China Initiative Events

At this week’s China Chat we are joined by Artist-Ethnographer Mary Ann O’Donnell who will present her paper, “@Nantou Ancient City #Common Origins — Inventing an Origin Myth for the Greater Bay Area.”

Before the Umbrella Movement (2014), Shenzhen origin stories and exhibitions asserted the importance of an independent Hong Kong to the SEZ’s success; the city’s political difference was implicitly considered a cause of Shenzhen’s success. However, in the aftermath of the Umbrella Movement and the more recent Water Movement (2019-2020), a regional origin story has gained traction in Shenzhen. In this paper, I track Hong Kong’s vexed place in Shenzhen’s evolving cultural geography. From the perspective of Luohu at the historic Sino-British border, Shenzhen origin stories emphasize that cross border cooperation produced economic success. In contrast, from the perspective of Nantou Ancient City, the former seat of Xin’an County and territorial predecessor of both Shenzhen and Hong Kong, both Shenzhen and Hong Kong’s success appear as effects of regional structures. By focusing on the changing representation of Hong Kong in Shenzhen origin stories, I call attention to how this narrative shift justifies a less ‘special’ status for both the Special Economic Zone and the Special Administrative Region, normalizing tighter social control in both cities specifically and the cities of the GBA more generally.