Some objects pack a wholloping story. 

Take this one for instance.

It sits now in a modest apartment in Guangzhou.   But it’s last address was the home of a landowner.  During the cultural revolution, the landowner decided that something so splendid might be held against him by the rampaging Red Guard. 

So the landowner sold it to a local peasant for a tiny sum.   And the peasant said, "Yes" and the object changed hands.

Now it is not known whether this was enough to spare the landowner the fury of the Red Guard.  Probably not, one guesses.  Great furniture can be laundered in a way that great houses and reputations cannot.  Perhaps the idea was to get rid of anything smashable, because once the kids started smashing, things would spin quickly out of control.  The other possibility is that the jettisoned this chair because he wanted to find a place of safety for it. 

None of this is clear.  I asked the present owner whether it wasn’t a dangerous object to own and he said, "no," he came from a very long line of peasants and no one would begrudge him it. 

China has a creativity crisis. 

Qin Xiaoying says so.  He argues that China’s culture industry has been shut out of the spectacular growth demonstrated by other industries in China.  This means it is falling behind the US and the UK, for whom "cultural products" are a major piece of the economy.  Mr. Xiaoing asks, "how can we turn China’s culture industry from a weakling into a major power?"

The struggle to create a cultural industry will be titanic because the barriers are formidable.  Mr. Xiaoying says, China’s thousands of years of "feudalistic authoritarianism [which] have stifled the promotion of individual personality."  And there are the lingering effects of the "Soviet-style, highly-centralized planned economy" that put "Chinese culture in a developmental straight jacket."

Mr. Xiaoying argues that three things are called for from the state: capital injection, policy support and protection.  To be this in the parochial terms of our own debate on the subject, the thing comes down to Virginia Postrel vs. Richard Florida

Richard Florida believes that "creatives" are a professional class who can be nurtured and enabled by interventions from the state.  This is one of the reasons he is so beloved of urban planners.  He promises them a role in the "innovation economy."

Now, I have never consulted Virginia Postrel on this question but I am pretty sure she would be unenthusastic about the Floridian vision.  I think she might say (and if she won’t, I will) that cultivating creativity through state support is a contradiction in terms.  Real creativity, creativity that is fully responsive to and engaging of, the cultural moment at hand, this comes from creatives flying by the seat of their pants, speaking to popular taste, and not from people funded by  government committee.

Creativity that is not tied to commerce doesn’t usually come to very much in the way of culture.  It speaks to a small constituency in orbit around a small elite.  That’s the way it looks to this Canadian.

References

Xiaoying, Qin.  2006.  Nuture creativity to propel culture industry.  China Daily.  September 16-17, p. 4. 

People say, "Grant, what are you really doing on these crazy trips of yours?  Moscow, one week.  Chicago, the next.  What gives?"

And now on the heels of a great triumph, I can reveal my true mission: to discover and document the often obscure and distant origins of popular culture.  Think of me as Carter of  Egypt.  Speke of African.  Lewis of Oregon.  Or just some guy looking around.

For this trip, the question was simple.  What were the origins of the Andre the Giant "obey" poster that began to appear a couple of years ago in the American city.  The posters were a great phenomenon of the 1990s.  Suddenly they were on park benches, road signs, utility poles.  None of them were signed. None were attributed.  This mystery of popular culture had no ready explanation. 

We met, as we always do, at the Explorer’s Club in New York City.  Preliminary intelligence suggested that Andre origins might be found in Chicago or LA.  The specific notion was that "Andre" might be a corruption of "Andrew," and something useful could be found if we scrutinized records of the English or Scottish immigrant communities of the 19th century.  (A free floating "w" was discovered in the archive of Chicago’s Folger Museum, but this proved, finally, a false lead.)

Eventually, the hunt took us abroad, first to Moscow and then Shanghai.  I had my doubts we would find anything of value in the former, and I now believe the trip was contrived by Marriott who had never been to the hermitage in St. Petersberg.   (Not all members of the team are quite as dedicated or discliplined as others.  For some team members, frankly, it’s all a bit of a lark.  And just between you and me, if Marriott’s father hadn’t put up substantial funding we would have dumped the little fellow years ago.)

Then last week, a frantic call in the middle of the night.  One of our people in China had stumbled upon an important clue.  And the race was on.  (We couldn’t be sure that the Scandinavians or the Israelis weren’t already in place.)  Time was of the essence.  Steam ships were out of the question.  We would have to fly. 

A week in Shanghai gave us nothing useful.  The evidence seemed to operate like a shortwave radio, first a weak signal, then a strong one, then nothing at all.  It looked like a trip to Guangzhou might be "indicated," and, as some of you know, we arrived here on Sunday.

And then yesterday, the break through.  The local team had zeroed in on a block of flats on the outer rim of the southern part of the city.  It took all of Monday and most of Tuesday to work our way through the possibilities.  Finally, in the late afternoon, with dusk coming on, and the exertions of the day upon us, we climbed the 8 floors up to the modestly appointed apartment of a startled woman of middle age.  "No," she said, she had never heard of "Andre" and, no, she was most certainly not harboring clues as to his origins. 

"Would she consent to a search of the apartment", we asked her, and when she said, "no," we did one anyhow.  The entire scientific community awaits these results, and we’ll be damned if we let someone’s rights to privacy get in the way.   It’s for science.  I mean, really. 

We were just about to give up altogether when, ho, a cry from the pantry.  Marriott was shouting incoherently but with great force.  We rushed in to see what the matter was.  And sure enough, there it was.  Marriott, the little bastard, had done it.  We were looking at the object of the hunt, no doubt about it.  I don’t have to tell you it was a bitter sweet moment.  Marriott’s name, not mine, would now live on in history as the man who discovered "Andre antecedent, CBNYD 2". 

Here’s what the little bastard found.  To the right, you will see a round plastic container, with a pinkish top and a face staring out.  That’s a Ritz container on the right, and a white plastic bag on the left.  We think it’s now being used as a cookie jar.

To be sure, this is an early Andre.  He is happier, rounder, and, er, like, not yet a giant.   But I think the identifying characteristics are unmistakeable.  The eyes, especially.  And that gaze, hollowed out, fixed on the infinite, seeing all, fearless, unblinking.  The Andre we know from bus shelters in St. Louis is of course an older, more mature Andre, an Andre who has lived too well, seen, perhaps, too much.

But as I say there is in my mind no question that this is the original Andre, the image from which all the other Andres must spring.  What the image is doing here on a child’s biscuit container, that’s a question for future expeditions.  How the image made its way from Guangzhou to the West, this is another puzzler.  There is of course every possibility that Andre’s origins are entirely elsewhere, that the biscuit container somehow merely "turned up" here Guangzhou, here in this 8th floor apartment, here on this kitchen shelf.  But I am proud to say that we did something remarkable yesterday. 

The mystery of Andre the Giant is now a little less mysterious. 

Interviewing 17.2 million people takes time, patience and plenty of pens and paper.  But now I can put my feet up and call the first week a job well done.  I may have missed a couple of people, but I am pretty sure I heard from everyone at least by horn. (Next to a table of drunken Australians, this is the noisest place on earth.) 

Naturally, I am now thoroughly smitten by Shanghai.  If I can persuade Pam, I’d would like to come back and live.  She said she’d think about it.  And she really will. 

Certainly, I could do what I am doing now, consulting.  But I notice that American business schools are setting up shop here, and that would be an interesting option.

This would give me a trojan horse with which to get cultural literacy into the b-school curriculum.  If I was teaching at a Chinese b-school, or an American b-school in China, I could make a strong case for courses that taught American culture to Chinese students and Chinese culture to American culture.  Once we are talking cross-culture, suddenly there’s a license to do what the b-school should have done in any case.

The best model is something like this:

1) teach a class with both Chinese and American students enrolled

2) teach the first half of the class in the US

3) teach the second half of the class in China

4) in the first half of the class, teach American culture and consumer behavior.  Putatively, this is for the Chinese students, but in fact this is also an opportunity to teach American culture to American students. 

5) in the manner of the case study method, engage the American students to help teach the Chinese students American culture, in the process giving the American students a reason for being in a classroom that teaches something the b-school community believes they already know. 

6) in the second half of the class, teach Chnese clture and consumer behavior.  Putatively, this is for American students, but in fact it is also an opportunity to teach Chinese culture to Chinese students

7) in the manner of the case study method, engage the Chinese students to help teach the American students Chinese culture, in the process giving the Chinese students a reason for being in a classrom that teaches something the b-school community believes they already know.

I think this could be interesting.  The "cross culture" mandate is a useful license, and at this rate it is the only way the b-school community is going to take culture seriously as a educational responsibility.  (This despite the fact that business now turns increasingly on innovation and dynamism.  Innovation is almost always cultural in origin and it is always cultural in effect.  Dynamism, ditto.)

So it’s one of the paradoxes.  The only way to fix  the American business school curriculum is to move it to Shanghai.  Got it.

This is a Communist star now tucked between monuments to capital. 

It was taken from a speeding taxi and I was pleased that I lined it up.  The chances of persuading the driver to go back around for another photo, well, these were not strong.   The Chinese will suffer many things.  Idiots are not one of them.

Five things struck me yesterday.

First, an ad for Nike that stands at least 35 stories high.  I didn’t recognize the basketball player featured, but he is fearsome, and, um, really tall.  The future of marketing has already created an outpost, a staging area, here.  (Yes, I know that this is probably the work of Weiden Kennedy.  But they created this ad in Shanghai.)

Second, innovative architecture of which these examples are not by any means the most remarkable.  The future of architecture has created an outpost here too.  Some of the stuff here made me goggle with admiration.  (I guess if I were better informed, I would have understood that Shanghai has become a show case, but I am not sure this is widely known.  This is one of the ways the future can sneak up on you.) 

Third, Shanghai is a capital of capital.  It’s China’s capital of capital.  It can’t be very long before it is the capital of capital, eclipsing even New York and London. 

Fourth, I am wondering when China will so establish itself as a culture center that we will quite like the idea of buying brands that include or consist of Chinese characters.   (I am there already.)  When will Chineseness becomes a mark of sophistication, power, connection, or all three?  Certainly in my lifetime, unless I am struck and killed by a Shanghai motorist.   When does Shanghai become the new  Rome?  When do I return as a bumpkin from the provinces?

Five, none of this comes to pass unless China masters openness.  And this week, there were troubling developments on this front.  The state declared that it would make itself sole source for information about China, that it would be Reuters with a monopoly on news, that foreign journalists would no longer be able to collect data. 

Observers, Western and Chinese, rubbed their eyes with astonishment and declared that, among other things, the capital markets would up and leave.  Cooler heads prevailed, and Premier Wen Jiabao insisted yesterday that China’s open policy would remain unchanged.  Still, this little misadventure in communications tells us that there some do not fully grasp the nature of the enterprise and the secret of dynamism. 

Talk about a critical path.  If dynamism is allowed to flourish, one future, a Chinese future, awaits the species.   Another, nonChinese future emerges if that long standing Chinese feeling for control asserts itself.  It is one of those "power comes to those who let go" paradoxes.  My guess is that the instinct for control is largely in remission.  You don’t get this far down the road unless you are deeply committed to letting things rip.

My hotel here in Shanghai is not nearly as good as the one in Beijing.  There are lots of little errors and some quite big ones.  The place has a certain randomness.  It’s a Hilton and maybe that’s why.  But I wondered if this is systematic variation. 

If yesterday’s post is correct, Shanghai is the more expressive, more individualistic of the two cities.  And that would be that most everyone in Shanghai is less interested in role perfection and more interested in self expression.  (I adopt Lionel Trilling’s distinction here.)

From this point of view, working in a hotel is not an honor but a drudgery.  Stuffing yourself into a uniform, being eager, exact, exterting…all of this belongs to those who live for the corporation.  If you are more self expressive, if you are from Shanghai, you are much more inclined, sorry, to want to blow your own horn.  Working for an institution like the Hilton that obliges you to efface your individuality, must eventually come to feel like "working for the man."  This North American phrase is the cry of outrage against a world in which the consumer realm may express be used to construct and assert personhood but the producer realm is very different. 

As capitalism gets more demanding of novelty, variation and responsiveness, the contradiction is closed a little.  Now the work-a-day world is more expressive of difference, less demanding of sameness.  China will someday adapt this approach to capitalism.  It will someday master it.  For the moment however, people are being inducted into individualism only by halves.   

References

McCracken, Grant.  2004.  China II.  This Blog Sits At The … December 20, 2004.  here. 
(see this post for an interesting case study on Chinese individualism.)

Three tiny ethnography observations

Lots of dogs as pets in evidence.  And a certain pride of ownership.  I am told this partly a reflection of the one-child policy.  Clearly, it is also true that pets serve some as a fashion accessory.

Lots less evidence of smoking than the last time I was here when everyone seemed to be smoking 4 cigarettes at once.

I went to the Shanghai Municipal Television building to do an interview, and I was interested to see in the lobby here several guys of middle age wearing baseball caps.  We see this in North America and I wondered if this was a Hollywood influence.  (Ron Howard and lots of other directors, not just bald ones!) 

The drive in from the Shanghai airport yesterday was telling.  Unlike Beijing, where everyone seems to drive in a state of grace, hands careful poised at "10" and "2," Shanghai is more pell-mell, more pet-met (petal to the metal).

In fact, people in Shanghai drive with verve and panache.  They honk much more than in Beijing.  And they do not just honk informationally. No, they honk with indignation and sometimes outrage.

Driving while indignant, this is easy for an American to understand. Indignation is, for many of us, our secret motive for driving.  We take to the interstate with the conviction that the world is filled with idiots who have somehow escaped notice that they are idiots.  That’s what our horn is for.  A patriot duty is satisfied, and the spleen well vented.

But the Beijing case tells us that indignation need not take the wheel, that honking with outrage is an abitrary, cultural convention.  Which raises the question, where does indignation come from? 

In the American case, it comes from property rights.  When in a car on the road, Americans file a claim.  They say that the road ahead of them belongs, for the moment, to them.  We call this our  "right of way."  If you cut me off, you violate my right of way and my property claim.  I seek redress with my horn.  I try to make you pay, at least sonically.  That this never works, that you can be relied upon to honk back or flip me the bird, this bothers me not at all.  Behind the wheel, each of us in Judge Judy, trying fellow drivers, finding them quilty, and meting out punishment.   Body by Fisher, radio by Sirius, wisdom by Solomon. 

Is that happening here in Shanghai?  I have no idea.  But Shanghai drivers do honk with embrage and this could be a key to a series of differences that appear, if only notionally, between Beijing and Shanghai.  For the diferences between the cities goes much deeper than driving practices.  People who live in Shanghai are said to be more entrepreneurial, more expressive, more vivid.  In their time, they were more international, more fashionable, more au courant. 

For parochial purposes, we may look for a Western correlate:

Shanghai is to Beijing

as

Montreal is to Toronto
New York is to Chicago
(i.e., First cities are to Second cities)
Rome is to Milan
Milan is to Paris
Paris is to London

There is a famous phrase in North America used to describe the difference between Canadian and American attitude towards over-the-counter drugs.  In Canada, everything is prohibited, unless it is allowed.  In the US, everything is allowed, unless it is prohibited.  It feels something like this difference might hold here.  Which would give us:

Shanghai is to Beijing

as

the US is to Canada

Westerners tend to think of China as something monolithic, as the Chinese do too, sometimes.  When you ask someone here how Communist party officials played midwive to capitalism, you are told, as if this were not just the best explanation but the obvious one, that they, the officials, managed the transition "for China."  This says that over and above the ideas called "communism" and "capitalism" this is a still larger, more encompassing one called "China."  And this is a very monolithic idea indeed.

But in other moments, the Chinese think of China as a country of countries.  At the very least, one is obliged to distinquish between Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangzhou, to which one would have to add the far North, the deep South and the wild West. 

From an anthropological point of view, the idea called "China" is sensationally rich and supple.  It allows for commonality big enough to bridge warring ideologies, and a particularity deft enough to parse out a lots of smaller differences.  Clearly, the Chinese have not heard of the post moderism that insists that all categories of knowledge are unstable, those of nationality and place, most of all. 

But then as any right thinking person understands, this conceit was really a Trojan horse introduced to Western thought by willy intellectuals.  Post Modernism was designed to persuade us to dismantle Anglo American theory and the ideas of incumbent culture, and clear a path for the French intellectual’s "right of way."