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jwsg's review against another edition
3.0
Over the years, I've come across various articles discussing urban development in China, the land reforms undertaken to facilitate this development and the downsides to this. The image of a solitary "nail house" standing forlornly in the centre of a giant construction site as its owners tried to stand their ground against a powerful property developer is still vivid in my mind. But I never quite understood the background and context to this visual image - what did the land reforms entail exactly? Without resorting to the throwaway term of "corruption" (although that plays a part), how did things get this way?
In this respect, Zhang's book does a good job in summarizing the key developments in Chinese housing policy over the past few decades, with the collectivization of land holdings in 1949, to the gradual introduction of housing reforms in the 1980s, to the heady rush to commercialise land use rights we see today. Zhang's book isn't about urban development in China or about housing policy in general. It's actually an ethnographic study of the middle class in Kunming and how they increasingly define themselves through their homes/properties.
Perhaps because Zhang is writing about a population that is relatively familiar - the middle class, as opposed to ethnographies of more marginalized populations e.g. Duneier's street vendors, or Bourgois' drug addicts - that you don't feel that you're reading anything particularly earth shattering or mind blowing. But she does a good job in articulating the key issues in a highly readable style. Some of the issues she touches on include the different kinds of housing developments coming up and how they seek to appeal to the middle class either by emphasizing their 'foreignness', their greenery (something in short supply in government built/sponsored housing) or their privacy and security; how individuals are increasingly defining themselves in terms of their material possessions, rather than their social ties and networks, or their personal characteristics; the spatialization of class and the social implications of this, etc.
One minor quibble I had with the book was Zhang's liberal scattering hanyu pinyin, indicating the Chinese terms used for certain concepts/terms, throughout the text. Some of the hanyu pinyin used made sense and was helpful; in some cases, the Chinese term packs in a lot more meaning or is more nuanced than what the English translation of that term might suggest. And it was useful in some cases to get a sense of what the commonly used term might be in Kunming. But in other cases, I didn't see the need for giving the Mandarin equivalent (because the English translation was a literal translation of the Chinese term and I don't think anything got lost along the way, e.g. kao ziji for "rely[ing] on oneself; or where the English term used was already a widely accepted translation of the Mandarin term e.g. nature for ziran; renovation for zhuangxiu; or feeling/sensation for ganjue). Putting in the hanyu pinyin in these cases broke the flow of the narrative, was distracting and felt a little superfluous, as if Zhang was trying to burnish her Chinese credentials more than anything else.
On the whole, though, a good read for anyone looking for a 101 on urban issues in China with a focus on housing.
In this respect, Zhang's book does a good job in summarizing the key developments in Chinese housing policy over the past few decades, with the collectivization of land holdings in 1949, to the gradual introduction of housing reforms in the 1980s, to the heady rush to commercialise land use rights we see today. Zhang's book isn't about urban development in China or about housing policy in general. It's actually an ethnographic study of the middle class in Kunming and how they increasingly define themselves through their homes/properties.
Perhaps because Zhang is writing about a population that is relatively familiar - the middle class, as opposed to ethnographies of more marginalized populations e.g. Duneier's street vendors, or Bourgois' drug addicts - that you don't feel that you're reading anything particularly earth shattering or mind blowing. But she does a good job in articulating the key issues in a highly readable style. Some of the issues she touches on include the different kinds of housing developments coming up and how they seek to appeal to the middle class either by emphasizing their 'foreignness', their greenery (something in short supply in government built/sponsored housing) or their privacy and security; how individuals are increasingly defining themselves in terms of their material possessions, rather than their social ties and networks, or their personal characteristics; the spatialization of class and the social implications of this, etc.
One minor quibble I had with the book was Zhang's liberal scattering hanyu pinyin, indicating the Chinese terms used for certain concepts/terms, throughout the text. Some of the hanyu pinyin used made sense and was helpful; in some cases, the Chinese term packs in a lot more meaning or is more nuanced than what the English translation of that term might suggest. And it was useful in some cases to get a sense of what the commonly used term might be in Kunming. But in other cases, I didn't see the need for giving the Mandarin equivalent (because the English translation was a literal translation of the Chinese term and I don't think anything got lost along the way, e.g. kao ziji for "rely[ing] on oneself; or where the English term used was already a widely accepted translation of the Mandarin term e.g. nature for ziran; renovation for zhuangxiu; or feeling/sensation for ganjue). Putting in the hanyu pinyin in these cases broke the flow of the narrative, was distracting and felt a little superfluous, as if Zhang was trying to burnish her Chinese credentials more than anything else.
On the whole, though, a good read for anyone looking for a 101 on urban issues in China with a focus on housing.
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