Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China

AUTHOR: Delisle, Guy

ARTIST: Guy Delisle (illustrator); Dirk Rehm (letterer)

PUBLISHER: L’Association (French); Drawn and Quarterly (English)

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION:Shenzhen, 2000 (English translation, 2006)

Publication History

First published in French by L’Association in 2000, Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China depicts Canadian-born cartoonist Guy Delisle’s experiences in Shenzhen, China. In North America, it was published in English by Montreal’s Drawn and Quarterly in 2006. Previously, in 2005, Drawn and Quarterly published Delisle’s critically acclaimed Pyongyang: A Journey to North Korea, an illustrated chronicle of his visit to North Korea, which was selected as one of the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Best Books for Young Adults and nominated for two Eisner Awards. Shenzhen works as a sequel, following Pyongyang in style and content. The book belongs to a trilogy, as Delisle published a third installment in 2008, Burma Chronicles. Shenzhen was translated and published in Spanish in 2006, German in 2010, and Dutch in 2011.

Plot

Shenzhen chronicles Delisle’s second trip to China, a three-month stint in Shenzhen, a rapidly growing city on the southern tip of China’s Guangdong Province, immediately north of Hong Kong. One of China’s most successful Special Economic Zones, Shenzhen exemplifies the accelerated rate of economic growth experienced by China, with the city increasing from one to ten million in population in the two decades before the book was published; thus, Delisle’s account serves as a postcard of a particularly awkward moment of global expansion. (In fact, Delisle’s narrative identifies Shenzhen as the fastest growing city in the world at the time of his account.)

Hired to direct a team of animators for a television series by Dupuis, a Belgian publisher, Delisle spends most of his time in China between the workplace, his hotel, and various restaurants, sharing incidental encounters with a wide array of people. Along the way, he experiences increasing isolation and cultural disorientation, eventually embracing his freedom from conventions as a foreigner. The author shares anecdotal information about Chinese dentistry, massive construction sites, public toilets, miniature theme parks, the politics of space in transportation, the neighborhood Gold’s Gym, and local cuisine, equating the city with Dante’s circles of Hell. His frustration with subordinates becomes evident when the Chinese illustrators prove unable to draw Caucasian eyes correctly and fail to grasp variable dynamics of the human body.

Delisle’s increasing alienation in a homogeneous Chinese population climaxes when he depicts himself amid a sea of Asian faces. By the end of the journey, Delisle transforms into an alternate version of Hergé’s character Tintin, embracing the ethnographic disposition of his experience in China. Delisle’s time in Shenzhen contrasts with his trips to Canton and Hong Kong, both of which seem to offer more amenable, appealing lifestyles that are more in sync with Western sensibilities.

Characters

•GuyDelisle,the main character, is a lonely westerner amid myriad Chinese citizens (a fact emphasized by the angularity of his face and his rounded eyes). True to his Canadian upbringing and European background, Delisle tries to engage the locals in a number of ways and observes them with keen attention, patience, and, at times, detachment. His experiences mostly lead him to puzzlement and astonishment. Usually portrayed with a jacket and a turtleneck shirt, he looks for clues to Chinese culture in areas relevant to Canadian and French culture, such as food, space, and social conventions; thus, his experience of the country is limited by his own cultural identity.

•The translators embody Delisle’s frustration with China, given his general lack of linguistic competence and his muteness. At times, responses bear little relation to Delisle’s inquiries. At other times, the translators leave the author to his own devices, when he could have easily used some assistance. In a sense, they are highly representative of the cultural chasm between East and West, since, though they may manage the language, they fail to acknowledge any of the implicit cultural codes. They are among the few female characters in the story.

•Mr. Lin the illustrator, in a singular display of friendliness, invites the author to celebrate Christmas at his apartment. However, the celebration includes viewing tai chi videos, discussion of Rembrandt’s work, and the serving of coffee, which demonstrates the degree of cultural disconnect. At the end of the night, having returned Delisle to his hotel by taxi, Mr. Lin runs off to catch a bus. Later, in a gesture of reciprocity, Delisle gives him a book on Rembrandt, which he accepts in a rather cursory fashion.

•The boss is a tall, quite elegant man who gets along well with his employees. A seasoned conversationalist, he personifies the social dexterity and competent attitude of a new generation of Chinese businesspeople, contrasting markedly with the enigmatic nature of the Chinese masses, which seem to misinterpret the singularities of Western culture and thrive in their alleged conformism.

•Cheun is Delisle’s most consistent acquaintance during his time in China; they meet during Delisle’s trip to Canton. He accompanies Delisle to some distinctly Chinese venues, such as a restaurant that serves dog. Later, he invites Delisle to his condominium in downtown Shenzhen, where they play basketball and Delisle meets his girlfriend.

•The hotel porter, perhaps more than anybody else, personifies an irritating, vexing version of China. Every time Delisle arrives, he is greeted with a phrase that bears little logical connection to context. His behavior does not even suggest a concern for pretense, but rather a penchant for self-interest, willing to do or say anything to appeal to the foreigner and gain his or her favor. In short, the porter evinces China’s eagerness to embrace the West as an economic resource.

•Tom the foreigner is the stereotypical fortune-seeking westerner, living in China to make money through e-commerce and the Internet. Fluent in Chinese, he personifies the other side of the cultural disconnect: the westerner who, though linguistically competent, does not master local cultural codes (a fact that he readily admits). His sense of worldliness is provincial and rooted in deep American ethnocentrism, as he argues about the differences in taste between hamburgers in big cities and small towns.

•The English Canadian, with a ponytail and round eyeglasses, is a compatriot to Delisle, who the latter meets toward the end of his time in China. The encounter allows Delisle to posit a puzzling, self-mocking theory about what he singles out as Canada’s only national issue: cultural identity. The character reifies stereotypes about anglophone Canadians since, for a change, he speaks fluent French.

•The restaurant cook is linked to Delisle by his gestures, which allude to the egg dish that plays a big role in the author’s diet during his stay in Shenzhen. His presence at the end of the story, when Delisle is almost locked in his workplace and may miss his flight home, signifies an instance of refreshing familiarity amid a culture that, for the most part, remains incomprehensively baffling.

Artistic Style

Shenzhen’s black-and-white illustrations are rendered in a charcoal-drawing style. This style emphasizes China as a country in a never-ending process of construction, still far from attaining economic maturity. The only exceptions are Delisle’s reproductions of a beautiful book of children’s drawings and the art books discovered in local bookshops, featuring authors such as Wang Chi Yun and Hu Buo Zhong. The latter leads to a full page of the author’s work emulating Chinese use of clean line. Delisle also incorporates a few images of the animated heroine from his work for Dupuis to highlight the locals’ inability to grasp the subtleties of the Caucasian physique. Occasional flashbacks to his earlier time as a cartoonist are depicted with a cleaner, less sketchy quality, as are the images from Chinese television channels or a photograph of a French-style table setting. The contrast between styles underlines Delisle’s intentional depiction of China with charcoal.

To evoke a more traditionally Asian rhythm of illustration, Delisle intersperses full-page images throughout the narrative. A number of these depict the changing landscape of the city: a skyscraper in the process of construction, concealed in scaffolding; a construction site with towering cranes; an electrical tower with power lines and a transformer; a building with towering billboards; and scaffolding improvised with what appears to be striped blankets. Others pointedly address cultural difference, including his anonymous presence amid a torrent of Chinese passersby; a facade covered with signs in Chinese characters but topped by a sign with Roman letters, hinting at the prestige of the West; Delisle dressed as Tintin, with Snowy by his side, in a veiled critique of Hergé’s representation of China. Rather than suggest the Zen-like pace of Asian narratives, however, the images appear jerky and abrupt, given their contextualization in Shenzhen’s speedy growth.

Themes

Above all, Shenzhen problematizes cultural difference. True to his French Canadian origins, Delisle appears fascinated by cultural identity. However, as he narrates his travails in Shenzhen and lists the ways in which he experienced the cultural disconnect, Delisle seems to gain awareness of limitations implicit in his Western perceptions. Most likely, the quality of his representation informs the reader equally about China’s intricacy and Canadian ethnocentrism. Along the way, it is an adequate snapshot of sweeping changes brought forth by globalization. China’s nerve-racking pace of growth is best appreciated in places like Shenzhen, where conventional priorities appear dislocated. Thus, as an exercise of cultural inquiry, Shenzhen works better as a personal exploration than as an attempt to grasp faithfully the complexities of Chinese society and its idiosyncrasies. As portrayed by Delisle, China appears as a place so different from the West that the experience of otherness becomes almost visceral.

Impact

Shenzhen tried to reproduce the success of Pyongyang, which dealt with Delisle’s experiences working and living in communist North Korea. Nonetheless, given the lack of specific critique of a political system (an agenda again embraced in Burma Chronicles), Shenzhen did not enjoy the same eager praise as its forerunner. For this very reason—the absence of judgmental militancy—the book suggests a more measured approach to cultural difference, coming across as more neutral and sincerely anecdotal than its two counterparts.

Further Reading

Delisle, Guy. Burma Chronicles (2008).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea (2005).

Thompson, Craig. Carnet de Voyage (2004).

Bibliography

Flagg, Gordon. “Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China.” Review of Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China, by Guy Delisle. Booklist 102, no. 22 (August 1, 2006): 60.

Ling, Chuan-Yao, and David Shook. “Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China.” World Literature Today 81, no. 2 (March/April, 2007): 65.

Publishers Weekly. “Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China.” Publishers Weekly 253, no. 37 (September 18, 2006): 42.

Shaer, Matthew. “Graphic Novels, All Grown Up.” Christian Science Monitor, June 27, 2008. http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2008/0627/p13s01-algn.html.

Yang, Andrew. “Globality in Comics.”  197 (Summer, 2008): 193-194, 201.