China Eats the World

On this trip we've been reading Tom Campanella's forthcoming book "China Reinvents the City" from Princeton University Press. It's hard to imagine a book about China that is more engaging. I recommend it, and most of the ideas in this post are from the book.

China's economic boom has allowed the national psyche to make major strides in recovering from some of the traumas of the Mao years. First, the influx of prosperity and resources means that for a lot of people, scarcity and hardship are either unknown or a distant memory (however, I should emphasize that life is getting harder for some as reforms progress). Second, the new availability of resources and leisure time in China has spawned an unprecedented building spree of theme parks that commodify China's culture and sell it to the masses, essentially remanufacturing one of "The Four Olds" destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. The first of these theme parks was Splendid China in Shenzhen, followed by over 2,500 more from 1989 to the present, including Tang Paradise, Yunnan Ethnic Villages, and countless Buddhism-themed parks. Unlike American theme parks, which are oriented towards amusing children and gratifying thrill-seekers, Chinese theme parks provide an opportunity for adults to rediscover and consume Chinese culture and history in a bizzare mix of miniaturizations of major buildings and topographic features, song-and-dance shows (or "Vegas and Bollywood with Chinese characteristics", as I like to call them), and mechanized statuary and fountains.

Not all 2,500 of those theme parks are about China. In addition to theming and consuming the landscapes of China itself, there is an enormous appetite for flavors from abroad. We visited "Windows on the World," right next to Splendid China in Shenzhen, a theme park that is essentially a giant garden full of miniatures of various wonders of the world, like the Pyramids, Angkor Wat, the Lincoln Memorial, etc. There is a powerful will in China to explore the world afresh after years of isolation, through consumption. There I am at left with some students, next to the Eiffel Tower, in China!

The most recent manifestation of all this theming and consumption seems almost logical if you can just accept the premise. In the suburbs of Shanghai, nine new towns are being constructed as part of Shanghai's regional plan. In a wild riff on Shanghai's history as an international treaty port, with different concession areas taking on different urban forms, each new town has a European country as its theme, and the theme is implemented by private developers right down to the security guards' uniforms. It's hard to believe, until you see.