautiful.”

i am not sure if shenzhen’s utopian origin sets residents up for disappointment, or if memory creates beauty where it may not have been; i’ve been to shanghai, and i remember smog, in addition to the lovely buildings. i do think that the utopian impulse behind the city’s construction continues to inform longterm planning. the idea of shenzhen as a sustainable city is, if it is nothing else, a call to create a better future. and yet. houhai continues to transform the south china environment and climate at a pace unplanned, and more than likely, with unforeseeable environmental consequences.

pictures of plants and smog here.

new squatters

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abandoned wanxia village, old shekou

this week, my good friend steve came to shenzhen. as we were walking around shekou (from seaworld toward the new pennisula housing estates/dongjiaotou/wanxia village remains), he asked if shekou had become seedier, focusing me on something i’ve noticed but not registered: the quality of life of shenzhen squatters has deteriorated. previously, many lived in the older remnants of inner city villages. however, with the rennovate the inner city villages (旧村改新) in full swing, much of that cheap, squalid, but solid with some kind of sanitation and running water housing stock is vanishing. instead, squatters are building more and more temporary housing on the fewer and fewer boundaries between the expanding city and remains of baoan county.

the erasure of impromptu vegetable gardens symbolizes the increased transience of squatter settlements. indeed, the vegetable gardens once symbolized alternative economic possibilities for those outside the formal economy. it is a dangerous world, when illegal gardens come to symbolize spaces of urban possibility for new migrants. this is, of course, most visible at seaworld, where the last of the oyster farmers are being swept away, and new generation of squatters have moved onto the garbage and landfill heaps that constitute the new coastline. two years ago, the oyster farmers not only had houseboats, on land, they had more or less permanent installations for processing oysters. today, only a few remain, and they are clearly leaving. soon.

pictures from the past three or four months.

the sweetness and the people

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royal jelly and fresh honey, straight ahead

yesterday walking in the lychee orchard section of shenzhen’s central park, yang qian and i stumbled upon bee farmers. they do the guangdong bee circuit–shenzhen, pingyuan, nanhai–following the pollen. they are from pingyuan and have been coming to the central park these past eight years. the honey is amazing. for those of you in shenzhen who happen on this entry they’ll be here for another week or so, before heading north. more bees, here.

at dinner, i was telling a friend about the 蜂民, i even tried 蜜民, before folks understood that i meant 蜂农，a phrase which (unlike 蜂民) shows up automatically in pinyin word-processing. yang qian laughed and said it sounded like i was talking about “crazy people (疯民)”.

then qingfeng joked, nobody wants to be 民　because that character has a negative connotation in chinese.

i said what about 人民?

no, not good. better to be an official.

who aren’t part of the people?

chuckle, chuckle.

i persisted, what about citizen (公民)?

that can’t be helped (无奈)!

everbody at the table laughed, reaffirming the unquestioned truth that as an american 公民 i couldn’t understand what it means to be a chinese citizen. we then started talking about the medicinal benefits of lychee honey, which helps develop anti-bodies to local strains of flu. it was a polite segue that suddenly seemed a portentious metaphor. now i’m wondering about social honey and culturally born strains of flu: what keeps the people healthy?

found objects: houhai

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this entry unites two of my obsessions: discarded objects and the houhai land reclamation project.


looking from old coastline toward the houhai land reclamation

in shekou, the land reclamation project continues, with new housing developments popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain, so to speak. like any good mushroom, these developments thrive in dark and fetid spaces, only to be washed up and presented as luxuries. the first step in growing a development mushroom is razing whatever came before (in the sense of shenzhen history: this entry presupposes that the rural has already been displaced). what came before is usually narrow, one-story high temporary concrete structures, which functioned as residences and small businesses (more or less from the 1980a), but also more substantial, once-upon-a-time intended for the long haul, housing (late 80s, early 90s).

step two in cultivating mushrooms is picking through the rubble, scavanging whatever might still be of use–plastic can be sold, as can metals. as i stepped through the remains, i found a small clay teapot and picked it up. one of the pickers yelled at me in a henan dialect that i didn’t understand. when i asked if she wanted the teapot, however, she said no, adding in mandarin, “it can’t be sold.” she wasn’t interested in talking with me, lugging her scavagings to a truck, where a man weighed and bought them.

pickers, like this woman, move onto the temporary rubble heaps, setting up campsites that blend into the rubble. indeed, the campsites are difficult to distinguish from the garbage. the tents are made from the same plastic the pickers are scavanging and the kitchens seem burnt piles of stuff. but looking closely (or prying as the case may be), i saw fresh vegetables, packaged foods, and soap, although no source of fresh water. at this site, there were two campsites, and each had a separate stove. lucky pickers have a bicycle to cart findings to collection stations, where they can sell them.

step three, of course, is the arrival of construction crews. images of objects found while others picked, here.

seaworld’s other: the itinerant oyster farmers

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the oyster coast

although histories of shenzhen often begin by reminding the reader that the city was once a small fishing village, nevertheless, the closest that most residents and visitors have come to the local fishing industry is on the yantian coast, where seafood restaurants crowd the space around the docks. in western shenzhen, the local fishing industry has been increasingly pushed away as the houhai land reclamation project moves the coastline closer to hong kong. this pushing increased at the turn of the millenium, when more upscale projects started reshaping local neighborhoods. however, it is only in the past two or three years, as the building projects have finished and new people moved in, that gentrification has successfully ousted most of the fishing industry. indeed, in the shadows and grind of a multi-building elite housing estate, i lost one of my favorite seafood restaurants, which had specialized in shellfish.

just beyond the the seaworld plaza, where nuwa holds up the sky, people gather to look at the ocean and the odd fishing boat. after breakfast, a friend and i walked down there; she to visit one of shenzhen’s well-known tourist sites, me to see if anything had changed. and it had. oyster farmers had occuppied the stretch of coast from nuwa toward rose garden estates and oyster shells now covered the area, creating the land for makeshift docks and oyster processing. in addition to harvesting oysters to sell throughout shenzhen, farmers were shelling and drying oysters to make oyster sauce, and then drying and grinding the shells to make a calcium supplement for animal feed. interestingly, many were not originally oyster farmers, but working on the boats for the season, after which they will look for other agricultural work.

pictures of seaworld’s other, here.

shadow people

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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.

和谐深圳：building a harmonious society

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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.