卦Trigram 2.0

If “shanzhai green” is a viable concept, where can it be found, and how can it be implemented? The key components, from my point of view, seemed to be inspiration and information. Given these, the innovative nature of Chinese villagers would allow them to find a way to implement. So how can the first two ‘i’s be delivered? To find out more about this, Winser Zhao and I visited Qingbiankou, a village in Xuanhua District, Hebei province.

Qingbiankou village sign

With a population of approximately 1200, Qingbiankou is a farming community based around an ancient garrison. It is located at the lower mouth of a narrow valley that, at its upper end, opens into rolling grasslands and hills. Three sections of the Great Wall are located in this valley. At the bottom are foundations from the Zhao period; midway are foundations from the Northern Wei period, and at the upper end are the still-standing wall and watch-towers from the Ming Dynasty.

The village itself also has its own walls, dating from the Ming period. These were stripped of their stone cladding during the Cultural Revolution, so that now only the packed-earth centre remains.

Most of the villagers live in recently-built dwellings that are built on the traditional Chinese courtyard, or siheyuan, model. There are a number of siheyuan remaining from the Ming period, although they are now damaged and semi-derelict.

Semi-derelict Ming-period siheyuan

Note the satellite dish!

The biggest issue facing the village is its water supply. The river next to the village has been reduced over the last two decades to a trickle. This photograph shows the river today; you can see from the height of the banks how deep it used to be:

Falling river level in Hebei province

What application might shanzhai green have in Qingbiankou? How might information be delivered? What kind of information do I have in mind? I’ll go into these questions in future posts.

I’m still looking for a new phone. I’ve had my Nokia N73 for a year now and, while I’ve taken some great photographs with it, I’m getting more and more frustrated with the sluggishness of Symbian. The finally-just-released Meizu M8 is a strong candidate, but I can’t find one! Since I need to go back to Singapore sometime soon to get a few things done, I was thinking of giving in and getting an iPhone instead; it seems that prices are quite good at Mustafa’s….

However, I think now that I’ll wait and see how much the Lenovo OPhone (link, link) sells for… It seems that it’ll be released very soon, and I’m curious about Android… Plus, with a 5Mb camera, it would still be the mobile camera platform that is my main requirement for my phone – China’s full of interesting sights, I need to have a camera with me at all times!

Do you Twitter? I was converted a year or so ago. It’s one of those things that seems pointless before you join, but once you’re a part of it… it becomes a stream of fascinating comment and insight.

I mention this because I’ve been blogging less and less frequently here. Niti has told me several times to get my act together and start writing again. In fact, I’ve been struggling to have something to say. Every blog needs a focus, and this blog has evolved over time. I talk about technology, social media, virtual worlds, biotech… All things that interest me but, if you’ve read me even intermittently, over the years you’ll see that my main creative motivation has been cyberpunk – simply because if I hadn’t been reading William Gibson and Bruce Sterling twenty years ago, I would never have become involved in either technology or business. Time has passed, though, and the cyberpunk future has arrived, and become our present. Even the cyberpunk giants aren’t writing cyberpunk any more, because where do you go from here? This has really become clear over the last two years, which is the period when my blogging started to peter out… Where to go next?

Which brings me back to Twitter. One of the people whose insights I enjoy the most is Paul Denlinger, author of the China Vortex. He’s been ‘Tweeting’ a lot recently about “Shanzhai”, the huge industry here in China that manufactures fake products… although actually, it’s more complex than that. Here’s what one user on Metafilter had to say about Shanzhai:

In Chinese, Shanzhai (山寨) literally means “mountain stronghold” and connotes a place with limited accessibility — i.e. beyond the reach of authorities. In the past couple of years, it has come to refer to the manufacture of illicit tech gadgets by unauthorized factories: show us your shan zhai ji! But shanzhai can be used more broadly to describe knockoff culture, cheeky brand subversion, grassroots industrial creativity, and a certain DIY ethos. The latter may be best exemplified in these videos of a “Shanzhai Glider” in action.

There are a number of videos on YouTube of “amusing” things from the Chinese hinterland – such as a truck driver imitating “Initial-D” style drift-driving, a farmer who makes robots, a home-made glider… I can’t link to these because at the moment YouTube is blocked in China so I can’t double-check the videos. Take a look, though. The thing is, I don’t watch these and think “Wow, look at those funny Chinese peasants and the weird things they do!”, which seems to be the general attitude on the internet. I think “Wow, look at the talent and innovation that’s untapped, and held back by isolation and poverty. Look at what it can do when given inspiration, using only what’s available!”.

If we take this meaning of ’shanzhai’, ie “grassroots industrial creativity, and a certain DIY ethos“, then we’re talking about exactly the same thing that Niti saw in India, where it’s called ‘jugaad‘. Niti tried for a while to popularize the phrase as a design concept for bottom of the pyramid marketing; it didn’t really take, but then it didn’t have the economic weight of the Chinese shanzhai industries behind it…

In my case, this takes me back to my cyberpunk roots – because what better example can there be of Gibson’s much-quoted line, “The street finds its own uses for things“?

So, here I am in China, I’m from an internet & knowledge background, and I’m interested in development and green issues. Once I read some of Paul’s ’shanzhai’ thoughts, I realized – here it is, the new focus: “shanzhai green“. In other words, China’s rural population have tremendous talent, which they can use if given ideas. Shanzhai means implementing innovation with the best tools available – be it traditional knowledge or the latest digital technology. Most often, it will be a mix of both. Shanzhai skills can be used to help rural development. Shanzhai skills can be used to protect the environment. Putting shanzhai skills to use in the pursuit of sustainable development? Let’s call it… “shanzhai green”.

Now I know what I want to blog about….

Well, it’s hard to believe, but it seems that the Meizu M8 (which I’ve written about at length previously on this blog and its predecessor) has been launched at long, long last. It’s well over a year past its original target launch date, and I have to say – I had given up on it. However, it seems that it’s a reality now and, in theory, on the shelves.

As it happens, I’m interested again – I need a new phone for work, and I’m also filling up the memory on my 8Gb iPod Touch. A 16Gb M8 would kill two birds with one stone. I’ve read some early reviews, and they’re pretty good.

There is a problem, in that Chinese law protects China Mobile and the other telephone companies by banning the sale of phonese with wifi ability. Thus, the M8 phones sold outside China (India seems to be a major target) will have wifi, but those sold inside China will not. There’s some debate on the forums as to whether this will be achieved by physically removing the wifi card, or by disabling it via potentially reversible software/firmware hack. Either way, it’s not a huge issue for me; when I want wifi, I take my eeePC…

All of this being the case, I scouted around a number of the phone shops in Beijing’s Wudaokou are today – but none of them had even heard of it! I’ll keep my ear to the ground…

There’s a story I read once, although I forget now the name of the book. It’s from Russia in the early 20th century. There was a village, deep, deep in the countryside; let’s call it Porechye (though that wasn’t the name in the story – I’ve forgotten that). In Porechye there was a small church nestling in a clearing in the forest. There was a village pond, where the ducks swam. There was a girl named Masha, who had beautiful blue eyes and beautiful golden hair. In Porechye there was also a young man, who was in love with Masha. One day, recruiters from the Tsar’s army came to Porechye. They told the young man that it was his sacred duty to join the army and fight on behalf of the Tsar and Mother Russia against the Germans.

The young man loved his country, and did his duty. He joined the army, and was taken on trucks and railways to the far-away battlefront. He fought bravely against the Germans. One day, the news came that the war was over. The soldiers were happy, but they didn’t know what to do. No lorries came to take them home from the battlefront. Eventually, they threw away their rifles, and began to return to their homes as best they could.

The young man was passed by a truck, who asked him where he was going. He said, “I am going to Porechye, where the church nestles in a clearing in the forest and the ducks swim on the village pond, and there is a beautiful girl called Masha who has beautiful blue eyes and beautiful blonde hair. Do you know it?”. And the men on the truck said “Yes, yes, we know it. We are going far, and Porechye is on the way. Come with us, and we will take you there!”.

So the young man got onto the truck, and he travelled with them for many, many days, that turned into many weeks. They had many adventures together, and eventually they reached the village of Porechye. His friends cried “here you are, back at your home, but we have far to go still, and must leave you here with our best wishes!” And the young man waved farewell until the truck was a distant spek, and then he walked into Porechye.

He found that there was a church nestling in a grove in the forest, but it was a different church, and indeed a different grove. There was a village pond, but it was not the village pond of his Porechye, and the ducks were of a different kind. There was even a girl called Masha, who had beautiful blue eyes and beautiful blonde hair – but it was not his Masha. For Russia is very, very large, and there are many villages named Porechye, with churches in groves and village ponds and beautiful girls called Masha, and the young man had not thought, before he left for the army, to ask how to get back. And so he buttoned his coat and hitched up his pack, and set off to find his Porechye, wherever it was.

The book, alas, did not say whether he ever found it. Perhaps he is still searching. I’m not sure why I’m even telling you this story, but I suspect it has something to do with roots, and where we’re from, and the globalized world, and how we sustain communities when the big world outside is rocked by great change. I suspect that this is where this blog is going in future.

I’ve just come back from a wedding in Manchuria - in Liaoning province, that is, part of China’s northeastern rust belt. Getting there from Beijing was fascinating; it took only four hours on the super-modern electric train to Shenyang. From there, it was a forty-minute drive to the town where the wedding took place. Here the post-industrial decay showed clearly – despite the broad streets, and a bold new SOHO complex, most of what I saw was decaying apartment blocks, hardly any traffic, hardly any lighting on the streets at night. On the night we arrived, I fancied a beer before hitting the sack; I asked the hotel concierge if there was a bar nearby. He looked at me in total astonishment. No, there were no bars of any kind, anywhere nearby. He was right, too.  In the end, I found a hotpot restaurant, and enjoyed  a 3RMB bottle of local beer, and very nice it was too!

The wedding was astonishing – the bride is  of the Manzu ethnic minority group, and an only child. The parents had splashed out on a traditional wedding parade through the town streets. We started at 7am, perhaps to avoid traffic, but I’m told that Chinese weddings do normally start early.

A caravan driver wearing (fake) skins, and with a knotted whip led the way, loudly cracking the whip to alert people to get out of the way. He was followed by a fawning jester, and by the female matchmaker. Then came the (French) bridegroom on horseback, in flowing yellow robes. Next, a phalanx of dancing girls carrying red lanterns on poles preceded musicians playing drums, gongs, etc. Next came the bride, who was carried (well, rolled along on castors, but it looked like they were carrying her) in a traditional sedan chair by four big men. The bride was wearing a traditional red wedding dress and veil.  At the rear of the procession was a group of bodyguards in (pretend) armour, bearing broadswords. Finally, there were a group carrying the traditional large, triangular dragon-pheonix banners.

This caused pandemonium as we walked through the streets – people came running to see, and leaned out of homes and shops to watch. Buses screeched to a halt, and cars slowed to watch, causing instant storms of horn-blaring from those behind. The biggest worry was the taxi drivers coming from behind: there’s a wedding procession? So what, I’ve got work to do! Press down on the horn, and keep going! Let those darned revellers look out for themselves! Fortunately the groom’s horse took it all in its stride, and didn’t buck or bolt, which was my biggest worry!

I was struck by the reaction of old women when we passed them – they almost all went into fits of delight and curiosity, wresting to glimpse the bride, pointing and chattering loudly and enthusiastically. We speculated that these are the ones who remember such wedding processions from pre-1949? Pre-Cultural Revolution? days. I should ask when these stopped becoming common.

I took a lot of pictures and video on my Nokia N73, until the memory card filled up. I regretted then that I hadn’t taken my EeePC – I learned on my trip to Pingyao in May that it only takes a couple of minutes to swap out the Nokia’s SD card into the EeePC’s card slot, transfer the pictures and video to a USB memory stick, and then start filming again. The perfect combination for the “citizen journalist”?

After the wedding feast,  we changed, and made the trip back to Shenyang and Beijing. I was only away for a day and half, but it still felt strange to arrive back in the ‘Jing’s traffic congestion and smog. It was a really different perspective on China, and has encouraged me to get out and travel a bit more than I have to date.

The LIFT Asia conference starts today, and I can’t be there. Bummer. I had really hoped to attend; the LIFT conferences is one of the more interesting gatherings around, from my particular set of interests. Alas, the new semester starts next Monday, and today and tomorrow I have meetings that Shall Not Be Missed… Ah, so near and yet so far – just a couple of hours’ flight across the Yellow Sea to Korea. Ah well, I’ll just have to read about it on their website like everyone else…