The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City by Juan Du (Harvard University Press)

To any traveler who goes beyond the Central Business District of Shenzhen and explores it through its vast spiderweb of subway lines, this city seems inexplicable. Once the central core with its dazzling towers is left behind, what’s left is a sprawl of disparate clumps of urbanity, like a gigantic follow-the-dots puzzle where the dots are connected only by a 177-mile subway line. Each clump feels unrelated to its counterparts, existing like its own little outpost, in a weird metropolis that spreads over 792 square miles. Conventional wisdom says Shenzhen sprang from a single fishing village with a population of 30,000. How and why did it spread, over the space of forty years, from this tiny nucleus into a bizarre and randomly-placed mushroom-crop of skyscrapers flung across an area that’s almost double the size of Los Angeles, with a GDP that in 2017 outstripped Hong Kong and Singapore?

The answer lies in debunking a creation myth that has been gleefully spread by everyone from the New York Times to the World Bank. Something from nothing is the classic Cinderella story and applying it to Shenzhen makes the emergence of this city almost miraculous. The truth however makes it much more interesting.

Hong Kong architect and academic Juan Du became intrigued with Shenzhen after she missed her flight out of the city. Wandering away from the affluent grounds of her hotel, she stumbled upon a village that was decidedly not affluent. The ramshackle buildings were no more than seven stories tall and children, accompanied by barking dogs, played noisily near long lines of vendors who were cooking over open flames. People sat on folding chairs, eating outdoors at a night market that was at least a century behind anything else Juan Du had seen in Shenzhen. 

When she began to investigate, she discovered that Shenzhen had over 300 of these villages spread across the city, all of them surrounded by skyscrapers. Between them they contained over 350,000 peasant houses that now offered affordable rentals to the city’s recently arrived labor force. How did these places come into being? 

The uncovered truth shatters the Shenzhen myth. In 1979 Bao’an County became the site of the city of Shenzhen. An area of 2020 square kilometers, with a population of 358,000, it contained over 2000 agrarian villages. Each of these provided a separate nucleus for urban development, which grew up around the farming communities, and each became known as an urban village. 

Even the crown jewel of Shenzhen, the glittering and wealthy area of Shennan Boulevard, is based upon humble origins. It originally was Country Road 107, built to connect the port to the market town that gave the city its name. Stripped of the mythical origin of a little fishing village, the legacy of Bao’an County is rich in regional history, with a longstanding economy built upon salt and oyster farms, as well as agriculture. What now appear to be random dots of modern development are actually based upon the villages that still prevail. Shenzhen’s “spatial development” has been shaped by “centuries-old agrarian spatial patterns,” which explains the confusing incoherence of it all.

But perhaps not for much longer--Shenzhen’s goal is to become a “comprehensive city,” with urban planning that will turn those unconnected dots into a full picture. To accomplish this, the urban villages are being subsumed into the whole, with Huanggang Village providing the desired prototype.

A community that had been in place since 1426, Huanggang was demolished and rebuilt as an urbanized historic village, touted as a “model village,” clean, modern, and sanitized beyond all recognition. It stands in brutal contrast to the village that Juan Du first encountered.

Baishizhou was notorious for being the “poorest, dirtiest, and biggest” of Shenzhen’s urban villages. Once five separate farm villages, it held approximately 200,000 people who lived in 2477 peasant houses. It was famous for having the lowest rent in the city and new arrivals flocked to it, attracted by housing that was cramped and uncomfortable. However, unlike the factory housing provided by employers like FoxConn, which was only a few kilometers away, the rooms in Baishizhou were unmonitored; they offered personal freedom.

Small businesses sprang up to cater to the needs of the new residents but gentrification was lurking on the edges. Surrounded by theme parks and luxurious hotels, Baishizhou became a prime target for the owners of art galleries, gourmet coffee shops, and craft breweries. When residents refused to make room for these new refinements, the city simply cut off their water and electricity. Now Baishizhou exists as an online video game created in the U.S. 

Shenzhen learned to become forceful in its relocation efforts after dealing with a villager who had owned both house and land rights for over forty years. She was the sole hold-out as her neighbors struck deals with the city.  For three years, as other houses were demolished and the skyscrapers drew near, her home stood alone in the midst of rubble, a “nail house” that remained hammered into place. She sold it at last for 12 million yuan and disappeared with her fortune. It was much cheaper to simply turn off the utilities.

But as the lights darken in the villages, they’re replaced with the blaze of 21st Century splendor. The new dream is to blend Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong into a single world-dazzling metropolis. Impossible? Tell that to Shenzhen.~Janet Brown