In Beijing I began to listen to my iPod while walking through the Peking University campus, since the walking distances were so damn long. I always found the contrast between my Western music and the almost provincial Beida setting (it may be the best university in China, but my 27th American-ranked USC still had garbage trucks instead of garbage tricycles) kind of amusing for its starkness.
I haven’t had the leisure yet to try superimposing an auditory track over the Shenzhen scenery, but I think it is a much more natural fit.
Where Beijing had historical signifiance rooted in its culture, Shenzhen has none – my mother notes that the last time she visited the place, it was a small fishing village. That picture shows the difference today (it’s of a busy street in the Dongmen electronics shopping area in Futian District). Beijing feels very Chinese; Shenzhen feels, as one other annoyed CTLC teacher put it, “like I’m just in New York or Miami.” The skies here are blue with white fluffy clouds and the traffic is moderately Angelino in sanity, as opposed to Sisyphean. Greenery is lush and plentiful (especially in Nanshan District!) and palm trees are in abundance here, and the climate is weightfully humid, but not too much so as to be oppressive. A cab driver yesterday told us, “Nanshan haizi hen you qian” (Nanshan kids [though Shenzhen ones in general] are loaded with cash.”
It feels, in other words, very American, or at least American-geared like many other tropical tourist destinations. The urban wasteland of factory plants that I had expected to find hasn’t materialized yet (perhaps they’re all in Bao’An or Longgang Disticts, though). Listening to “This Is Why I’m Hot” by MIMS would no longer feel cheekily ironic here. But I think it would still be significant, just as Shenzhen itself is. Other American teachers who get disgusted by Shenzhen’s newness, brashness and shininess are missing the point, and even coming dangerously close to an Orientalist expectation for an exotic East. This is China’s flagship city of growth, experimentation and development. These are the characteristics that China wants to impress the world with and which demonstrate in a single microcosmic environment the principles that China holds for advancement. Every wrinkle past that must be read in this context and not merely brushed away as “something I could have found at home.” We are standing witness to a new, changing China, and being in Shenzhen is the best place to watch how it unfolds.
For instance, last night I was at a bowling alley with friends (it was the last night we would be together before we split up to go live at our own schools today). Bowling in China is regarded as a fancy elite sport – far different from Westwood Lanes back home in Olympia! The family across from us brought in their two shaved poodles and a few children. We spent most of the time ogling the poodles (who we always thought were just on the verge of running down a bowling lane) but I couldn’t figure out, in my head, the children. How many of them were there? Were they actually siblings or just cousins? Eventually a young couple came to watch the girls, and for parents the resemblance was there but the age certainly was not. I had heard before that if you were a) a Party official or b) rich you could sidestep the one-child policy, but this was the first time I’d actually seen it. None of our practice-teaching kids in Beijing had siblings, and when asked about it they were quick to defend their country’s reasoning, despite their own personal desires for brothers and sisters. I wonder if the kids in Nanshan will show up with the same opinions – or show up with brothers and sisters.
Enough for now; I have to go jump into a suit and join the contract-signing ceremony. This is the moment where the 100-strong group of Americans disperses and we begin living by ourselves as lone foreigners in China; this is the end of training and the beginning of my real adventure. At the end of the ceremony, representatives from each school will take each of us to our schools. I feel a little bit like a puppy at the pound waiting for adoption.
This is exactly how I would feel: A puppy to be examined before being adopted. Great piece of writing. May be I am just biased, anyway, I thoroughly enjoy this article and wanting to hear more!
A puppy in a business suit.
Interesting reactions to Shenzen. When my study group was in Shanghai last May, most of my classmates thought the Western features made the city feel fake. But the three Chinese-Americans on the trip (including me) didn’t have any problems with it.
Weirdly enough, those same classmates who disliked Shanghai’s Western features really liked Hong Kong.
Where will you live? Will your school arrange apartment for you?
I think it is about expectation. Which is influenced by ones knowledge about China. One who who expects China to be this exotic oriental place is going to be disappointed by the western features. Most kids from Chinese background already know something about this land and this may help to explain the different reactions.
Well, yes. Don’t you think that there’s something wrong with expecting an “exotic oriental place” to begin with though? The dichotomy between the normal and the exotic other seems built upon a framework of power relations.
If you mean the power relations as it is a remnant of Colonialism. It is always there without most people realizing it; on both sides.
“Other American teachers who get disgusted by Shenzhen’s newness, brashness and shininess are missing the point, and even coming dangerously close to an Orientalist expectation for an exotic East. This is China’s flagship city of growth, experimentation and development. ”
Orientalist is right, though it may sound harsh. We forget that this is the dream that America has created for the rest of world. We can hardly begrudge others for managing to make it on their own. Depending on your values, or your dreams for peace / the environment / humanity, that kind of development may not be right, but who are we to call it wrong?
Just wonder what the real definition of Orientalist is, so I check and found it to be what I thought it was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism
I mostly meant it in the way Edward Said uses it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)