Tag Archives: urban village

后海新村: more houhai, again

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houhai tianhou

saturday morning, houhai new village, where the houhai tianhou once gazed out on houhai harbor and now sits back from houhai road, among shade trees and handshake buildings, her view blocked by cars and housing developments. those pictures, here.

also, at some point when i wasn’t paying attention, nanyou and chuangye roads became nanshan road. on my 2004 map, the road has the old names, which mark the border between nanyou and shekou neighborhoods. my 2006 map has the new names. i’m looking for a 2005 map to see when the change happened. interesting because it points to the continuing subordination of shekou to nanshan district. once, long ago, shekou was directly under the central government, and was only brought under district control in the early 1990s. but then again, the district system only came into play in the mid-1990s, but that’s not the story i’m telling here. nevertheless, i did wander past the old nanyou building and take a picture of it. again, interesting for its mid-1980s state of the art, both architecturally and in terms of landscape. (nanshan road runs parrallel to houhai road, and before the completion of the binhai expressway was the main road connecting the nantou peninsula to shenzhen by way of shennan road.)


nanyou building, shenzhen state-of-the-art, mid 1980s

second random thought of the houhai village walk. shenzhen is full of buildings from the late 1980s and early 1990s that have never used air-conditioner casings. the casings, attached to the buildings and located next to windows, were designed for small air-conditioners. presumably, once shenzheners could afford air-conditioners, they went for the bigger, better, colder variety. so empty casings and air-conditioners variously attached to the sides of buildings. as part of the beautify nanshan campaign, these randomly placed air-conditioners are now being caged.


never-used air-conditioner casings

月亮湾： remnants

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gate, nanyuan village

the nantou peninsula juts into the pearl river delta just above hong kong. the houhai land reclamation project takes place along the southern coast, stretching east toward mangrove natural preserve. historically, the southern coast was unprotected from taiphoons and pirates, and so the nantou villages huddled along the yueliang harbor (月亮湾) on the northern coast of the nantou penisula. each village had it’s own pier, where fishing boats anchored. a narrow road that stretched from the county seat at nantou market (today “nine streets”) to shekou linked each village to its neighbor, and then curved around nanshan mountain toward shekou and then chiwan. the road was divided up by gates, which were once locked at night, but now stand as reminder of previous loyalties and social worlds.

in the eighties, after village lands had been appropriated (征用) by state and newly established shenzhen ministries, the villages were left with plats of land(宅地) for each male villager, his sons, and grandsons as well as land for collective economy. this land became the basis of the new villages. now, in nantou, this system of giving out plats to people with extant land as well as to their sons and grandsons, who had not yet built homes, resulted in a particular landscape. on the one hand, there are identifiable sections of new village of colorfully tiled 3 to 8 story buildings. these areas were built on farmland, which was planned in that each eligible villager received exactly one hundred sq meters. pressed up against each other, these buildings occupy all of the space, except for a narrow alley in between each building. indeed, they are so close, neighbors can reach across the alley and shake their neighbor’s hand. on the other hand, there remain old buildings, which the owners have not yet razed and replaced. these buildings are now used for commercial storage or as small workshops.

the new villages as did the old villages, once nestled along yueliang wan. the point of this entry is simply that yueliang harobor has now been successfully reclaimed. the first street, which winds along the former coast is called, ironically enough, qianhai road (前海路). another, larger road yueliang harbor road now stretches along the much straightened coast. as the harbor has been filled, the villages have been surrounded by upscale housing developments, creating familiar “basins” on nantou. specifically, the city has surrounded the countryside, hidden it from view.

south of the nantou penisula villages, cars rush along nanxin road toward five-star hotels and 30-story condo buildings. north of the villages, cars speed home on qianhai road. indeed, for several years now, nantou has been considered a white-collar haven. inside the villages, shenzhen’s original residents live on one floor of their handshake homes, renting the rest of the space, including old buildings to migrants, who can’t afford to live on either nanxin or qianhai roads. within the narrow alleyways of the new villages, original shenzhen peasents and rural migrants from the rest of china have recreated rural chinese markets within the belly of shenzhen’s capitalist beast. i walked east from nanyuan village toward guimiao road, passing through nanyuan, beitou, xiangnan, and duntou villages. contradictions posted here.

浪心：surging hearts

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grandma sou from langxin village

The characters for 浪心村, Langxin Village literally translate as “wave heart” village. However, I’ve chosen to title this entry “surging hearts” because of the four people I met there.

This weekend, Yan Ling invited me to go with her to langxin to interview Grandma Sou, a 90 year-old woman who was still living in her old home; indeed she had been in the same home for over seventy years, since the day she married into Langxin. Her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have all moved out of the village. Some are in the United States, others live in new village housing located next to the old village, which is now home to migrant workers.

Because neither Yan Ling nor I speak enough Cantonese to actually interview anyone, we asked A Jun to go with us. Once we arrived, however, A Jun suggested that we find someone from the village to introduce us to Grandma Sou. In old village housing next to the yuan surname ancestoral hall, we asked who had a key to the ancestoral hall so we could see it. A woman from Hunan brought us to Uncle Chen’s house. Born in Langxin, Uncle Chen retired to langxin in 1992. Before that he had been in Beijing and for a time in Hong Kong.

Uncle Chen told us that the Yuan ancestoral hall was one of three important buildings in the village. The other two were a family temple and the old school. All three were in various statges of disrepair, although money was spent to keep the ancestral hall and village clean and incense burning. In order to earn the roughly 5,000 rmb necessary to keep the ancestral hall clean, Uncle chen had rented out space behind the hall to migrants. the rental money was used for the upkeep and an annual dinner for all the villagers.

“How many villagers are there?” I asked.

“Roughly 20 males in the village,” Uncle Chen replied.

“Not many.”

“No,” he agreed. “They’ve all left.”

Not quite it turns out.

We asked uncle chen to introduce us to Grandma Sou. He agreed to ask if she would see us. And she did, with the caveat that she was partially deaf and couldn’t understand most of what was said to her. So we went to her home, where she smiled at us, and we smiled back, as Uncle Chen occasionaly screamed our questions at her.

WHY DON’T YOU LEAVE?

Because its quiet here.

DO YOU COOK FOR YOURSELF?

Yes.

WHO DOES YOUR SHOPPING?

My children.

After a few photos, we left. I was struck by her graciousness and also her independence. We could come or go; this was her life and it certainly needed no explanation or documentation. At the door, we met two of her friends, who have also lived in the village for almost seventy years. They come to visit everyday, even though they know Grandma Sou can’t hear them speak.

“How many old women are in the village?” we asked.

Over ten was the answer.

They asked me where I was from and laughed when I insisted that they were beautiful, one of the few phrases I can manage in Cantonese. They allowed me to take their pictures and then went in to sit with Grandma Sou.

大芬村：souvenir update

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i went back to dafen with a friend and bought several souvenirs. i met a husband and wife who have a shop selling old ceramics, including mao busts and plates from the cultural revolution. unable to resist the irony i bought a plate of mao and lin biao. the quotation (published in the p.l.a. news on august 3, 1967) reads, “revolution is the liberation of productive forces, revolution is advancing the development of productive forces (革命就是解放生产力，革命就是促进生产力的发展)”。i then flipped through their collection of cultural revolution posters, all the while wondering, “what if they’re fake?!” however, authenticity wasn’t what stopped me from buying a poster; i didn’t purchase a poster because i wanted brighter colors. the vendor explained the black and white prints in terms of development: apparently china didn’t have color printing in the 1960s.

i also met a husband and wife who sell contemporary vases, as well as remnants from their former business importing russian folk art (by way of harbin). so i bought a small vase and am using it to hold pens and pencils. the folk art had me thinking again about the aesthetic politics of copying. i don’t look for unique folk art, but authentic, which is defined by continuing a tradition, usually through emulation–the big latin word for copying. in a nearby shop, a woman selling miao folk art, all guaranteed to be hand embroidered, reiterated this truth. repetition authorizes tradition. but repetition by whom? could i make a vase, or only appropriate the technique, no matter how accurate my interpretation?

so three examples of reproductions that aren’t forgeries–cultural revolution stuff, russian folk art, and miao embroidery, all sold in dafen. meanwhile, the shenzhen daily reports that huang ye (黄野), one of the most successful entrepreneurs in dafen, has a factory of over 200 employees, with 10 designers making “original” works within a particular tradition for sale in europe and the united states.huang ye has contextualized artistic reproduction in terms of italian tradition and global economics. in mandarin, these oil reproductions are called 行画 (hanghua). according to huang ye, the reproduction of classic works used to be based in italy. however, given economic development, this production moved to korea in the 1930s and 40s, with the orders and models coming from italy. in the 1960s and 1970s production moved from korea to hong kong, where the reproductions were called 韩画 (hanhua), eventually moving to china in the 1980s.

a final irony. the vendors of russian folk art also like indian religious iconography. behind their desk, they have placed a russian mary and guan yu, the god of wealth beneath two indian gods. when i asked, they said that guan yu was important in guangdong; all businessmen had a guanyu in their shop. the other gods were just aesthetically pleasing.

dafen office space

who’s to say that dafen hasn’t been revolutionized?

沙尾村：the banality of progress

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the three r’s of a successful boomtown: raze, replace, repeat (every ten years, sooner if possible).

旧村改新：initial observations

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this is another thoughts-in-progress entry. these past few days, i have been trying to organize thoughts about the 旧村改新 (old village make-overs), a recent government initiative to clean-up shenzhen’s new villages (now understood as “old”). this was part of the reason for posting on luohu; i actually took that series of pictures last december, but the juxtaposition of new luohu village, the era of two cities building, the new housing development, and the renovated train station point to issues that come together in the make-over initiative. so if you haven’t yet, you may want to first take a walk about luohu.

the point, of course, is simple: there are many shenzhens and they all abut one another. indeed, it’s as difficult to miss new villages, which have a distinctive layout and architecture, as it is to overlook a high-end housing development. these different urban forms actualize the different development trajectories that shenzhen’s villagers and white-collar migrants have pursued. that is to say, even if we bracket for the moment the question of whether or not shenzhen has deep, imperial history, nevertheless, it has been over 25 years since deng xiaoping began reform and opening just north of hong kong. architecture styles and urban plans actualize different moments in this process, providing a material history of the city. with the village make-over initiative, the government seems determined to remove traces of historic difference, even as cultural officials continue to moan about shenzhen’s lack of history. below is a picture of the arch at the entrance to huanggang new village.

the old village make-over initiative first came to my attention over dinner last year, when friends were discussing the government’s decision to raze 18 mid-rise buildings), right at the huanggang cross-border checkpoint. the topic came up not because those at the table disagreed with the make-over process, but because this was the first time china was simultaneously imploding 18 buildings. the event was know as “china’s first blast (全国第一爆).the buildings belonged to yunong village (渔农村). if memory holds, the conversation focused on the technology involved, the need for a modern area to face hong kong, and the avarious fearlessness of villagers, who continued to errect illegal, rental properties.

this past year, i have watched construction teams lay the foundations for a new yunong with something of a jaded eye. this is not the first time that the municipal government had directed a movement specifically at shenzhen’s urban villages. and in a certain sense, it often feels like a more of the same kind of project.

in 1991, the government initiated the rural urbanization movement (农村城市化运动) with the goal of integrating all villages into the municipal government and giving all shenzhen peasants, citizen status. this was called the double transformation. this movement finally ended in august 2004, when baoan and longgang districts announced that all villages had been redistricted and all villagers had been given a new hukou. shenzhen was thereby the first city in china to have neither villages nor villagers within its borders.

for officials determined to turn their city into a global, international city, the end of rural shenzhen was a major milestone. indeed, in this area shenzhen has been heralded as a national leader. these administrative changes, however, did not irradicate the visceral spatial differences between shenzhen villages and the surrounding city.

in order to deepen the integration of the villages into the fabric of the city, shenzhen officials turned their gaze to the built environment as a sign of rural-urban difference. consequently, the following year, in 2005, the government decided to start the old village make-over initiative. crudely, this entails razing what are known as “handshake buildings” and replacing them with modern residential developments. handshake buildings are so-called because they are so close to each other that neighbors can reach out their windows or across their balconies and shake hands. the initiative includes building plazas and public areas, as well as different kinds of housing developments. i include a picture of a row of handshake buildings, huanggang new village.

compare with an image of the new urban dreams currently under construction in huanggang:

the old village make-over initiative was formally approved on october 28, 2005. it is a special five-year plan to improve the urban villages (城中村), speed up urbanization, promote the unification of infrastructure within and outside the sez, realize the joint planning and harmonious development of urban villages and other areas in the city, and to advance the architecture of a global, modern, and key city, errect a harmonious and efficient shenzhen. the curious can check out the full old village make-over plan online.

nevertheless, the question of make-overs and everyday life only became interesting the other day, when i was in shuiwei and huanggang, two of the futian villages that abut the hong kong border. frankly, i was impressed with the layout of shuiwei’s culture plaza, which boasts a funky (if derivative) outdoor stage, a curious rocks museum (the rocks are mainly from guangxi), and a library. i also had tea at a colorful hong kong style teashop, where the milk tea was strong and rich. suddenly, i wanted to move from tianmian, which is conveniant but not like shuiwei. (the lack of tasty but reasonable restaurants in tianmian is a bone of ongoing contention. after all, one of the defining features of the urban villages has been the quality and price of the restaurants.)

my desire to move to shuiwei points to an underlying fact about new village life; the primary source of income for most villagers is rental property. this has meant that villagers have built as densely and as highly as possible, with little concern for the overall environment. it also has meant a density of cheap beauty and massage parlors, restaurants, places to play mah johng, food markets. indeed, since the mid-1990s, as most of shenzhen’s factories have been pushed outside city limits, the importance of rental property and services to village economies has grown. the main residents of the villages are low income migrants, usually from the countryside.

it seems that the ratio of villagers to migrants in the villages concerns the government. the villages maintain their own militias (民兵) that act as a police force within village borders, shifting social regulation from the state to these quasi-governmental organizations. according to futian government statistics, for example, there were 19,353 villagers registrared in 15 administrative villages (there are 20 natural villages in futian.) those villagers provided housing for 572,143 migrants. a ratio of 1 villager for every 29.5 migrants. (these figures do not include unregistered migrants, some of whom live in illegal housing, but others who live in the underground walkways that connect villages to the city proper.) these migrant laborers are precisely the persons regularly identified in the press and popular opinion as causing social unrest. outside the sez in baoan and longgang districts, the villager to migrant ratio is even higher. thus, this research suggests that the greatest challenge facing the make-over movement is a contradiction between the villagers’ economic interest (as landlords) and the state’s interest in maintaining social discipline.

i conclude with a picture of the home of the shuiwei militia (水围民兵之家).

home, tianmian garden

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home, tianmian garden
Originally uploaded by mary_ann_odonnell.

I realize that I’ve spoken about inhabiting Shenzhen without actually taking about where I live. I’m not sure if this evasion was deliberate or simply the result of habits—research is other than my quotidian reality, even if I write myself into the story. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t taken pictures of Tianmian, the village/development where I live, but have thought about the actual story being elsewhere, in the anywhere but here mode of ethnographic inquiry, which, I’ve come to suspect, is tied up in the throes of middle class American angst about standing still when I should be moving on (to something better, of course). Certainly that impulse, even more than an affinity for things Asian, propelled me out of high school and into China studies.

Today’s project then is to sit and think about Tianmian.

An urban village, Tianmian is located next to Shenzhen’s Central Park, west of the Shanghai Hotel. Throughout the 80’s and most of the 90’s, the Shanghai Hotel marked the western edge of “downtown”. The Luohu Train Station, a main crossing point into Hong Kong, marked downtown’s eastern border. However, since the mid-90’s, development has moved west and with it the city’s center, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the edges between downtown and the rest of the municipality have blurred. Once considered part of the “suburbs”, Tianmian is now prime real estate, being located just west of the new City Hall Building (the old building was located east of the Shanghai Hotel) and a ten-minute cab ride from Huanggang, a recently opened crossing point into Hong Kong.

It is important to understand that Tianmian encompasses a wide variety of folks and livelihoods. In this, Tianmian is highly representative of Shenzhen, although at a smaller scale than in Longgang and Baoan Districts, where the villages retained much more land than did villages within the SEZ proper (Nanshan, Futian, Luohu, and Yantian Districts). Millennium Oasis is a high-end housing development, where established professionals and their families live. Interestingly, many of these are extended families, who either live in the same condominium or have bought condominiums in the same building (older sister lives on the fifth floor and younger on the seventh, for example). New Tianmian Village includes the Village’s factories, mid-level housing development (Tianmian Gardens), and the New Village proper. These constitute the basic livelihood of all Tianmian villagers, who have stock options in both the factories and Tianmian Gardens, where young professionals and working families live, again many extended families here in a smaller space than Millennium Oasis. The New Village condos/apartments are the cheapest to own or rent. Many singles live there, as do friends who have pooled their money to move in together. Each of the buildings in the New Village belongs to one of the village men and it provides revenue that is independent of collective resources.

I’m not sure how many people live and work in Tianmian, but there are approximately 670 units (9 buildings) in Millennium Oasis, 780 units in Tianmian Gardens (5 buildings), and 2,048 units in the New Village (63 buildings). There is also a dormitory associated where Tianmian factory workers live. I live in Tianmian Gardens.

I first came to Tianmian in 1996 to interview the developers, who subsequently became good friends. The government requires developers to build a kindergarten and school as part of the development. Once the school has been built, the developers can choose to either give the school to the state to run, or to run the school themselves. My friends chose to run the school themselves. Part of the curriculum included an emphasis on English. They originally hired a teacher, who for various reasons, didn’t come. Subsequently, they asked me teach until another teacher could be found. That was four years ago. The first year, I thought it was a temporary arrangement. I left to take a visiting position at the Rhode Island School of Design and maintained my research affiliation with Shenzhen University. However, when I returned two years ago, I had signed a three-year contract with the school, where I am now vice principal in charge of internationalization. Crudely, internationalization includes reforming the English curriculum, setting up programs with international schools in Shenzhen, and implementing an English language curriculum in the High School.

Sometimes, I think my trajectory from conducting research to setting up a school is very Shenzhen, where folks pride themselves on being practical rather than idealistic. Before I came to the school, my friends joked that I was wasting myself at the University, especially as everything was happening outside the (increasingly porous) University walls. I also recognize in it a disconnect between my research style and that of the US Academy, where I managed to obtain visiting positions, but never a tenure track appointment; I grew tired of looking for the next job. Yet my husband lives and works in Shenzhen. My friends live and work in Shenzhen. One day I realized that I wanted to commit to being present to those lives. So I stayed.

In my personal map of Shenzhen, Shenzhen University has symbolized my attempts at ethnography. From 1995 through 1998, the University was my base while I conducted fieldwork for my dissertation. I have taught there and continue to return for seminars and to meet with friends to talk about our various projects. The University also symbolizes a particular way of being in the world—moving from one academic appointment to the next, placing that ambition in front of everything else. In contrast, Tianmian has represented another impulse, one to settle, to come home after years of always moving on. It is not simply that I have resided here for the past two years, but that Tianmian is where I settled. Please visit.