China Dérive |
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| Written by Adam J. Smith |
| Tuesday, 24 November 2009 00:00 |
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Arriving in Foshan is like arriving in any mid-sized Chinese city. As the coach enters the suburbs, the visitor is greeted with vast ring roads, twisted metal sculptures that pass for road art, factory parks, and an imposing skyline of brutal 1980s tower blocks. I am one of very few foreigners who are working here, and generally the city is rarely visited by tourists. On the map, it is a non-place or un-place. It is ignored and underrated. Though Chinese cities are being reconfigured and reorganized at an alarming rate. Old 'danwei' communities are being demolished to be replaced by pseudo-Spanish shopping malls and gaudy hotel resorts, farmland is giving way to an expanding suburban frontier of fry pits and gated sub-divisions, and the old downtown complexes of 'hutongs' are being ripped apart to make way for Orwellian office towers and mammoth convention centres. Chinese cities are being reconfigured and reorganized at an alarming rate.Foshan has yet to achieve the kind of sleek, sanitized look that some Chinese cities have created. It is currently a place in transition, a sort of purgatory between demolition and construction. While cities around the world are gradually replacing the old with the new, it really hits you in Foshan like a bulldozer: giant gaps and pockets exist throughout the city, covered in rubble and wire and armies of construction workers. The city neither has new buildings, nor historic ones. Everything looks dated, and not in a kitsch or ironic kind of way, but in a way that any hipster would roll their eyes at in distaste. There also appears to be a penchant for buildings that look like things: robots, barrels, fruit, musical instruments, children's toys, and even cheese. A form of architecture has been created here that is depressing, ugly, degrading, and surreal; similar to the commercial squalor of roadside America, yet more tatty. Anything older than five years looks bleached and frayed. To be honest, I don't blame the local government for demolishing the entire city and starting afresh.
Foshan is the darkest city at night that I've ever visited or lived in. Part of the Chinese government's plan to conserve energy means that streetlights no longer turn on, and shops are asked to switch off all lighting when closed. From my apartment, the city appears as a navy blue mass with a purple hue on the broken horizon, intercepted by strips of flickering neon and asteroid belts of cars navigating through the air pollution. There is something unnervingly apocalyptic about a city lit by car fog lights, illuminating entire tower blocks, Foshan is like witnessing the end of world. revealing a poisonous smog in the air and casting huge shadows down semi-demolished side streets. Foshan is like witnessing the end of world. At any moment the four horsemen may appear in the neon-lit sky. In the midst of night I can see fire aglow at the tops of smoke stacks, the golden arches of McDonald's, and the vast factory parks of Walmart production-line workers. As I unpack my suitcase ready to start a new life, I wonder if I will ever call Foshan home. Can such a transient place be a home? On the surface, Foshan is a harsh and barren place, but so are Antarctica, Mongolia and Las Vegas, and people still manage to live there. Could it be that in the globalized world we live in, we are always and never 'at home'? Adam J. Smith is a British ex-pat, living, teaching and writing in China, while exploring the changes taking shape in this nation. Tags: architecture, beijing, china, derive, environment, foshan, globalization, shanghai, travel writing
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hello |
surely a city like this, that no tourist would ever have any reason to visit, is more telling of a particular country than the bigger cities are. Just as St. Louis is more telling of what is happening to the United States as a whole than New York, Foshan is more telling of China than the 'face' projects of Shanghai or Beijing.
Chinese cities are pedestals for the trophies of government officials who receive millions in disposable tax yuan and never have voters to please. They build the ugliest looking buildings that come to resemble a cross between the Disneyland castle and Bauhaus. Anything and everything European is replicated, resulting in an eclectic pick-and-mix exoticism that certainly makes the Chinese city a unique experience.
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