Beijing Urban Farming Union: home composting workshop
The first Beijing Urban Farming Union event has met with great interest and we vowed to continue a series of workshops and meetings to learn about growing food in the city. It all begins with the soil, but accessing soil and organic nutrients has proven to be a problem in the city; meanwhile, the dumpsites are still filled with 63% kitchen waste, polluting the environment. So practical solutions for home composting are at the top of the priority list.
This Friday (7 September 2012) at 5pm, we will have the pleasure to learn a proven home composting method from a very distinguished specialist. Ayumi Matsuzaka is a japanese artist and gardener living in Berlin; she has travelled the world spreading her knowledge on food, waste, and natural cycles for several years; in Beijing she also takes part of the sustainability/art series “Examples to Follow” at Iberia Art center. For those who couldn’t meet her there, life gives you a second chance at HomeShop. Don’t miss it!
We will learn about the urban gardening movement in Berlin and focus on a small-scale non-smelly composting method for your apartment/balcony/rooftop. If you have a used bucket or box with a lid (up to 40 liters), you can bring it to the workshop and take home your starter kit.
Please register in advance for us to prepare the materials.
Please join us for a gathering at HomeShop to exchange on urban farming in Beijing. It’s an opportunity to meet likeminded people, learn some facts and d.i.y. techniques, and share knowledge and experiences. How can we access soil and fertilizer? Where can we get seeds? What materials can we use for containers, and where can we put them? How can we work together to make it easier and more fun?
To address these questions, on the agenda will be a tour of HomeShop’s on-site small farm and composting experiments and Seed Exchange Bank, presentations on small civil-society and community initiatives into agriculture in Beijing, and envisioning possible ways of linking up and cooperating among diverse groups of growers (and potential growers).
We should grow more food in the cities! This meeting is an invitation to get involved.
共同组织：家作坊和简明清 Co-organized by HomeShop and Jonas Nakonz
More: Plant a cucumber at your doorstep and you’re instantly beamed into a universe of global politics, complex ecosystems, social change, climate change mitigation, d.i.y. technology, massively improved quality of life and spiritual enlightenment contemplating the beauty of nature. Food sustains life; but eating your average food can contribute to the destruction of biodiversity, global warming and poisoning of soils and water. Some figures: Chinese agriculture emits almost twice as much greenhouse gas than its entire industrial sector. Of the yearly 50 Million tons of inorganic fertilizer poured onto Chinese soil, only 17% is taken up by crops. The rest is “lost to the environment”. Not to mention the yearly dose of 1.5 million tons of toxic pesticides sprayed on your food, and the coal-burning energy to produce that stuff. What is more, 30% of all fuel guzzling trucks on Chinese roads are actually transporting food – if you could smell the carbon in your dish you’d choke. Chinese urbanization – the largest migration in human history – has led to the creation of an estimated 10,000 km2 of unused rooftop area in China; that’s a big playground for organic gardeners to counter these problems. There’s tons of wasted organic matter; Beijing alone sends 8000 tons of food waste to the landfills every day and burns another 2000 tons. All of that could be put into compost bins and provide clean nutrients for your food. In Chinese cities, bucket gardening is refreshingly popular, particularly among the elderly. But the potential of urban farming goes far beyond. There are fascinating technologies, ranging from easy self-watering systems from recycled bottles to sensor-controlled automated farms. There is something smart for every space and condition. Urban farming can transform gray concrete into spaces of relaxation and dialogue. It creates community, networks of exchange, a platform for education and empowerment. Don’t wait until governments solve the problems of this planet. If you plant that cucumber, you’re part of a big thing!
My first attempt to enter the Chinese People’s Public Security University at 7 o’clock on a Thursday morning met with abrupt rejection. “This university is not like others,” the sympathetic but inflexible guard smiled. The following Tuesday I returned and through the magic words of a few contacts, fairly waltzed into the vast and well-kept campus, abuzz with the meticulous workings of early evening. We walked along streets with names like “Loyalty Avenue” and “Diligence Avenue” in a self-contained parallel universe populated by young cops and athletes in various groupings and formations breaking apart, flowing through a corner together, founding blue constellations across the immense, dusking Culture Plaza. No trash cans in this world: trash cans mean trash. No holding hands in this world.
After a review of evening roll call followed by substantial dinner in the cafeteria, we proceeded to a large installation near the heart of the campus, formed of a massive free wall surrounding a model of what appeared to be a European style town center. The traffic lights stood blind and waiting, and through a window above a real dry cleaners came the keening quasi-tunes of karaoke.
The town was neither completely real nor completely fake. Perhaps this diversifying was to make it more interesting, to create a sense that this dead space was somehow half alive, like a permeable, banal amusement park. But as a training ground for how to tackle situations like traffic control and bank robberies, one could also imagine this mixture of shops for daily necessities and the neighboring empty simulations as furnishing the leitmotif of preparedness for social breakdown even on one’s habitual off-hour trips to commissary.
Passing again outside the wall, we cut across the gigantic sports fields to a low building of studio rooms where extracurricular clubs convened. One of our guides, whose major is in processing foreigners and who loves punk music, had offered to let us watch their brand practice. We were treated to a suite of Chinese and American standards including “Every Breath You Take” by the Police, “Desperado” by the Eagles and “Holiday” by Green Day.
No irony in this world. Just the shining, armed citizens with their perfect eyesight (mandated to make it through the gate), honing their creative, sexual energies for the republic.
Holiday
“Say, hey!
Hear the sound of the falling rain Coming down like an Armageddon flame (Hey!) The shame The ones who died without a name
Hear the dogs howling out of key To a hymn called “Faith and Misery” (Hey!) And bleed, the company lost the war today
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies This is the dawning of the rest of our lives On holiday
Hear the drum pounding out of time Another protester has crossed the line (Hey!) To find, the money’s on the other side
Can I get another Amen? (Amen!) There’s a flag wrapped around a score of men (Hey!) A gag, a plastic bag on a monument
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies This is the dawning of the rest of our lives On holiday
(Hey!) (Say, hey!)
(Wait for it!)
“The representative from California has the floor”
Sieg Heil to the president Gasman Bombs away is your punishment Pulverize the Eiffel towers Who criticize your government Bang bang goes the broken glass and Kill all the fags that don’t agree Trials by fire, setting fire Is not a way that’s meant for me Just cause (hey, hey, hey), just cause, because we’re outlaws yeah!
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies This is the dawning of the rest of our lives I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
This is our lives on holiday”
(from the album “American Idiot” by Green Day, 2005)
For human survival, we receive other’s life for maintain our own life. Today is the perfect day to appreciate their work on food production even after the loss of life. We will design the body sized garden (continued on 5月 20日) burning giant building and eating cold food to celebrate together with the dead.
organized by 植村絵美 Emi UEMURA, 方丹敏 Barbara FANG and Michael EDDY
Calendar Restaurant is a restaurant that opens once every month during the course of the farming season. It was initiated within the context of an art project from July to October, 2010. When farming started in 2011, we simply wanted to explore this practice within the framework of daily life and timeline of vegetables’ growth (that is where the calendar originates). In this restaurant, customers become cooks, working with fresh vegetables from our garden and sharing stories of their experiences. Once food is ready we sit together at one big table to discuss complex food issues: health, food safety, social systems, politics, weather, Chinese medicine, old Beijing cooking, food design and preservation ― but not to the point of making the taste muddy! This year our farm plot is supported by Runtian Farm and the restaurant is supported by HomeShop. Calendar Restaurant is organized by 植村絵美 Emi UEMURA and 方丹敏 Barbara FANG
日历餐厅 时间表 春夏 2012 Spring Summer Calendar Restaurant Schedule
３月２０日（春分）开始農耕 Start farming ４月４日 星期二（清明）让我们为先人做点什么 Let’s Get some help from the dead ５月６日 星期天 （立夏）日历餐厅开放日Calendar Restaurant Open ５月２０日 星期天 (小満） 想得瓜就种瓜，想得豆就种豆 Planting seeds for your wishes ６月２日 星期六 (芒种）儿童乐园 Child land ６月２３日星期六（夏至）传统中医食物 Chinese Medicinal Food ７月休 holiday ８月５日（立秋）星期天 日历餐厅研究计划 Calendar Restaurant Research Trip ８月２４日（七夕）星期五 情人餐 Dinner for Love
Photographer 王久良 WANG Jiuliang’s mapping of landfills that encircle Beijing.
location: “中国箱包之都 China Luggage & Bag Capital” 河北省保定市白沟工业城 Baigou Industrial City, Baoding, Hebei Province date: 5-6 January 2012
It is said that Beijingers’ vicinity to the imperial seat (both past and, ahem…present) means that they don’t know much about how to really do anything, as serving the government—or at least falling heavily shadowed in its midst—means that you do not really have to make your own living, nor can you cheat too far astray from the one that’s been allotted to you (think, in contrast, of those wild rebel producers in Guangdong [2]). The Beijinger’s belly is big, it’s got swagger like that and stands for a certain slow pace of life unlike the typical notion of an urban persona. So where we had previously held some romantic vision of an action-packed urban exploration, venturing out again this winter we realise that such adventure has less to do with sleek and agile black-clad intrigue than a questioning of what the making of urbanity really means here in Beijing, the capital city of not-knowing-how-to-do-much.
The second floor workspace of 红海棠皮具有限公司 Honghaitang Leather Goods Company, Ltd.
A visit to a friend of QU’s luggage and bag factory was compelled by curiosity and surprise, for such industrial production in Beijing is rare, but what we thought would be the outskirts of Beijing turned out to be Hebei province, surrounding Beijing on all sides like a seventh or eighth ring, traceable by desolate farmlands, landfills and, yes… production. 白沟镇 Baigou village, approximately three and a half hours from HomeShop by bus or subway and long-distance coach, once fell under the jurisdiction of 高碑店市 Gaobeidian city (not to be confused with the 高碑店 Gaobeidian of fake antique furniture fame in eastern Beijing), but for some unknown reason has in latter years been re-territorialised as part of the 保定市 Baoding municipality, a city historically well-known for being a site of minor victory over the Japanese during the occupation in the 30s. Baigou was in fact once called 白狗, but this unflattering name (meaning “white dog”) was later changed to 白沟, and from the trenches of this small village farmers were engaged as early as the 70s in 副业 sideline work in bag manufacturing as part of the communists’ organising of 生产队 production units across the country.
LIU Lei’s mother can still remember the time when her family grew vegetables on their land, but she says that by the time of the reform and opening up at the end of the decade many farms already sat fallow as the shift from farmer to manufacturer grew, like the design of fashionable bags, more and more intense. There is perhaps a mutual feeling of 没办法 for those farmers who leave their land to make better fortunes as businessmen and migrant workers (“如果没土地了，怎么办？开三轮，开小商店，你什么能力都没有只能打工咯，没办法 Without land, what are you supposed to do? Drive a motor-taxi, open a small shop, or if you don’t have any skills whatsoever you can only be a laborer, what other way is there?”), and those who are forcibly evicted by developers with petty compensation (“一千一亩就等于抢走的 1,000 yuan per mu is basically like being robbed”), but at the end of a long description of a violent protest incident in Baoding last summer, where around 1,000 farmers occupied a highway in protest of unfair compensation for their land (“你能怎么地？上访？你走不出保定，走不出河北，更到不了北京。 What are you gonna do? Make appeals to authorities? You won’t be able to get past Baoding [municipality], you won’t get to Hebei [provincial authoritiy], and don’t even think about Beijing.”), LIU Lei’s father cannot help but smile embarrassedly that their family’s luggage and bag factory has benefited from the state-directed urbanisation of Baigou. Family-run production units-cum-full-fledged businesses grew steadily in the 80s, and LIU Lei’s family joined mid-decade with her mother and father making bags themselves and other relatives in the family traveling as far as Sichuan to sell their ready-made stock. The conglomerated efforts of the families of Baigou (majority Han Chinese with a large population of 回族 Hui minority peoples) began to attract tradesmen to the village itself, and the LIU family no longer had to travel; their bags sold quickly from the aluminum rack stands they set up in the village market.
With support from continued urban development initiatives like the 白沟新城经济社会发展居 Baigou New City Socio-Economic Development Bureau and the 保定白沟箱包产业生产力促进中心 Baoding Baigou Luggage and Bag Industry Productive Force Promotion Center, Baigou has risen to become Hebei province’s only nationally supported and monitored economic zone, with factories like that of the LIU’s producing around 1,000+ bags daily. Supported by the labour of between 70 and 100 employees from neighboring provinces like Henan and Gansu, the 2-story factory the LIU family built on land they purchased from a developer for approximately 100,000 yuan/mu (1/6 of an acre) has now been renovated with an additional floor of worker dormitories, and the price of the land has jumped to 4 or 500,000 yuan/mu. Whilst the real estate bubble is finally finding its friction in the mega-cities of Beijing or Shanghai, it is clear to LIU Lei’s family that there is still a lot more room to grow in Baigou. Keen city-developer relationships keep the dust flying under the many cranes that hang over the landscape, and the influx of new residents and labourers from other areas pumps the village population from 100,000 to 4 or 500,000. 22 year-old LIU Lei’s web savvy and English abilities give the Honghaitang company a whole new sphere of possibility, and supported by the government’s sponsorship of half of their Alibaba membership fees, a single family in Baigou is able to place itself on an international map of production and consumption.
Honghaitang‘s showroom is located on the third floor of the second phase building of 白沟箱包交易城 Baigou Bags and Cases Trading Market
Where geographers define urban construction as “the key mechanism of local state building” [3], LIU Lei’s father says simply, “发展的意思就是盖一个楼 Development here just means building a building“, and their factory is the most concrete evidence of it. But what we must consider here are the complex forces that push a “state-led urbanisation” into a very real dynamic with the local level, whether that be through the fist of 城管 chéngguăn bullying farmers from their land or local families joining together to purchase land instead of buying from 外地 wàidì developers. As such, territorial strategies occur both top-down and from the ground-up, “as much a tool of resistance as of dominance.” [4]
No conclusions yet… to be continued.
城市探索与发现（第三期），是一通过短途漂移和旅行摸索城市化进程的持续性项目。有意参与未来小旅行者（提供路线或参与旅行均可），请联系lianxi[at]homeshop[dot]org[dot]cn. This is urban exploration number three, part of what will be a continuing series of minor drifts and journeys into the making of the city. If you are interested to join future outings or have suggestions for one, please send a note of interest to lianxi[at]homeshop[dot]org[dot]cn.
—— ［1］The retroactive numbering instated here places the previous activities of a visit to Jackson Hole, Beijing and the rePLACE Beijing project respectively as the first two urban explorations. ［2］As considered based upon north-south cultural differences, Cantonese identity and 公民意识 civil consciousness discussed during a dialogue on Cantonese culture and media, October 2011.
［3］Hsing, You-tien. “Territoriality and Space Production in China“. Cross-Currents, No. 1. December, 2011. ［4］ibid.
NOTE: All facts reported in this text are not verified and come strictly from narratives told by the LIU family during the Baigou urban exploration. For more academically reliable information regarding the transformation of the urban environment in China, we can recommend the first issue of Cross-Currents e-journal, or please explore on your own.
ずーんとみしらぬ大きなもの。植えたことさえ忘れていたとうもろこしをみたときここにいなかった３０日分の太陽と雨と空気とかがすっかりかたちになったことに気づいた。とそんなことはおそだしで今つけたしたが。そのすぐそばには空心菜が一面を多い、おいしい実りをつけているはずの豆類は跡形もなくなっており、レタスが上に伸びてかっこう悪くなっており、シソがものすごく幅をきかしていてその影で凛としたたたずまいでオクラが３本。じゃがいもはまだ地中ですごしているようだし、トマトは大暴れの雨や風邪にひやかされながらも真っ赤な実をいくつもいくつもつけていた。雑草達はゆかいそうにきっちりとびっちりと意気投合したよう。ピーマンと辛いピーマンはみごとなもの。なすびは規格サイズくらいなものから巨人クラスのものまでさまざま。きゅうりはビールッパラの下膨れ何がどうなったらこんな形になるもんだか、きゅうりってすらっとしていぼいぼの予定だったんだけど。６月上旬にとれていたズッキーニも見当たらない。ダンミンとチンサン（畑の相棒）によるとこの夏は雨だらけ、幾度も雨。そういえば今日も寝ている間ものすごい音をたてていたかしら。そんな中でも７月の日历餐厅では新じゃがでニョッキ、バジルソース、菜園サラダ、オーブン野菜、スコーンとラズベリージャムフロムUK plus wine and teaで目もおなかもみたしながらもお天気予報お姉さんと農夫がする”天気と野菜を育てる話”に耳とこころをかたむけます。(google translate will offer no help for this article).
The CD was composed of American commercial rap and r&b sped up and seamlessly mixed into one-hour mp3’s. He used this pulsing and unrelenting rhythm to fuel his wild progress, despite the near opacity of the lyrics to his ears. Young and tidy, with glistening hair and a craggy cheek surface formed of the new sustenance, he was an image of youth, an animation of the performance of youth under pressures. We climbed in and with the door’s closure, an easygoing promise of timely delivery and an immediate u-turn in front of an oncoming bus set a tone for a sequence of negotiations and split-second decisions informed by flowing intuition. This pointed awareness did not count the law chiefly as its limit, working along its approximate guidelines, but hovering in a parallel state where speed and safety are blurry, immeasurable energies constituting pure duration. Looking at the license on the dashboard, one noted an older, pale, balding man gazing back; the spirit and attitude of driving had either rejuvenated an adult, or made an adult of a boy. The maneuvers, which included burst-passing on the narrow 2-lane causeways that elegantly cross-hatch the edges of East Lake, cutting corners early shadowing mini-vans, and swerving around piles of debris, not to mention hurtling past other speeding cars on the new elevated freeways, all made up a language of an urban space that sprang up and lay half-destroyed and half-in-progress. As such, it was not the code of a single person, though he is the atomic driver in an incalculable system of circulation and friction; but he can only be the atom in tension with the particles exploding around him. Even the pedestrian on the rubble margin senses the shifting values and instant momentum transformations, adjusting to this general spatial intelligence with minimal violence; the other drivers play variations on each other’s motions, together developing the chaotic vocabulary that oscillates between efficiency and entropy, creating such tropes as the cautioning head-lamp flicker and the selfish congesting lane-take. Just like the tireless and carnal mp3 soundtrack accompanying the sequence to its end, these signifying gestures don’t accumulate toward a thesis, but in their isolation gradually chip away at time, leaving us dizzy and early, present, in front of the Hankou train station. There are no straight roads, and in Wuhan, the atomic driver must hustle space with the will of an unstable citizen.
Occupation, as I talked about in the previous part, is an expression of the Everyday and an important part of Everyday Life involves the active occupation of space, for example in the way the HomeShop has come to occupy its new site. The consequences of occupation threaten institutionalisation, which may lead to gentrification in its imposition of permanent change on an area.
On the other hand institutionalisation protects HomeShop’s work from over-ephemerality or instant dispersal. The positive side of this comes from an example of activism, as Isaac Mao points out:
“… In China, many dissidents and activists are opening up their personal information. Why? Because previously they just wanted to close it down to protect themselves without being tracked by the government. Someone might want people to know his position so he can do things secretly. But now many are opening up this information because they see the social power. Once they’ve opened up their position, home phone, and travel plans, more people in the cloud know where they are at the same time as the authorities. He is protected even as he is tracked.” (more…)
时间 posted on: 5 September 2012 | 
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