A City Called Shenzhen

其他 创作
欧宁 发表于:
2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture Guidebook
In the South It is only a 300-meter walk to the subway from where I live, but if I'm in a bit of a hurry, I sweat. I'm in short-sleeves, but I can still feel that sticky contact between my body and the humid air of this city. We're only feeling a little autumn chill here, but in the north they're reporting heavy snowfall. Winter has come early in the north, but it's still tardy here in the south, I don't know why. When I'm finally seated behind my desk, opening images of snowy scenes that friends have sent me, I think of how, many years ago, winter would arrive here soon after it came to the north. Nothing seemed to obstruct the cold fronts then; they came marching down, sweeping away the hot damp dust of the south, giving the people here a taste of winter's bite. Not so these days; this world's ever-changing climate is so hard to grasp. I moved to this city twenty years ago. I left it ten years later, and now work has brought me back for a brief stay. When I first moved here the city had only recently been built, and everywhere you looked you could see new-hewn roads slicing through low hills, the dark red hillsides not yet re-cloaked in foliage. I was living in a seaside campus at the time, and had views of a long unbroken stretch of the border, under blue skies and white clouds stunning in their contrast. It is across this particular bay that so many have swum. People yearned for the city on the other side, and they practiced swimming from the time they were young, often slipping past the coast-guards' watch on moonless, windy nights and swimming towards an imagined future. Many met their demise at the end of gun barrels, others in the bellies of fishes. Some, of course, were successful, and years later became the heroes of another age (1) – though the sugarcane, fish pools, banana woods and star-fruit trees that had bewitched them so in their youths no longer exist; in their place have risen skyscrapers, and the rush of traffic. This city is only thirty years old. Before it became a city, it was just another little southern border town. Those who fled here were beginning the struggle for life in a new place. When they were pricked by homesickness, they could simply walk to the border, call to their relatives living on the other side and, beneath the gaze of border guards wearing two different kinds of uniforms, pour their longing for home through the wire mesh fence (2). Soon, history began to loose its bonds, and trade flourished along the border, large quantities of gold, clothing and daily articles began to flow, drawing back the curtain on a whole new age of consumerism in China (3). History called this place awake. It was marked off as a special economic zone, beginning a bold new experiment, and attracted mostly foreign investment from overseas Chinese (4). At the same time, large numbers of people rushed in from other parts of China, speaking all kinds of dialects, carrying their meager belongings, coming in search of their dreams. I, a young goose-herder from the countryside, was one of them. I will always remember that year, the moment I got off the train after a long, arduous journey, and the sense of my own triviality as I was swallowed up by the rushing floods of humanity. In that shoddy yet lively square in front of the station, each human being was merely an insignificant speck of dust. The legends of this city have been talked about too much already. What gave rise to these legends? I've found that its geographical location is key. It is situated at the southern edge of the nation's border, bordering on a major metropolis with a long-standing tradition of capitalism, both nourished by the same river (5), both sharing a spoken dialect distinct from mandarin Chinese, resulting in a local character very different from the country's interior. This swath of territory had early commercial dealings with other countries, becoming familiar with modern economic concepts such as free trade and property rights, and it looks out over a wider world. Meanwhile it has been a point of origin for revolution many times throughout history. It is adept at knowing which way the wind blows, and values deeds and actions, and so has been more accepting of historical change than other places, even actively promoting such change. From this point of view, "the south" has already become shorthand for a certain kind of spirit. Twenty years ago, when I arrived here clutching a train ticket, I too imagined myself a pioneer come to make my place in a new world. I knew that nothing was for certain, but I also believed that anything was possible. Losing the Countryside The year I arrived in Shenzhen, my younger sister came, too. She had only recently finished middle school and was helping at home, then one day she abruptly boarded a bus that was picking up female laborers, and was gone. She went first to a toy factory in Bao'an, where she lacquered toys, then went to carry plates in a Cantonese restaurant in Nantou, then worked on the assembly line at an electronics factory in Luohu, switched again to answering phones in a call center, then returned for a time to the food industry, and finally became a warehouse manager for a factory in Bagualing. It wasn't until that factory was restructured that she began the job she has now, in a property management company. She has held so many different jobs over the past twenty years, and lived in so many different places – now she is married, with children, and has organized her own little household. Shenzhen was once like a giant magnet, drawing in girls like my sister from the countryside. While she was at home she was responsible for most of the housework, and sometimes brought piece-work home from the fishnet factory to add to the family's income. Every Spring Festival, village girls who had gone ahead of her to Shenzhen would come home dressed in all the newest styles, bringing with them all kinds of fashionable things, some of them even flashing Hong Kong currency, which she'd never seen before. All this produced in her a yearning for Shenzhen. When she finally arrived in the city and entered the cage-like factories, their doors sealed shut, becoming a busy, ant-like factory worker, she felt a little uncomfortable. I remember one evening, as I accompanied her back to her factory, I tried to comfort her: All the squabbling, Let it vanish along with this night. Tomorrow you'll be back on the production line, You are one of thousands of workers, You're my only kin in this foreign commercial land. The height of work season is almost over, It will be spring soon. One of these mornings you'll awake, And the bus will already be carrying you on the road to home. (6) I know that missing home can provide a sort of spiritual strength that helps workers like my sister deal with their unfamiliar environment and high-pressure jobs. They represent a cheap labor force overflowing out of China's vast agricultural regions; they gave their strength and their youth for Shenzhen's early processing and export economic model. The large numbers of workers flooding into the cities meant empty nests in the countryside, and the agricultural and fisheries industries (the mainstays of the countryside economy), once so vibrant, also began to relocate. Beginning in the early 1980s, large-scale urbanization drained the blood from the countryside and provided nothing in return. Behind any successful city are the many unseen contributions of the countryside at its margins. My home is a fishing and farming village in western Guangdong province. Every time I return, finally arriving after a long journey involving many different means of conveyance, passing from the clamor of the city to this place, I have the feeling that I have arrived at the ends of the earth. Though the world outside is changing by the day, this place maintains its original appearance: boundless red earth where dense sugarcane fields still grow; flooded fields are still plowed by a lone farmer and ox; the beaches at dusk, the tide fully out, are full of fishing boats with stowed masts and sails. Time seems to have stopped here; it instantly produces a kind of eternal rural recognition. But its changelessness also worries me; I am afraid in the end it will be left behind by this world. Should we cherish our memories, or look forward towards development? These are two choices we often face in these times. In China, the city and the countryside will forever be two aspects of the same problem, and finding balance between them is like a knotty math problem, stubbornly resisting resolution. The reality we seem to be facing is that the wave of urbanization will continue to roll forward, land resources within the cities will become ever more scarce, and large amounts of concentrated capital will begin to look towards the distant countryside. The incursion of urbanization into rural areas not only calls into question the continuation of thousands of years of agricultural civilization, it is also related to issues of the nation's ratio of arable land, and the food supply. Should we perhaps not think twice before we continue our forward progress? There's no doubt that Shenzhen's original residents were lucky; they were able to enjoy the benefits of this city's development. My sister was also lucky, at least she was able, through her own hard work and perseverance, to finally find a place to call her own here. But it is possible that one day, they may no longer be able to say for sure where their countryside lies. The fisherman's evening song, the drifting fragrance of the rice paddies – these things may soon appear to us only in dreams… City-Building Fever In 1992 I was one year away from graduating from college. Besides dating, I also busied myself with editing and publishing underground volumes of poetry. My life as a literary youth was spent mostly in Shenzhen, where the small number of poems I have produced in my life were written. That year, the strange and unfamiliar phenomenon of bars had just arrived in Shenzhen (the Duke on Hongling Road might have been Shenzhen's very first bar). They were different from the nightclubs which had been popular beforehand – they were more free, more relaxed, and it was easier to meet people there. The foreign ships docking at Shekou Port began to bring in Mexican beer, Sol and Corona, in quantity; at the time Shenzhen was the only place in China where you could find beer like that. Just at the time when lifestyles were quietly beginning to change in this city, Deng Xiaoping returned once again to the special economic zone that he had personally created, and gave his famous Southern Tour speech. A once-popular song had lyrics than went like this: "In the spring of 1979, an old man drew a circle on China's southern coast… In the spring of 1992, an old man wrote poems on China's southern coast." (7) The two dates mentioned in the song lyrics were not only important years in Shenzhen's history, they were important milestones in China's reform and opening up. A propaganda poster long stood at the Shenzhen Grand Theater intersection, which showed both Deng's wise and kindly face, but also his famous words of warning. He was the spiritual father of Shenzhen, and it was because of his superlative political wisdom and economic theories that Shenzhen could achieve what it has today. After he passed away, wreaths were placed beneath that poster, and it became something of a holy place, where people could express their gratitude and nostalgia. For some unknown historical reason, this leader chose Shenzhen time and time again, and it was here he sounded his loudest clarion in the center of power's mad storm. After his southern tour in 1992, Shenzhen was once again invested with an invigorating power, and upon the foundations of its early processing and manufacturing economy it embarked onto a new economic activity that would carry the whole nation behind it. Real estate and service industries sprang up, and the city-building fever began to spread. The new economic activity that originated in Shenzhen soon provoked a thorough transition in Chinese society: from a politicized society to a commercial society in which everything is consumed (this change is particularly evident in the media industries: some newspapers which were once the mouth of the government began to carry large numbers of advertisements, and began to actively court the interests of readers, fueling the flames of consumerism). In 1996, a Dutchman's towering frame was seen in Shenzhen and surrounding cities. He led a group of students from the Harvard school of design as they carried out a series of research projects, and in the end he invented a new technical term to describe these cities: COED (City of Exacerbated Difference) (8). When Wired Magazine asked him what he had learned from these cities, he said, "There, building something new is a daily pleasure and a daily occurrence… We discovered that in the area we were in it takes 10 days - and it's three people and three Apple computers. And it's a 40-story building. Others are done in two days." (9) This kind of speed, unimaginable to Europeans, is a typical symptom of city-building fever. A sort of out-of-context continental European style was popular in Shenzhen at that time. He witnessed this clumsy imitation, but also saw their new method of dealing with height and density, and believed deeply in its practicality and reasonableness. He discovered a new kind of feeling here, and shared his discovery with the world via exhibitions and publications. Interestingly, his research into the Pearl River Delta cities fed directly into his later interest in the design competition for the new CCTV headquarters in Beijing, and after winning that competition and completing the project, his architectural firm accepted two major projects in Shenzhen (the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and Crystal Island): ten years later, he has transformed from an observer to a creator. His name is Rem Koolhaas. His discoveries in the Pearl River Delta were later labeled an "alternative modernity", particular to Asian society. When I first read this Harvard research report, 722 pages in length, it was already 2001. This book provided me with a completely new angle from which to understand the city where I once studied, lived and worked, and it turned me into an irrepressible enthusiast of urban research. Shenzhen's city-building fever continues to this day. Back to the Streets Shenzhen is a 24-hour city. By day, its administrative system and commercial machinery operate at top speed; by night, bustling residential life sustains that urban energy. The former is hidden within the interior spaces of buildings, creating an invisible network of power; the latter is exposed on the street, and the clamor it creates is a symbol of this city's vitality. In the first few years after I entered society, I lived in a series of "urban villages" within Shenzhen. I found that these communities, built by original residents on their own land, formed a world that was independent and open, where they accepted outsiders, but also maintained autonomy, using their own wisdom to create a kind of inexpensive and convenient, but also rich and rowdy, street life. While I lived here I never felt the pressure of high rent, all my needs could be met for a low cost, and I never had to worry about finding food or entertainment at night. To a habitually sleepless person like myself, these urban villages were paradise. When I was bored, there were pirated movies and game centers; when I was hungry, there were street-side food stalls – not only fueling stations for the body, but also social venues, ideal places to hear what the people were saying and observe the world; when I was tired, I had a bed, a place to recharge quickly, and regain the strength to continue the battle the next day. In any city, it is always the lower strata of society which creates a truly vibrant street life. First of all, the street is where they make a living; second, restricted living space forces them to occupy the streets, to gather and seek pleasure there. When their rights are infringed upon or life becomes difficult, and they have no spokesperson or other means of expression, they will make their voices heard on the street. To them, the street is not only the competitive arena where they carve out a living, it is also the refuge where they seek out spiritual comfort, and the warmth of the masses, and the meeting hall where they express their opinions and participate in politics. It is because of them that the city streets overflow with life, a never-ending social drama. Henri Lefebvre once said that space is political (10). From the point of view of physics, it is essentially homogenous, but when people make use of it, it inevitably becomes stratified. The bourgeois and the upper classes steer clear of the lower classes' streets not only because they dislike the scent of the place, but also because of a deep-rooted sense of territorial segregation: they want to live in a community with walls and guards, in a home with a big living room and a garden, where they can hold social gatherings and move the life that might have happened on the streets into a private and well-defended space. This segregation is not only a safety consideration, it is also a symbol of identity and status. As these people spend more and more time holed up in their homes, the public urban spaces that were created for them naturally fall deeper into disuse. This is why you can often see public squares completely devoid of people, or empty rooftop gardens, or unvisited green spaces in the midst of fancy neighborhoods. On the design and planning blueprints these are all ideal public spaces for resting or gathering, but class separation and the barriers of identity mean that social interaction can never cross the dividing lines of urban spaces, and the result is wasted spaces on the one hand, and a great press of struggling humanity on the other. On countless days and nights my work would lead me to walk, linger and think in Shenzhen's Civic Square, opened in 2006. Its enormous scale once again made me feel my own insignificance (just as I had felt it twenty years ago in the train station square). Under the burning sun, the vast wings of the Civic Center sprang up towards the sky; at night it rested in the dark, illuminated by the distant city lights. When will the city's people return to the streets, I wondered. When will this square be thronged with visitors? Perhaps the singular purpose of its design (administrative functionality and political symbolism) is the key to the problem. If an urban space is to attract the crowds, it must perform a variety of functions and satisfy many different needs – this is also in line with principles of conservation of space and energy, and sustainable development. Besides holding celebrations and ceremonies, couldn't street life be moved here as well? As I write this, the following scene appears in my mind: people surging through a square filled with merchants, foodsellers, newspaper hawkers, venders of clothing and other goods – all those who typically struggle to make a living on the streets raising their voices and shouting their wares… The Amusement Park Shenzhen was once called the entertainment capital of southern China. Early on, Hong Kong people came in large numbers to open factories and companies, and thus Shenzhen replicated Hong Kong's entertainment model wholesale – it was filled with karaoke joints, nightclubs and enormous food streets, where beautiful young girls from other parts of China converged, and all desires for food, drink and fun could be satisfied. As a city which had sprung out of nowhere its tourist resources were sorely lacking, but the clever Shenzhen people created a tourism-industry miracle out of man-made scenery. Mini scenic spots such as "Splendid China" and "Window of the World" once drew countless Chinese visitors to experience and appreciate. Though these were not Shenzhen's inventions, Shenzhen took them to new heights. Miniaturization is a classic element of China's entertainment and tourism culture. In ancient times it resulted in the bonsai tree, miniature forests and false mountains; in Shenzhen it passed through some mysterious transformation to become a commercial innovation. Miniaturized scenes are a kind of substitute, they not only compress the wider world, they also compress the distance between people's dreams and reality. They turn great into small, turn nature manmade, turn reality into imagination, turn far into near, and turn those things that can never be ours into possessions and playthings. Miniaturization, through compression, alters the scale of things; through replication, it absorbs the essence of the original. The city of Shenzhen itself is a miniaturization – it compressed what would have been a thousand or at least several hundred years of historical progress for a normal human city into the space of thirty years, and instantly packaged up human dreams into a solid, tangible object, redeemable for cash value. In the ten years I lived here I saw the construction of even more entertainment venues. Heading east from Shennan Avenue, you can see such sights as the skyscraper of the "Honey Lake Resort" piercing the sky, or the slides of the "Water Fun Park" lying like a giant coiled python, or the stacked neon and dazzling billboard ads of "Happy Valley". I often imagine the scene years from now, when they've gone out of business and have turned to ruins, overrun with grass and tangled in ivy – these structures always give me a tragic sense of the brevity of life, and the fleetingness of pleasure. The daredevilry of the cablecar, in which your life seems to hang by a thread, the thrill of a weird but lifelike world, romping and playing in the water, the temporary pleasures that make us forget our worries – they form a kind of rebellion against the real world, a sort of addictive hallucinogen. Someday, when their purpose is fulfilled and they have finally succeeded in bearing us common folk through our intolerable mortal lives, they will revert to wilderness. For a long time, the Chinese did not know what happiness was. Our history has been a solemn one, we are accustomed to making contributions to a collective to which we are merely a tool, and so as we step into a new age, entertainment has become away for us to express our new awakening. Like Cui Jian's sudden rise to fame: he is only a musician, but within that certain period of history, the hopes and expectations of the entire society changed his music into the cutting edge of thought. In the late 1980s and early 90s, as all of Chinese society began to reform, all cutting-edge culture found its breakout from the entertainment industry. They placed themselves within this thing that people loved to hear and see, and the cutting edge of their social criticism flowed out along with the rushing desire for happiness. This was a strategy, and it was also the choice of history. For a time, I worked in Shenzhen introducing rock and roll warriors like Cui Jian to a larger public. At that time, performances could only be held in commercial venues like bars, and I have seen countless people celebrate his music as though they had gone mad: below the stage, in crowded spaces, they used his songs to release all their own suffering and discontent, and to draw in the strength to continue living tomorrow. Amid the deafening sounds of rock and roll I found myself moved; there isn't too much entertainment in this society, there is too little. Today, entertainment is a flourishing element of Chinese society (especially after the more powerful media industry began to participate). It has some excessive tendencies, even sweeping away the serious ideas of our age's leaders of opinion. But I still believe in its value. Even the most brilliant brain still requires an exit, a way to find a connection with the rest of society. The old strategy is still effective, rock and roll still needs and audience, and this city still needs entertainment! Future City-State What will Shenzhen be like in the future? After the completion of its mission as a special economic zone, Shenzhen has been searching for a new identity. Its years of experimental economic reforms have left the city with a particularly wealthy society; after the people are dressed and fed, will they begin searching for something new? For example, might Shenzhen become a special political zone, and lead the nation in experiments in institutional political reform? A political magazine once conducted this sort of speculation (11). In recent years, Shenzhen's government really has adopted a fresher image; it is the first municipal government to call its office building a "Civil Center", promoting a newly democratic concept with the city residents at the center while the government is at their service, utterly unlike China's traditional political concept of the primacy of the government. But the reform of political institutions has always been a bottleneck in China, and it's hard to know exactly what a special political zone would look like. But the question of abolishing the second frontier (12) around Shenzhen is already on the agendas of the Shenzhen city government and the central government. Once one of the most important physical symbols of the special economic zone, this second frontier is increasingly an obstacle for logistics and communication between Shenzhen and the rest of China. Shenzhen is in need of more room to grow, and needs to be able to develop the areas beyond the frontier. Popular demand for its abolishment is growing stronger, and related debate rages in traditional media and on the web. Is it possible that in the not-too-distant future, this borderline, 100 kilometers in length, may really become just a site for reminiscence? There are some who have even proposed abolishing the first frontier. If these two borders were both removed, Shenzhen would merge with Guangzhou, Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta cities to become a true urban belt, or one big urban zone. At present, inter-city routes which have been erected are already a step in this direction; in the future, high-speed transportation within the Pearl River Delta will blur the distinction between cities, and it will feel as if we're all living in one big city! The merging of Shenzhen and Hong Kong has always been an important topic in the discussion of Shenzhen's future. In the past, Hong Kong looked after Shenzhen as a younger sibling, but now Shenzhen has matured into adulthood and intends to develop further, while Hong Kong seems to be weakening slightly and could use support. Watching out for each other like lovers, their feelings grow stronger as more bridges and roads are constructed, and more areas along the borderline developed. Will they someday join as one? Will they become a single city? One system? One government? The above are mere some speculations and imaginations related to Shenzhen's city politics and geographical changes. But the city residents and their lives? How might they change? In this regard Shenzhen may be like other cities, and may experience similar trends. Someone once asked me what our city, architecture and lifestyles would be like in 2050. My answer was as follows: First of all, we will be old. All traffic and transportation will be blindingly swift, so fast that the people themselves can't keep up, and they'll stay at home rather than going out. Electronic buildings, incorporating miniature versions of every possible entertainment facility and residential need, will allow us to idle away our days. Buildings will not be built of today's materials, they will be digitally constructed; people will not segregate their spaces with physical barriers, but with the flow of data. You could put it this way: in the future the concept of space will no longer exist, because high-speed transportation and our digital lifestyles will eradicate the boundaries of the city. You will not know where you are; you will only live within the stream of time. Of course, in this electronic world there will still be poorer neighborhoods – those will be the neighborhoods where network speeds still drag along at today's level. Notes: (1) Reportedly it was a mass flight of 100,000 people from Shenzhen's Bao'an district to Hong Kong in 1962 that helped drive the establishment of Shenzhen as a special economic zone thirty years ago and put the reform and opening up movement into effect. An article from Southern People Weekly in 2008 once said, "There is a village in Hong Kong called Luofang Village, and Shenzhen also has a Luofang Village – the former was founded by people fleeing from the latter, and in 1962 there was 100-times income disparity between the two." (2) He Huangyou, a photographer working in a rural culture station, recorded scenes of people shouting at the tops of their lungs. (3) Zhongying Street(Chung Ying Street), in Shatoujiao (Sha Tau Kok) located in eastern Shenzhen, was the first place where some Chinese experienced shopping madness. (4) Manuel Castells, a Spaniard who toured southern China in 1983, called this experiment "crony capitalism" in his later book End of Millennium. (5) The Pearl River, which opens out onto the Pearl River Delta. (6) Little Sister, 1991. Collected in the self-published poetry collection Eighteen Poems. (7) Spring Story, lyrics by Jiang Kairu, music by Wang Zuogui, originally performed by Dong Wenhua. (8) Great Leaf Forward, project on the city 1, Harvard Design School, edited by Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tsung Leong, Taschen, 2001. (9) Wired Magazine, July, 1996, Issue 4.07. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.07/koolhaas.html (10) See his book Space and Politics. I was surprised to learn that, before becoming a famous authority on urban research, Henri Lefebvre was a rural sociologist. (11) Phoenix Weekly, August 2008 (12) The border between Shenzhen and Hong Kong is known as the first frontier, while the border between it and the rest of China is known as the second frontier. Translated from Chinese by Eric Abrahamsen.
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最后更新 2010-09-09 00:54:46