Beyond the palimpsest: Traditions and modernity in urban villages of Shenzhen, China

Abstract

This study uses the palimpsest analogy to explore the interactions between traditions and modernity in Chinese urban contexts. Chinese megacities including Shenzhen have undergone continually radical and dramatic transformations. The palimpsest notion, a layered, overwritten surface with traces of earlier content, enables us to unravel historical and cultural layers from the past in the present readings. Shenzhen is then conceptualised as a palimpsest, illustrating its uneven stratification process in which urban villages contain deep descriptive layers, encompassing both traditional myths and futuristic modern ideas. The case study of Pingshan village through a close examination of specific locations via ethnographic mapping demonstrates that each particular space is an accumulation of various ways of palimpsest. This gives a glimpse of the traditions that being handed down and how they intersect with modern influences to produce hybrid spaces. These traditions are the forms of practice embedded in the everyday lives of residents, including long-term villagers and arrived migrants. The study concludes by proposing a framework for creating the potential of hybridisation to inform a more inclusive approach to urban planning and design