During my move back to Shanghai I spent a lot of time running around town between friends places, dinners, apartment hunting and my new school. For a few weeks there it seemed like I was getting in a cab by myself everyday. As it goes, I was having a lot of short conversations with cab drivers and after only a few I starting noticing something interesting. It seemed like not just a few, but a disproportionately large number of them were from 崇明岛 (chóng míng dǎo); that long island/suburb across river, north of the city proper. Well, after about the 5th or 6th time, I started inquiring as to if there were any special reason as to why I had talked to so many people from the same suburb.
The only answer I got was about ‘hukou’s or the Chinese system of household registration which controls where people can and can’t work. Basically, if you aren’t registered somewhere you can’t work there and getting registered means being born there or having lived and worked there for a long time. (or maybe just a little 关系?…) For that reason it’s quite common, if not completely normal, to have a driver from a suburb a bit outside of any Chinese city driving your taxi. They have the registration and can make more money doing work in the city.
Still…it seemed strange. They were all from the same suburb and not even a very close one. In fact I was told that although they are building a bridge now, the island is only accessible by boat. And hey, it is an island. It seemed like there had to be something going on.
Well it turns out that there is. A friend of mine, @bramerb, via twitter sent me a link to an article here about a planned ‘eco-city’ on an island near Shanghai. Turns out that the government is starting to, and still may attempt to, turn 崇明岛 into some sort of city project of the future called Dongtan Eco-City.
It all makes sense! Well, not really, but it’s a big piece of the puzzle. I’m still curious as to why so many became cab drivers and I’m not even sure if people have been directly displaced by the project, offered some sort of incentive package, or something else, but there’s definitely a connection there. On paper the project is awesome. The thing is, in China and other mega-populated countries, the human cost is so very high. Of course environmental sustainability is important, but how ’socially-sustainable’ is relocating thousands upon thousands of people for every project? A hard balance to strike indeed…
I guess its time to learn how to say ‘Eco-City’ (绿城？) and continue the conversation.
Interesting.
4 Comments
But you’re right, so many taxi drivers from the island, all speak highly of it and each encourages me to visit the beautiful place – and cheap, too! – yet the reality is those taxi drivers make more in the snarl of traffic that is Shanghai than on the bucolic island that is Chongming.
I hear ya. After hearing so much about it, I’ve started to want to check the place out as well.
Wow, that article makes it sound like quote the boondoggle. Was the intention for the island’s residents to be able to stay there? It seems like they built the homes with a whole different market in mind.
I had to look that one up, but yeah, it seems like it may turn out that way. A lot of China’s grand projects of the last few years have taken huge hits from the crisis.
As far as the relocation goes, the place definitely wasn’t built for the majority of the people living there. I’m sure some could afford to continue living there, but not the majority. It’s pretty much state-sponsored gentrification.
In China, tho, it’s pretty much impossible to build anything without moving anyone. And, to their credit, the govt usually provides newer housing and/or monetary compensation. Of course, that doesn’t exactly just make everything better. A lot of social unrest/protests, etc stems from stuff like this.