Jeroen de Kloet and Yiu Fai Chowthe state-sponsored CCTV ran a documentary on shanzhai mobile phones, generating nation-
wide publicity for what it dubbed “shanzhai culture.” The same year shanzhai was the most
searched word in China, according to a survey by Google. In 2012, when the sixth edition of
the authoritative Modern Chinese Dictionary was published, shanzhai was one of the new entries
(Wang 2009).
In fact, a number of studies, taking cues from the circulation of terms in other locations
that, like shanzhai, are not translatable to the real–fake binary, have questioned the universal
application of authenticity, originality, and ownership discourses (see Hendry 2000 on Japanese
theme parks). Writing on Vietnamese consumer markets, Elizabeth Vann notes “The idea of
authenticity as ‘original expression’ is a specifically Euro-American concern” and “is not always
a useful tool” (Vann 2006, 288). We choose to follow the vernacular term “shanzhai” to avoid the
foreclosure configured by paradigms of authenticity, originality, and ownership.
Originally a Cantonese term, shanzhai was used in various Chinese classical texts, to denote
“fortified mountain village,” “mountain fortress,” or “a bandit stronghold in the mountain”
(Wang 2009). In particular, the Chinese literary classic Water Margins, which depicts a group of
outlaws and their heroic stories, provided the term with its dominant imagery: grassroots rebel-
lion and anti-establishment romanticism (Zhang and Fung 2013). One can also trace the notion
back to Lu Xun’s idea of “grabism.” As Andrew Chubb remarks, “With shanzhai culture Chinese
producers and consumers have taken the tradition of Grabism—active and intense engagement
and exchange with economic and cultural authority—to new heights of popularity and scale”
(2015, 279). Its more recent emergence can be traced to the industrializing Hong Kong of the
1970s where small-scale factories and family-run workshops were organized to manufacture
cheap and low-quality products for overseas orders (Bao 2011). From here it would not be
difficult to imagine the term’s appropriation in Chinese localities like Shenzhen as a preferred
term for factories producing mimic smartphones and so forth. As such, shanzhai culture can be
conceived as something grassroots and rebellious, or, in the words of technology blogger John
Biggs, “a strange amalgam of counterfeiting, national pride, and Robin Hoodism” (Josephine Ho
in Zhang and Fung 2013, 404). On the other hand, as Lin Zhang and Anthony Fung remind us,
commercialization remains the key driving force behind shanzhai culture, and Chen Zhi also
points to its historical tendency to follow the power structure of mainstream society despite it
being outside the mainstream (2011). Chubb remarks, “On closer inspection, [shanzhai’s] resist-
ance appears either superficial, or paralleled by contradictory impulses of affirmation of the same
authority it purportedly subverts” (2015, 276).
This indeterminacy of shanzhai culture is precisely what invites us to attempt the move
from fake to shanzhai. If we are not sure what shanzhai culture is doing, we need to find out.
Instead of privileging analyses of products amidst theorizations of the fake, an inquiry into
shanzhai should, to follow the spatial imagery thus evoked, enter the stronghold and find out
what the people in shanzhai are doing. In that sense, our inquiry into Dafen Village and its
place as part of shanzhai culture is a supplement to existing enquiries into both Dafen and
shanzhai culture. On the one hand, existing shanzhai studies tend to examine its economic
ramifications and cultural influences (Bao 2011). There are exceptions, but none puts shanzhai
practitioners and practices at the center of their explorations. Bao Yueping’s inquiry assumes
a sociological perspective to analyze shanzhai as a phenomenon (2011). Zhang and Fung use
what they call “the myth of shanzhai culture” to unravel the complex narratives of digital
democracy as seen in a shanzhai CCTV show (2013). Jeroen de Kloet and Lena Scheen ques-
tion the concepts of the generic city and the global city by positing Pudong as the shanzhai
global city (2013; see Figure 15.1).