Shanzhai

Abstract

In recent years, the Chinese word shanzhai, meaning fenced mountain village in remote areas, took on a new meaning and gained a new popularity. It now refers to any kind of cheap imitation or unauthorized reproduction, and all the activities involved in producing such a copy. This article discusses the way in which the word has come to take on its new meaning, and asks why such a shift was necessary – why does the Chinese language need a word that so succinctly points to the activity of copying? It also examines how the phenomenon of architectural imitation in China is situated in the shanzhai culture in terms of precedents, motivation, ideology, practicality, and implication, arguing that the true meaning of this word is to establish the cultural identity for Chinese people who embraced the shanzhai manner.

Keywords:

• Shanzhai
• commercial plagiarism
• architectural imitation
• cultural needs

Notes

¹ China is certainly not the only country making fake products. Other countries – in the past or currently – also have experienced counterfeit production and no doubt also have their unique cultural perspective of the law-defying part of their economies.

² In addition to the summary above, there is another “unofficial” version of reusing the word. In the mid-twentieth century it was common practice in Hong Kong – a Cantonese-speaking city bordering with Shenzhen – to subcontract the making of products to backyard manufacturers operating in hillside slums jerry-built mostly with wood, hence the nickname: shanzhai product. While the business of subcontracting has been a noted research topic, for example, in Kim-Ming Lee’s “The Flexibility of the Hong Kong Manufacturing Sector” (China Information (1997–12): 189–214), the associated nickname has hardly received scholarly attention.

³ For a survey of China’s recent architecture, see Thomas J. Campanella, The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), a pre-shanzhai publication that insightfully examines the political, technical, and social conditions leading to the shanzhai phenomenon in architecture. For China’s architectural copying, Bianca Bosker, Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), traces the philosophical sources and historical precedents of architectural imitations in China all the way to the era of China’s first emperor in the third century BCE and discusses how the elements of the past still affect contemporary culture in China, although shanzhai is not mentioned in this book.

⁴ For a discussion and criticism of the new classicist phenomenon in China, see Kerry Sizheng Fan: “Culture for Sale: Western Classical Architecture in China’s Recent Building Boom,” Journal of Architectural Education 63, no. 1 (2009): 64–74.

⁵ Samples of criticisms of the new classical architecture, also known as “European Continental style,” include Chen Guanhong, “‘Oulufeng’ jianzhu weishenme zai zhongguo fanlan?” [Why is ‘European Continent Style’ Architecture Widespread in China?], Huazhong Architecture 2 (2002): 22–23; Fang Yuan, “‘Oulufengge’ de meisu jianzhu” [The Low-Taste Architecture of ‘European continent style’], Architectural Journal 2 (2002), 42; Zhang Weicheng, “Houzhiminzhuyi qingshi xia de houxiandaizhuyi – ping shanghai jianzhu de ‘oulu fengqing’ feng” [Post-Modernism in the Context of Post-Colonialism – A Criticism of the “European Continent Flavor” in the Architecture in Shanghai], Time+Architecture 1 (2000): 23–26.

⁶ For a comprehensive survey of Chinese classical-revival architecture, see Fu Ch’ao-Ch’in, Zhongguo gudian shiyang xinjianzhu [Chinese New Architecture with Classical Style] (Taipei: Nantian, 1993).