Back. And yes, coming into Hong Kong International Airport, I noticed the extensive advertising for the Universiade, more wonderfully, blue skies welcomed me. Limiting the number of cars in Shenzhen and shutting down factories makes the environment more beautiful. I am looking forward to walking the city over the next few days and enjoying clarity.
Universiade facelifts continue and, along certain paths in the city – the global, neoliberal, middle class paths – one walks through rubble under tarps and past construction sites. Nevertheless, several steps off those intended tracks, life continues undisturbed by visions of what Shenzhen leaders think foreigners / outsiders should see. The effect of this selective construction is to further isolate pockets of working class ordinariness and transform it into unsightly poverty. In fact, one of the reasons urban villages are as such is because the city grew up around them, closing them in, and distorting their relationship to greater landscape. Thirty odd years ago, a village was a tight cluster of single story story houses and narrow paths in the midst of rice paddies, streams, orchards, and small docks that opened to either the Pearl River or the South China Sea; today an urban village is a tight cluster of three to eight story rentals that hum in the shadows of thirty story apartment complexes and postmodern skyscrapers even as the sea recedes.
Below, a walk through Dongmen, Hubei New Village, and Old Luohu work unit neighborhoods, begging the question: if what we see is what we get, why aren’t we learning to look more deeply?
Last night at a bus stop, happened upon Shenzhen’s latest universiade campaign and yes, its Confucian quotes about welcoming guests and behaving in civilized fashion. The neoconfucian quotes are part of a larger campaign that is using the universiade to teach Shenzhen residents how to properly inhabit the city. In the subway, for example, posters show event mascot UU lining up and waiting his turn to get onto the subway. Elementary schools are teaching students to smile openly “in a western way” to great foreign guests in a friendly manners; indeed, in one of my favorite news stories, the Binhe Elementary principal explained the creation of the schools’ Smile Angels and then winning angels analyzed the characteristic that made their smile uniquely welcoming – sweet, like a bow, and so open I end up squinting.
This campaign deepens and expands upon popular neoconfucianism throughout Shenzhen. As mentioned in an earlier post, for example, some schools and many families require children to memorize the three character jing in order to cultivate filial and more intelligent children. The SEZ’s 30th Anniversary was also celebrated with Confucian quotes. I’ve also noticed that recent advertising campaigns have stepped up the filial piety quotient, moving from generalized “care for your parents by using our product” formulae to the following structure – a mother tries to help a son, the son rejects her help, and then discovers his mistake. Product placement underscores the twin moments of maternal care and the son’s enlightenment.
The Confucian Merchant (儒商) has long figured in Shenzhen public discourse about how the newly wealthy should behave, focusing on business ethics and philanthropic responsibility. Then came a grassroots movement among the middle class to teach children Confucian classics. However, the Universiade campaign underscores that the Municipality’s public discourse is growing even more explicitly neoconfucian, which in turn, points to the flexible soft side of municipal ideology and its intersections with culture and commerce – hegemony in the sense of unquestioned common sense.
All the universiade mandated upgrades have us walking through and between construction sites. Today’s pictures from Coastal City and Seaworld.
I’ve learned a new expression, face engineering projects (面子工程), which I understand to mean large scale social mobilization that is just for show and will vanish with the project’s intended audience. Continue reading
Follow-up on last post: there have been weibo posts about Shenzhen’s decision to force 80,000 people out of the city. Of note, the incident has led to Lu Xun spirited condemnations of “Chinese character”. A few translations from the past 1/2 hour:
Shi Shusi‘s summery: 深圳为了确保大运会顺利举办，确定“黑八类”予以驱逐本身是个闹剧，而不少人在俺的博客留言对此政策表示拥护则是个杯具。他们不是神马强势阶层，仅仅有幸没被列入驱逐黑名单——类似阿Q面对更弱的小D，肆意欺凌，没有任何慈悲和怜悯。这证明深圳此举是有一定群众基础的，这有些令人绝望。
In order to insure safety at the Universiade, determining “a playoff list” to determine who is banished is a farce, and many people posted that those upholding the policy were in a bad play [sic]. The ones upholding the policy aren’t the advantaged, but rather the lucky ones who didn’t get black listed — like when A Q faced the even weaker Little D, wantonly humiliating him, without compassion or sympathy. This shows that the policy has a wide base, making some people despair.
说明当权者成功的一面。许多人不知不觉中成为阿斗，成为帮凶，到自己也深受其害是才发觉周围已没有人再为自己呐喊了，华夏民族的悲哀。This just goes to show one side of success. Many aren’t aware that they’ve become fools and accomplices until they discover that there is no one around to yell for help when they are in trouble. This is the sadness of Chinese people.
抵制大运会，还屁民以尊严。Boycott the Universiade, where’s our fucking national pride.
The published facts demand interpretation:
According to reports, as of April 6 in the “One Hundred Days Movement”, municipal police have gone out 284,000 times; they have made over 330,000 inspections of rental housing, 32,000 inspections of internet bars, 60,000 inspections of tourist agencies, 20,000 inspections of clubs, and 40,000 inspections of other spaces. As a result, over 2,300 landlords have been penalized [for infractions] and over 1,180 illegal internet bars, travel agencies, and other spaces have been closed, effectively cleansing areas that have had difficulty insuring public safety.
据悉，截至４月６日，在“百日行动”中，我市警方共出动警力２８．４万人次；检查出租屋３３万余间（次）、网吧３．２万余家（次）、旅业６万余家（次）、休闲娱乐场所约２万家（次）、其他场所４万余家（次）；处罚出租屋主２３００余人，停业整顿、取缔黑网吧、旅业及其他场所１１８０余家，有效净化了社会治安难点地区。 Continue reading
Landscaping at the Spring Cocoon is moving forward as Shenzhen gears up to great the world. Today, I was given a neon green sticker that says “Start Here”, which Nanshan Second Foreign Language School students were distributing. I offer seven photos to give a sense of before and after changes at that particular corner, right in front of the Kempinski Hotel and next to the school. #1 The entrance to the stadium, that mascot string of bubbles, which sometimes have faces and speak in cartoons; #2 that corner in June 2003 and then #3 in April 2011; #4 the old coastline at that corner, June 2003 and then #5 in April 2011; #6 a picture of the area taken from Binhai road, looking northwest, and; #7 topiary details.
Most discussions of Shenzhen emphasize that as an immigrant city, Shenzhen is a Mandarin speaking outpost of national culture in the midst of Guangdong Province. However, this description glosses over the historical division of Baoan County into Cantonese and Hakka cultural areas, and how urban development focused on the SEZ (rather than the entire Municipality).
The establishment of Baoan and Longgang Districts in 1992 institutionalized these historic divisions, with a Cantonese cultural-linguistic area (Baoan District) and a Hakka cultural-linguistic area (Longgang District). At the same time, the traditional SEZ (bounded by the second line) formed the core of Mandarin national culture in the city.
Thinking about Shenzhen as a tri-cultural city enables understanding of how cultural homogenization does and does not take place. Today, I’m thinking specifically about the creation of a recognizably “rural” local identity versus an “urbane” Shenzhen identity. In the area surrounding the Universiade Village, for example, these various trends are most visible in ongoing construction and demolition projects.
Construction wise, the planned Universiade Village boasts beautiful, glass stadiums and swimming areas, which reflect urbane aesthetics. Indeed, the nearby 5-star hotels and upscale residential areas lump Shenzheners (the Mandarin nationals) with cutting edge international taste and consumption. This aesthetics contradicts that of the mid-90s generation of handshake buildings that constitute much of the Longcheng Street residential area. Architecturally, it all seems a straight-forward contradiction between rural and urbane Shenzhen, which in turn is often misread as a contradiction between Cantonese and Mandarin spheres.
In fact, walking through a small Hakka Village, like Dawei indicates how recent handshake buildings as an architectural sign of the rural are in Shenzhen. In Dawei, the handshake buildings have been built into and on top of a traditional, small Hakka compound (similar to the one in Sungang). In other words, handshake buildings create a common “rural” or “Baoan local” identity for (once culturally and linguistically distinct) Cantonese and Hakka villages only in contradistinction to a Mandarin identity.
Visual evidence in slideshow, below.
507 artists worked on the Dafen Lisa for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. However, as the City beautifies for the next big international event (the Universiade), the piece was targeted for removal because it does not conform to (ever changing) urban plans. Unexpectedly, the decision was successfully protested because the scale of Dafen’s collective copy of the Mona Lisa has produced a cultural item that is recognized as being unique to Shenzhen, which in turn, has led to debates about “to raze or not to raze (拆，还是不拆).”
This debate interests because it speaks to Shenzheners’ increasing recognition that over the past thirty years, what they have done is valuable and worthwhile, no matter what other people think. The birth, if you will, of civic pride against the very standards that were once the city’s raison d’être. Here’s the quote:
深圳为大运会整顿市容本没有错，街道、城管相关部门没有错。政府关注的是安全、规范、整洁；媒体关注的是文化艺术氛围，艺术家与画工关注的则是生存与创造环境。若果一定要说错，那可能是我们的文化错了：在一次次国际盛会面前，我们是如此“激动”，以至于显得不太自信。
Shenzhen is not wrong to beautify the city for the universiade, the relevant street and city departments are also not wrong. The government is concerned with safety, order, and tidiness; the media is concerned about cultural and artistic atmosphere, artists and art workers are concerned about their living and creative environment. Perhaps if we have to say something is wrong, maybe its that our culture is wrong: in international event after international event, we become this “excited”, which makes us seem to lack self-confidence.
Shenzhen Noted 