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Being Chinese
Once, I was proud of the Shenzhen miracle. Now I’m not so sure
The Taiwanese-influenced accent my voice carries is a relic of the 2000s and hints at how differently my generation understands modernity
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Ling Tang is a lecturer in cultural studies at the University of Melbourne and a singer-songwriter under the name Lyn Dawn.
I am a second-generation Shenzhener, born to parents who moved from Hunan province to Shenzhen city in the 1980s to seek opportunities. My father had a Master’s degree, a rarity then which afforded him the chance to look for work outside our province. Both my parents ended up with a state-owned enterprise.
My mother went back to Hunan in the 1990s for my birth, so my grandparents could help with childcare, but I was brought back to Shenzhen before my first birthday. Since leaving the city at 17 to study, I have lived in Hong Kong, Sweden and the United Kingdom and now teach cultural studies in Australia.
Today, Shenzhen means more to my parents than to me. The city “felt different” to my mother in her late 20s, as the train crossed into it. Shenzhen was and is modern, open and built for young professionals. It has fewer guanxi networks and clean streets. People come here from all over China, so it’s a Mandarin-speaking city in a Cantonese region.
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