DongGuan Dérive.

I arrived at the bus station in DongGuan around 1pm. It looked liked it was going to rain. Maybe just a shower, nothing too serious.



I walked towards the mamouth South China Mall. Currently the worlds largest shopping mall. Though when i visited it last summer to shoot some video footage, it was completely devoid of shops (except for a small department store.)



Very little had changed. Maybe one or two new shops had recently opened, but i think there seemed to be less people walking around compared to last year.



The whole mall is like an enlarged 4D cartoon.



Clowns are surposed to be entertaining, though they turn out to scare people. This kind of place is the same. It was built to entertain, to be fun. But is depressing and mournful somehow.



My camera ran out of batteries. So i went to the only department store to buy some more.



I felt hungry, and ate at the only place open that served food; McDonald's.



God this place was barren. Like a post-apocalyptic worldscape, where people once wandered and bought shampoo and slippers.



I had to leave.



The surrounding area looked very typical of Chinese suburbia. Similar in some ways to American suburbia. Possibly as alienating. But different, more high density.



I spent at least 3 or 4 minutes trying to cross the road.



I walked towards a store called Metro, which i also visited last summer. China currently seems to have a penchant for building such 'big-box' stores. B&Q and WalMart have also invated China.



Metro sells everything in bulk. I got stared at by the shop assistants for taking pictures, and carrying a large back pack that could be used to stuff full of bags of washing powder. Maybe the store assistants were just bored. I would be in their position.



I still thought it might rain, so i bought an umbrella. I walked outside and walked up what looked like a cul-de-sac with a demolition zone on one side and at the end, and apartment buildings on the other side.

I walked to the end of the road, where there was some farming going on, and lots of rubble. Despite the big supermarket chains moving into China, many of the Chinese still grow their own food on allotments. Maybe this has something to do with the famine of the 50's, or general paranoia about food security. After all, 1.5 billion people is alot of mouths to feed in a single country, and will become increasingly difficult in the future. Food prices have skyrocketed in the last 2 years, crop yields are down, and there are already people going hungry.



I walked down the sidewalk that ran along the never-ending line of apartment blocks trying to look for DongGuan's downtown city-center skyline.

Walking in China can be a bizarre experience. The pedestrian is dwarfed by everything, even the plant pots and street lamps.



I give up looking for the skyline. Chinese cities generally have no single area with tall buildings. Chinese cities are only and all tall buildings. So i wave for a taxi.

I spent 5 minutes trying to explain that i wanted to go to the downtown, the main street etc. etc. but the taxi driver just shouted things in Chinese. I called my assistant; Jenny, to help. She explained to the driver where i wanted to go.



20 minutes later i wondered if the taxi driver was lost, taking me to a downtown in another city, taking the long way around to clock up as many miles as possible, or if the downtown really is this far away. I guessed the last. Chinese cities are vast. Especially DongGuan, which appears to suffer from suburban sprawl more than any other Chinese city i have visited.



Eventually he dropped me off in the 'main area' of the city, which looked from my window to be a collection of elaborate shopping malls and colourful ginormous billboards.



I walked up to one of the malls, where a boy in a fluorescent orange polo shirt offered me a voucher to a fitness club.



I walked towards what looked like a subway entrance, which turned out to be the entrance to an underground mall. I took the escalator down, had a look, and decided to turn back.

I walked alongside a wall covered in mobile phone numbers. The unemployed (this part of China has many at the moment) post up or paint their mobile numbers everywhere incase an employer is looking for labour.



It seemed as if DongGuan was built for clowns. Every building was adorned with the same gaudy primary colours and oversized ornaments usually found in children's nursery schools. Why did everything looks so childish?

I explored a huge courtyard parking lot. Again there were oversized toys everywhere.



I walked towards what looked like a factory, but got shouted at by a security guard. I turned back and entered a shopping mall.



This mall was full of shops selling furniture and home appliances. I walked into a chandelier shop, took some pictures, and got asked to stop. I find it frustrating to be constantly asked to stop taking pictures, due to the fear that i might want to copy and sell what i'm photographing, especially in a country that plagerizes everything.



I crossed the road, and entered another shopping mall. Malls in China generally contain one or more supermarkets. This one had two. I entered Carrefour, and walked around.



Chinese supermarkets are always littered with advertisements and cardboard arrangements promoting new products that in the 'West' are dull, but to Chinese customers are new oddities.



I left the supermarket and walked towards what appeared to be a collection of pseudo-'European' buildings. I passed a number of businesses catering to cars.



The pic-and-mix collection of European buildings turned out to be yet another mall.



This one was certainly more decrepit, even more so than the South China Mall.



Next to the mall was probably the largest apartment building i've ever seen. I wondered what it would feel like to live in a tiny container in such an enormous building.



I realized quickly that most of the mall was vacant. That it obviously wasn't a place worth caring about, like many of the places that have been build during the past 50 years. Such places in China are commonly referred to as 'face-projects'; usually ambitious building projects pioneered by a wealthy city official with wild ideas and tax revenue at his disposal, built with an ego, but without keeping in mind how people will actually live with such a project, how it will be carried forward into the future, how it will interact will other surrounding buildings and spaces, and how it actually feels to live, shop, work or even walk through such a place. City officials in China are not elected and do not have voters to please, so they can do whatever the hell they want.



I continued walking, and reached a network of apartment buildings that seemed at least 40 years old, which appeared rare for DongGuan. I walked down one of the alleyways, and peered through a few windows and observed families as they held BBQ's outside.



I reached a dead end, and turned back on myself, to exit onto a main road. This always surprises me in China, how one minute you can be amongst little alleyways and children playing and old women hanging out washing, and then suddenly your out on a main road with thousands of cars and strip malls and neon lights.



I passed yet another 'European' themed shopping mall. I didn't go inside. Surely such places have been built for their aesthetic abilities to lure people to them, though they appear clownish and cartoonish. I generally feel places like these chip away at our dignity day after day, until we stop caring.



I continued down the road towards a number of giant balloons in front of a furniture supercentre.



I went into the furniture center, and got waved at by two young women who spoke English. They asked me to take a tour of the shop with them. They took me around and showed me a variety of furniture and appliances. Fake fruit and bread and animals were everywhere. They gave me a business card.



I walked along one of DongGuan's main thoughroughfares. Either side there was development going on; new tarmac been layed, apartment blocks been constructed, workmen painting and sanding.



I crossed the road, and was faced with yet another shopping mall, this one adorned with gaudy ornaments and oversized models of consumer products.



I was hungry, and dinned on noodles in a Yunnan restaurant, where i flicked through golf magazines from 2007 and 2008.



Upon exiting the restaurant i realized it had become dark, and so i decided to leave the city center, and head back to the coach station in a taxi. The taxi ride only took 10 minutes. I realized that earlier on in the day i had been ripped off, and had probably been taken around the city in a loop to rack up as Yuan on the meter as possible.



I arrived back at the South China Mall, which was now lit up with neon signs.



I walked back to the coach station along the highway and construction wastelands of half finished fake-Bavarian style apartment blocks. The huge neon sign for the South China Mall produced an immense purple glow of light pollution in the humid air, like some alien spacecraft that landed on a hundred foot high plinth.



I arrived at the coach station at 7:35, bought a ticket back to Foshan for 7:50, and waited for my bus.

Interview with Mohammad Masad.

Can you describe the social mix In Dubai.

The people who live in Dubai represent one of the most complex and diverse mixes of people anywhere. There are approximately 200 different nationalities that live in Dubai. The people come from all over the world. This mix of population can really be broken down into two different communities; the first one is the Emiratis who are the original indigenous population of Dubai, and the second major group is the expat community. The largest group amongst the expatriate community is from South Asia, especially India.

What factors have brought global attention to Dubai?

Dubai has grown to become a global city. The reasons for people coming here can be traced within the global context of free trade, cheaper air travel in recent years, the free-ing up of visa restrictions; basically globalization. There are always opportunities here, plus there are no taxes, which makes it a very attractive place to come to. This is not just specific to Dubai though; internationally in recent years we have witnessed the mass movements of people from rural areas into cities in search of new opportunities, people moving across borders from country to country who are not grounded in any locality. If you look at the residents of the city, that the majority of the people that live here are not permanent citizens, it is a transient population. People come here to experience the modern marvels that have been created in Dubai; whether it be an indoor ski slope, or group of man made islands, or a rotating hotel. In addition to this you can buy almost anything you want.

Another reason as to why people are interested in Dubai, has to do with the crisis of the ‘Dubai Ports World’ that happened about 3 years ago. A major Dubai company acquired the rights to control 6 US ports, and that created a political storm in the United States, and Congress was generally opposed to it, and so Dubai has become a recognizable name in the US and around the world, as a major emerging city.

Can you expand on the importance of shopping in Dubai?

For people who live in Dubai, perhaps the centre of activity is the shopping mall. There are now 45 malls here, shopping has become a major activity, the city is like a giant shopping mall in itself. This has two sides to it. The shopping mall is where tourists spend a lot of time, and for people who live in the city, the shopping mall has become the public place of congregation. It is the most experienced public space in the city. The reason for this is the lack of actual investment in real public places outside of the private shopping mall. If you live in Dubai, there are hardly any other public spaces to go and meet people.

In this sense Dubai is not radically different to other cities around the world, where shopping malls have become primary public spaces. To understand the significance of the shopping mall in Dubai, we have to keep in mind the changing image of the public space globally. Many cities invested in creating artificial environments for people that are safe, consistent, clean and generally pleasant to be in. Like many citizens in cities across the world, people in Dubai have become primarily consumers, there has certainly been a shift in recent years from being a citizen of a country to becoming a consumer of the world.

What does this say about human activity around the world? That people are living in gated compounds and environments and when they want to interact with other people they get in their car and drive to a mall or theme-park, without ever really interacting with nature?

The city has always been a place that represents civilization, and its importance has relied on the premise of interaction with other people. The interesting thing about Dubai is that this interaction is extremely limited. So the question remains; is Dubai really a city? I’ll give you an example; I’ve lived in this compound for 7 years, there is no social life here, there is no real community, I don’t know my neighbours, they don’t know me. People live here to do there job, they don’t live here to be part of a community. It’s transient; people live here for a few years and then move on.

The interaction with nature here is equally as problematic, as you look around there is less and less nature that you can authentically experience. The front beach areas in Dubai have become private beach areas, managed and run by hotel resorts. Unless you are a guest at one of the luxury hotels you cannot get onto the beaches. There is not much public beach that is left.

The fact that your missing these two essential things as a resident of Dubai; both interaction with other people, and interaction with nature it says something about a new kind of city, a new kind of urban life, in which much of our life is encapsulated within enclosed environments whether its your apartment or villa, car or shopping mall, office, or restaurant. There is very little authentic urban experience left.