It took another night rumbling through the countryside for Deng Xiaoping to arrive at the first proper destination on his Southern Tour of winter 1992. Wuhan – the ‘thoroughfare of nine provinces’, as it is known in China, and where Deng had stopped briefly the day before – is deep in the country’s centre. Between Wuhan and Deng’s next destination, Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, the flat flood plain gives way to wave after wave of mountains, before the land eases once more into the gentler topography of the Pearl River Delta, around which were arrayed the main stops of Deng’s tour.
Deng’s train arrived at Shenzhen at 9am on January 19th. Waiting at the station were, once more, an array of party officials. As he stepped to the platform, one stepped forward. ‘We have missed you!’ he told Deng. Another added, "The people of Shenzhen look forward to seeing you, and have been looking forward to it for eight years!".
Eight years previously, on January 24, 1984, during his winter “vacation,” Deng had arrived in Guangdong on his special train. He spent more than two weeks visiting the province and next-door Fujian, including stops at three of the four SEZs—Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Xiamen. That was the first time Deng had visited Shenzhen; 1992 marked the second. He would spend six days in the city before departing for Zhuhai, across the Pearl River.
The myth of Shenzhen is that it transformed from ‘fishing village to megacity’, but the reality is more complex. The area that became Shenzhen was not the sparsely populated countryside that the Chinese Communist Party like to claim, but a vibrant border region with a number of thriving market towns with a population of three hundred thousand.
The city’s progress was marked by landmark building projects: in the 1980s, the International Trade Centre, thrown up at a rate of one floor every three days, become China’s tallest building, and an emblem of Shenzhen’s status as the country’s new model city. On his tour in 1992, Deng ate at the revolving restaurant at the top of the sixty-three storey tower and endorsed the rate of progress he saw stretching to the horizon around him. He visited a factory making laser discs, and China’s first theme park: ‘Splendid China’, a park housing miniature versions of all China’s great sights: the Great Wall; the sacred mountain of Tai Shan; the Forbidden City; the Potala Palace in Lhasa. A photograph shows Deng, in a sober overcoat, surrounded by his smiling, colourfully attired, children and grandchildren, with the vertiginous stairways and white walls of the Tibetan landmark rising behind them.
His visit would be celebrated in the famous song ‘The Story of Spring’:
The Year of 1992
That was yet another spring
There was a great man
Writing a magnificent poem in Shenzhen
Spreading splendor all over China like a spring breeze Moistening beautiful flowers like springtime rain Shenzhen! Shenzhen!
China’s pioneer ship sailing across the sea
This is the third episode of a series exploring the legacy of Deng Xiaoping’s journey in 1992, following his route stop by stop, and interviewing those with insight into the history of this period and the places Deng visited. In this episode, I'm joined by Juan Du (Twitter: @JuanDu_DuJuan). Juan Du is an award-winning architect and urban planner. She is Associate Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong and was formerly on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She leads IDU_Architecture, a research and design office based in Hong Kong. Du is also the founding academic director of the Shenzhen Center for Design and is actively involved in the ongoing development and planning of the city. She is also the author of ‘The Shenzhen Experiment’, which was published this year by Harvard University Press.
