Jun. 2020; A City Is Its People
Change. Not many peoples favourite word, to be honest, is it. Change is inevitable. Change can oftentimes be good, and often unnecessary and/or unwanted. Living in a gargantuan steel behemoth of a city like Shenzhen, your feelings and opinions about change are as insignificant as a grain of sand on the beach, because this monster will never rest. When I first arrived in Shenzhen circa spring 2010, the city was made up of 3 main areas, with a sprinkling of mysterious lifeforms on the outer reaches of those. One roller coaster ride of a decade later and I swear this place has gotta be close to doubling in size sometime real soon. Everything has changed, although not all this change is seen as an improvement by all. But this last week I read several articles that brought warmth to this cold London heart, and brought back happy reminiscings of my first few years in Shenzhen; the street sellers are making a comeback.
If you can cast your minds back a decade, before everybody and his dog had a smartphone, before we had apps to translate and so many gadgets and inventions to make life lazily easy, living in Shenzhen as a newly arrived Westerner was more than somewhat of a challenge. On a daily basis there was a multitude of obstacles that could catch you off guard at any moment, nearly all of which could have been solved with a working understanding of the language. Personally the biggest difficulty I had was not entirely the language, but the food.
Before I found myself here in the blistering heat and overwhelming culture shock of Guangdong, I lived in Germany for a year. Now my spoken German is about as fluent as my dogs understanding of Pythagoras theory, but in most other languages there is an alphabet to fall back on. When you’re a regular Joe in an unfamiliar land you can memorize a few words, the word for bakery or cinema or toilet for example. It doesn’t take long before anyone can recognize the word for coffee in half a dozen languages. But, being a fresh fish here in South China, with a language system that looked not much more more than random squiggles of ink on a page, that simply wasn’t gonna swing.
As much as I hate to admit it, I spent the first couple of weeks living on the food at my delightful Western workplace, and filling my dissatisfied face with Subway sandwiches. Being a non-meat eater for approaching 20 years, pointing like a confused chimp at a random local eateries menu and saying “zhe ge” is not going to bless my belly with the mouthfuls of heavenly vegetarian delights I’d so wished for. Back in those early days my diet was pretty terrible, eating mostly bar food at work and packs of snack tofu other times. But, one evening as I took a long leisurely stroll outside of my polished and privileged neighborhood, I stumbled across an oasis of cuisine that almost brought a tear to my eye; street barbeque.
Now this may seem ridiculous to those who take it for granted, but this was the first time I’d ever had street barbeque. In England yes of course we have barbeque, but it’s a very different affair. We love to eat al fresco, but we don’t have bbq restaurants, per se. A Barbeque , to us, would usually go as such; a pleasant weekend would come along, and we invite ones friends and neighbours (and unfortunately sometimes the family would invite themselves along too) and we would set up the metal bbq beast in the back garden. The meat would be marinated several hours earlier. The fridge would be stocked full of beer and wine. The men would arrive and stand around shirtless (if it managed to reach anything over 18 degrees or so), sipping cold lagers, savagely complaining about work/boss/colleagues/etc, and bizarrely would procure great pleasure in taking care of the cooking, a very rare occurrence in many Western households. It must be those hunter-gatherer instincts that come flooding back into the average caveman subconscious, but us fellas just love standing around large lumps of charred meat as it cooks in front of us. The ladies would arrive and slowly drink enough wine to sink a battleship, giggle uncontrollably, playfully ridicule the menfolk and make us nervous when they whisper. But, street bbq in China is a completely different thing, and I found it an altogether joyous experience.
It seemed back in my early years here, every neighbourhood, every street corner or even underground walkways would have some kind of street food. Fond memories of untold amounts of evenings sat around with friends on bright plastic chairs in the humid night air, sipping cold Tsingtaos and laughing over the most silly of conversations. Tofu skin, beans on sticks, see you tomorrow mushrooms and green peppers so spicy you can taste them for days. Happy days. When I’ve travelled around other Asian countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines and even Japan, street food is alive and well, attracting both locals and visitors alike to sample this staple of regular working peoples life. When I go to any new place in Asia, it’s the street food district I’m searching for first. Street food is real food, for real people. I’ve never understood the penchant for swanky expensive restaurants, every city has those. Go where the locals go, eat what the locals eat. Unfortunately, nearly all the street food vendors have been moved on several years ago, most of the evening markets have gone the way of the dodo. But, it seems now they might hopefully be making a reappearance. I’m not alone in applauding the decision to let the vendors back, bringing a little more soul back into the neon lit avenues and alleyways of this futuristic megacity, and with any luck, helping a great deal of people back on their feet.
As a keen photo taker, I’ve always loved exploring the backstreets of whichever place I’m in. Some of the most memorable and enjoyable exchanges with people I’ve had in Shenzhen were in areas such as Baishizhou, Hubei in Dongmen, Xiasha and more. But these areas are ageing, and progress waits for nobody. When these gorgeous old neighbourhoods are boarded up and closed down, I’ve often wondered what happens to the people that lived there. Of course they are safe and (I hope) happy, but where do they go? To me, these are the areas of life that bring the personality and charm to a city. Shenzhen is a shining example to the world of Hi-tech, finance, environmentally friendly industry and transportation, it’s nothing less than a flagship metropolis. But, a city is it’s people, not it’s robots. Personally, I’m greatly looking forward to more evenings of street food, cold Tsingtaos, and silly conversations with friends again.