卦Trigram 2.0

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…

I’ve been reading about two dead cities recently – one in Russia, the other in China. The Russian city… that gives me an eerie feeling, a sense of ghosts howling in the taiga through endless winter… The Chinese city… leaves me sad. Although they are far apart, they are powerfully connected, and have important messages for our future. The difference between them is that the city in Russia was once a bustling, important city which was abandoned and left to rot. The other city never existed, but represents the abandonment of a vital dream.

The first, unnamed, city is featured in a photo-essay on the English Russia site. It was a closed city during the Soviet era; strategically important because of defence industries (I suppose). Following the funding crisis that came with Soviet collapse, the army couldn’t afford to keep these industries going… and gradually the city shut down. How long did the residents hang on, I wonder, hoping that something would turn up? Did they gradually leave, group by group, household by household? Or did a moment come when people finally realized there would be no salvation, leading to a mass departure? I guess I’ll never know.

I look at the photographs, and wonder: how many of our cities – in China, Europe, the US – will end up the same way, as our oil-dependent, unsustainable global economy breaks down, and climate change becomes more apparent? More and more, it seems that there will have to be major structural changes to our way of life, and surely many cities won’t be able to survive.

The development of sustainable communities is one response. The development of eco-cities, with the ability to be self-sustaining, is another. I’ve written a lot about two such projects over the last few years, both here in China. One is a joint Chinese-Singaporean venture outside Tianjin; the other, an Anglo-Chinese project near Shanghai. Sadly, I find that the Shanghai project, Dongtan island, now seems to be dead in the water. The reasons seem to be complex, but it’s undoubtedly (according to the article in Beijing Today) at least partly due to the connection of the project with Chen Liangyu, who used to be the Communist Party secretary of Shanghai, and who was convicted of corruption. It seems that absolutely no work has been done on the project, and no-one seems to expect that anything will be done now. That’s a great shame.

However, I can still finish on a positive note: the other Chinese eco-city, the one being developed with Singapore, is making progress. Hopefully, it will give us valuable insights into how other cities can be retro-fitted for sustainability – and perhaps (especially high energy-input cities like Singapore!) avoid the fate of that nameless Russian urban ruin.

Over the last few years, I’ve become something of a global nomad, shuttling between three bases:

• Cowbridge
• Beijing
• Singapore

This is an interesting  combination, I’ve come to realise. The first is an ancient market town which still has a very strong community despite recent demographic change, and very much has the potential to be self-sustaining economically. The second is, of course, the huge capital city of a gigantic nation. There are still areas with a very strong neighbourhood spirit, although the ‘Old Beijing’ of pre-1949 (or even the ‘new’ Beijing of 1949 – Olympics) is now much diluted. As a city, Beijing isn’t particularly self-sustaining. However, as an old, organic city it has many areas and buildings that could be brought into use for urban farms and other community projects. Beijing is also close to farmland, and its fate is closely tied to the future prosperity, or otherwise, of the  country’s peasant farmers. The third, Singapore, is the most artificial, and is dependent on supplies from outside in order to exist. Although the government constantly warns this country’s citizens how fragile their nation is, there is an emerging national consensus and community spirit. The government reserves all community action to itself, however,regulating and monitoring all citizen activity closely.

As the global recession bites, it’s clear that the global economy will not continue as before; the money simply isn’t there any more. So how will these three bases of mine cope with the end of abundance (in the West), energy scarcity, resource depletion, and peak oil? What can the  West, facing the end of Baby-Boomer affluence, learn from bottom-of-the-pyramid ingenuity? How the West’s knowledge be shared with the Asian poor?

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.

My old G4 12″ iBook recently started making really loud grinding noises, which seemed to come from the bottom left-hand corner. Sometimes, when I started it, it gave an error message saying that it couldn’t find a hard drive.

Oops. Not good.

A trip to the new Apple Store in Sanlitun village led to me “checking in” my ailing laptop for inspection. Yesterday, the diagnosis was made: a new hard drive is needed.

Hmmm. That’ll cost me 3000RMB. While I was in Singapore recently, I spent SGD244 on a new battery, since the old one had lost most of its capacity. How annoying! But it makes me think that’s probably not worth it, to keep throwing money at an old machine…

OK. Well, I liked that iBook because of its small footprint. However, I’d already stopped carrying it around… my Asus EeePC 700 has filled that niche… I mostly used it as a home media centre, and for video editing. That suggests I should replace it with a Mac Mini, which would cost 5,388 RMB. 

I wonder whether Apple offer an educational discount in China? On their web page, I can’t see the icon, which is a little frustrating. In Singapore, I bought a few items from them and took the benefit of the discount, both as a student and, later, a lecturer. If they’re not offering it here, what does that say about their brand positioning in the Chinese market? Are they cutting loose the education sector as too insignificant, and just going for the urban hipster segment?

Well, I need to go to the store this afternoon to retrieve my iBook; I’ll ask them then.

A haven for the South Asian migrant workers, and an interesting insight into the services needed by an insecure, low-paid service force.

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…

I’ve just moved in to my new apartment, on the inner side of Beijing’s north-western Second Ring Road. This road was built where the city’s ancient defensive walls used to stand, so “inside the second ring road” means “inside the historic part of the city”. One of Beijing’s little mysteries, by the way, is that there is no First Ring Road…

My apartment block’s not historic, except perhaps for the people: when the old alleyways and courtyard dwellings were to build shopping malls etc, the local residents were relocated in these housing areas. They’re rather cheaply built – bare concrete stairways, and no elevators (and didn’t I feel that this morning, when I was carrying my boxes and bags up to my 7th-floor place – I climbed those stairs twelve times, each time with a heavy load!).

Today’s been a lovely late summer day: blues skies, the air getting dry now, compared to the humidity of July and early August. I was coming back from my evening meal at the Guloudajie dumpling joint, looking up at the stars as they came out… and then realised, hey, I can see the stars! At least in these areas, and especially in these apartment complexes, Beijing has definitely joined the Dark Sky movement, with plenty of screened halogen lights, sending all of their light downwards – not up into the sky…

It’s also interesting that the apartment complex has lots of “flower beds” around – which is to say, I don’t think anything much was ever done with them, except perhaps some sickly grass. However, almost every available spot has been colonised somehow, bu residents planting all kinds of flowers and other plants. Sometimes occupants of ground-floor flats have planted vines outside, training them up to almost entirely cover the windows. I can see the advantages – extra privacy and insulation, flowers, and so on, but it must still be a little strange to live there! Anyway, another Western trend that’s got some coverage lately, Guerrilla Gardening, also has its Beijing equivalent!

So, the Olympics have come and gone,the Paralympics will start soon, but the city and it’s local culture – which didn’t get so much attention – continue to grow and thrive in ways that the rest of the world could learn from.