Shenzhen: Youth Is Its Culture (Part 1)

Shenzhen has developed from a small fishing village into a world-class megacity in just four decades since it was established as a special economic zone. However, despite its rapid development, Shenzhen has been labeled as culturally lacking for at least three decades. While "culture" is an abstract concept, we can still discern the essence of the issue through specific data. Is Shenzhen truly devoid of culture? Let's examine some statistics to find out. As of 2019, Shenzhen has 13 regular higher education institutions with 113,200 enrolled students, including 21,000 postgraduates; 674 public libraries of various types, with a collection of 47,459,500 books; 52 museums and memorial halls, and 11 art galleries; 1 comprehensive grand theater, and 1 concert hall; 2 television stations, 1 radio station, and 3 radio and television centers; 8 national intangible cultural heritage items, and 10 provincial intangible cultural heritage items. Shenzhen hosts frequent cultural activities, ranging from the China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair to the Shenzhen Reading Month, from the Shenzhen Beach Music Festival to the Shenzhen Migrant Workers' Culture Festival, and from the China (Shenzhen) International Piano Concerto Competition to the Shenzhen Hakka Culture Festival. These events cover a wide range of interests, including professional, popular, refined, and accessible. Shenzhen also has more than ten literary and art associations and over twenty professional art groups, as well as a team of at least 3,000 literary and art workers. It boasts cultural festival brands such as the Grand Theater Arts Festival, the International Ink Painting Biennial, the International Biennial Piano Competition, and the Chinese and Foreign Art Masterpieces Performance Season, with more than 300 art performances throughout the year. Shenzhen's piano education level is among the best in the country, and it has many world-class piano talents. In Shenzhen's tourism resources, attractions with creative culture as their theme account for a large proportion, such as Shenzhen Cultural and Creative Park, OCT Creative Culture Park, China Folk Culture Village, and Guanlan Print Village. Shenzhen is the sixth city in the world to be approved as a "City of Design" by UNESCO, and it is also the earliest city in China to process animation for overseas countries. In fact, the cultural industry in Shenzhen is becoming a more dynamic and future-oriented "fourth pillar industry." Perhaps these data cannot fully explain how cultured Shenzhen is. However, according to the 2019 selection, Shenzhen ranked third in the China Urban Creative Index and among the top ten in the China Urban Brand of the Year. A city with a brand and emphasis on creativity should not be called a "cultural desert," right? So where is the problem? In fact, Shenzhen is not alone on the road to being ridiculed for lacking culture. Let's start with the city across the river from Shenzhen. Once upon a time, during the economic take-off of Hong Kong Island, it was also said to be lacking in culture. The complaints came from both mainlanders and Westerners. The Westerners' reason was that this world financial center was too commercialized and lacked some leisure and romance; the mainlanders' impression was that the culture of this small place seemed to be limited to Cantonese songs and martial arts movies. Even martial arts novels, which were popular in the Chinese community, have always been despised by the serious literary circles in the mainland.