The Gleam, The Glint, and The Tarnish
Shenzhen was given the status of a Special Economic Zone more than 20 years ago. Its development started haphazardly, but it was clear it would be a different city than any other in China at the time. I visited Shenzhen over the years often enough to see it emerge from dirt to skyscrapers. One of my former students whom I last visited in Shenzhen in 2004 said that Shenzhen was now “just like New York City.” He had recently moved into a gorgeous apartment. The apartment complex had been designed by a French architect. The grounds were beautiful and immaculate; the swimming pool enormous and inviting. From one bedroom, I looked out upon a high hill with walking trails around it.
The following view of Shenzhen is from a visit in 1998, when it was on its way to its present incarnation.
The gleam of the September sun off the modern metal and glass skyscrapers is blinding. I’m back in Shenzhen, a city designated a Special Economic Zone in China. I first came here in 1990 when it was an idea rather than a reality. It was like an awkward puppy with huge paws to grow into. Dirt was everywhere and skeletons of buildings were rising from the dust. It was trying to be a Hong Kong look-alike and feel-alike. It succeeded only in being an uncomfortable mixture of east and west.
Amongst the gleam, there was also tarnish — cute Chinese girls who came with a dream and ended up as prostitutes, and enthusiastic, educated entrepreneurs-to-be who were seduced by corruption. Anything human or material could be bought and sold in Shenzhen. In the frenzied pace, I looked into young Chinese faces and, instead of two brown eyes, saw dollar signs clicking like a cash register.
It was disconcerting and even frightening. Unlike the rest of China in the early 1990s, crime was an element to beware of. One of my Nanjing students moved here to work and had witnessed two murders.
In the intervening years, Shenzhen has cleaned up its streets and gives at least an impression of more orderliness. Some of its showy skyscrapers are attractive. One can find Pizza Hut among TCBY’s, KFC’s, and McDonald’s. A huge Wal-Mart is filled with “lots of things we never knew we needed,” as my friend aptly pointed out. Attempts at westernization offer strangely oily cappuchino coffee, pretty fountains, long lines at the lottery office, pathetic beggars, and desperate-looking countryside faces streaming out of the train station.
I suppose it is the way all of China is going in its hurtling lunge into the westernization of our entire planet Earth. My friend tells me more and more people have guns. The guns come in, along with drugs, from Vietnam. Both direct and subtle forms of robbery are common. Beeps and even songs emanate from omnipresent hand phones held by just about everyone.
Shenzhen is now a gangly teenager growing in unsightly, disproportionate spurts in an energized state of becoming.
Tags: China; Special Economic Zone in China; development of S, Shenzhen, Travel
