Hong Kong
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| Hong Kong Harbor |
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| Small fishing village - a striking counterpoint to the massive urban development |
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| Hong Kong skyline --- |
The entrance into Hong Kong harbor
from the South China Sea was spectacular. Our landfall at sunrise with misty
landscapes of forested hills and islands taking shape was like going through
the narrow entrance to unexpected island kingdom ---- maybe Oz. Tucked here and there at
water’s edge are small fishing villages, a soft and human reminder of the
region’s past and simpler economy. With
the fisherman’s houses as a small counterpoint, our views opened to a stunning
modern city of unending buildings soaring tightly shoulder to shoulder in great
monolithic formation.
Bright neon on the buildings of Hong Kong Island to the
south and impressive structures along the waterfront in Kowloon where we docked
welcomed us to the pinnacle of Asian modernization. More than just
impressive, Hong Kong rivals New York City in both glitz and splendor. Once
docked, we were dazzled
by Hong Kong’s skyline glittering across the bay. Filled with the corporate
offices and financial centers for many of the world’s largest corporations and
advertising with confidence their corporate logos in bright neon on architecturally
iconic structures, the view, especially at night, was mesmerizing. While
now under a “one country, two systems” policy, Hong Kong largely maintains
autonomy from China in both its economy and government as it powerfully showcases an
overpowering consumerism and flaunts China’s economic prowess to the world.
We disembarked through the Harbor City shopping mall filled with the richness and elegance of Gucci, Rolex and Dolce and Gabana and were introduced to Asian consumerism at its height. Another reminder of globalization’s growing impact on China are the number of McDonald’s and KFC’s along the busy streets of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and even Xian. In Xian the Chinese amusingly refer to KFC as Kentucky Fried Cat.
We disembarked through the Harbor City shopping mall filled with the richness and elegance of Gucci, Rolex and Dolce and Gabana and were introduced to Asian consumerism at its height. Another reminder of globalization’s growing impact on China are the number of McDonald’s and KFC’s along the busy streets of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and even Xian. In Xian the Chinese amusingly refer to KFC as Kentucky Fried Cat.
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| The massive residential high rises in Hong Kong |
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| space so very limited |
In Hong Kong we
visited two art galleries -- Osage and Gagosian, Hong Kong and a design studio,
Latitude. All three visits allowed us to see the different parts of this
intensely built city, the highly developed infrastructure and to see/
understand what is important to the Chinese artistic community. What was brilliant about Hong Kong’s city planning was the largely undeveloped
open space outside main areas of dense population - so people can quickly and
easily get away from the city’s intensity to relax and enjoy nature.
At Osage Gallery we met the Artist
----Li Xinping and Sonja NG, curator of their current show: Machine
and the Body. The Osage
Foundation, a nonprofit, raises strategic funding and in-kind support for
multiple art projects ranging from early childhood art education workshops to
controversial thought-provoking performances and installations involving some
of the world’s most prominent artists. Its aim is to foster a deeper regional
consciousness of the arts in Asia and to increase cultural and artistic
dialogue. It was impressive to see this interest
and high level of professionalism in promoting creation of art and artistic understanding
in China.
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| Artist and Curator at Osage Gallery |
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| A work from Machine and the Body at Osage Gallery |
Next, with the curator, we toured an exhibit of Zeng Fanzhi’s key paintings from the last
twenty years showing the evolution of Chinese art in the post-1989 era at the
new Gagosian, Hong Kong Gallery. The pricing for both exhibited
bodies of work at Osage and Gagosian ranged from hundreds of thousands to
millions of dollars. The paintings shown were museum quality and showcased the
influence of European and American painting on the technique and style of
modern Chinese works.
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| Work at Gogosian, Hong Kong by Zeng Fanzhi |
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| by Zeng Fanzhi |
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| by Zeng Fanzhi |
Finally we visited the design firm, Latitude -
producing exquisite porcelain ware. Latitude’s production involves dedicated
craftspeople located in Jingdezhen, who have helped the designers to delve into
China’s history of ceramics. Inspired by the legacy and wealth of knowledge of
these artists, they rely on their reinvestigation of a fixed craft and
rediscovery of age-old rituals. The delicate celadon dinner service displayed was
reminiscent of the great porcelains of the Chinese Royalty. Using the same
techniques and craftsmen from Jingdezhen province whose ancestors produced world
renown Chinese porcelains for centuries, these craftspeople are rare and highly
adept.
And these
are the same craftspeople that Ai Weiwei commissioned to do his famous Sunflower
Exhibit displayed recently at the Tate Modern. By doing this, Weiwei employed many of the skilled craftspeople of Jingdezhen
who had been languishing without work as the new Chinese world refocused on
mass production and manufacturing—not the legacy of great art and great
craftsmen/artists of the past. Sending such a powerful message through his art,
perhaps, Ai Weiwei has been heard and China will rediscover her artistic riches.
We were
constantly reminded that the Chinese have through history designed and
constructed great building projects on a monumental scale. The use of vast
public spaces with superb, iconic architecture enhanced by beautiful waterways
as seen in the past in the old palaces of the Forbidden City, the great Terra
Cotta Warrior mausoleum in Xian as well as Shanghai’s Bund continues as a
predominant influence in modern city planning for the ever growing urban centers of
Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong and new ones to come.
Over
the last year, the press made us all aware of China’s “miracle city”—Shenzhen--
the home of the infamous Foxconn employing over 400,000 workers. These Chinese work 24/7 on assembling such digital electronic goods that are the rage in America
and the world as the Apple’s iPad. Just thirty years ago, Shenzhen was a simple
Chinese fishing village. Today its population has reached 12 million. Larger
than New York City, Shenzhen is fastest growing urbanization project in
the history of the world. But unlike the showcase cities of Hong Kong, Shanghai and
Beijing, China’s new industrial zones are not pretty.
This
year the worker apartment residences in Shenzhen had bars on the doors and
windows installed by Foxcann so that workers would not be able to commit
suicide --an emblem of the dark side of China’s fast economic growth and
somewhat inhuman urbanization. A small NGO, Students and Scholars Against
Corporate Misbehavior, has been monitoring unhealthy labor practices in the
Chinese industrial zones and is showcasing the bad conditions at Foxconn . Some of our students traveled with people from
this NGO to Shenzhen in an effort to see these practices first hand. Despite
having arranged for a tour of Foxconn, they were turned away at the gates.
China does not want to promote any controversial exposition that would help to start a Jasmine Spring in Asia.
China does not want to promote any controversial exposition that would help to start a Jasmine Spring in Asia.
Shenzhen, the city and its
manufacturing complex, just as the great cities of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing,showcases
in another way China’s growing prosperity and its new consumer economy with underlying
goals of economic power and material splendor. Here and
everywhere else in China we saw the government and the Chinese people pushing
to become a #1 global player. Modernizing at a dizzying pace and attempting
quickly to eradicate massive poverty with infrastructure development and seemingly
a new religion of consumerism, the Chinese have let the multinationals come in to
help them grow and prosper. But it is
now evident, that while this practice has temporarily helped to grow China’s GDP,
today, multinational corporations –like Apple and Wal-Mart- are exploiting the
Chinese workers to keep their own production costs low and their corporate bottom lines highly
profitable. The unfortunate conditions in Shenzhen seem like a new consumer
slavery gripping low wage earners who unknowingly come from rural communities to
prison-like conditions in Shenzhen and other manufacturing centers in hopes of
making money. At $150 a month, however, the Chinese workers cannot meet the
cost of living in Shenzhen today.
Perhaps, the only solution to this is for countries and multinationals to work together to develop worldwide ethical standards for wages and conditions.
Perhaps, the only solution to this is for countries and multinationals to work together to develop worldwide ethical standards for wages and conditions.
