Product Description

Shenzhen is entertainingly compact, with Guy Delisle’s observations of life in a cold urban city in southern China that is sealed off from the rest of the country by electric fences and armed guards. With a dry wit and a clean line, Delisle makes the most of his time spent in Asia overseeing outsourced production for a French animation company. By translating his fish-out-of-water experiences into accessible graphic novels,Delisle is quick to find the humor and point out the differences between Western and Eastern cultures. Yet he never forgets to relay his compassion for the simple freedoms that escape his colleagues by virtue of living in a Communist state.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #242283 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-17
• Released on: 2006-10-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 152 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781894937795
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Last year's Pyongyang introduced Delisle's acute voice, as he reported from North Korea with unusual insight and wit, not to mention wonderfully detailed cartooning. Shenzhen is not a follow-up so much as another installment in what one hopes is an ongoing series of travelogues by this talented artist. Here he again finds himself working on an animated movie in a Communist country, this time in Shenzhen, an isolated city in southern China. Delisle not only takes readers through his daily routine, but also explores Chinese custom and geography, eloquently explaining the cultural differences city to city, company to company and person to person. He also goes into detail about the food and entertainment of the region as well as animation in general and his own career path. All of this is the result of his intense isolation for three months in an anonymous hotel room. He has little to do but ruminate on his surroundings, and readers are the lucky beneficiaries of his loneliness. As in his earlier work, Delisle draws in a gentle cartoon style: his observations are grounded in realism, but his figures are light cartoons, giving the book, as Delisle himself remarks, a feeling of an alternative Tintin. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Delisle's Pyongyang (2005) documented two months spent overseeing cartoon production in North Korea's capital. Now he recounts a 1997 stint in the Chinese boomtown Shenzhen. Even a decade ago, China showed signs of Westernization, at least in Special Economic Zones such as Shenzhen, where Delisle found a Hard Rock Cafe and a Gold's Gym. Still, he experienced near-constant alienation. The absence of other Westerners and bilingual Chinese left him unable to ask about baffling cultural differences ranging from exotic shops to the pervasive lack of sanitation. Because China is an authoritarian, not totalitarian, state, and Delisle escaped the oppressive atmosphere with a getaway to nearby Hong Kong, whose relative familiarity gave him "reverse culture shock," Delisle's wittily empathetic depiction of the Western-Chinese cultural gap is less dramatic than that of his Korean sojourn. That said, his creative skill suggests that the comic strip is the ideal medium for such an account. His wry drawings and clever storytelling convey his experiences far more effectively than one imagines a travel journal or film documentary would. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Customer Reviews

absorbing
This is an absorbing traveller's tale which I began reading late at night and couldn't go to bed before finishing. Not only didn't I find it boring but I disagree with most of the criticisms in Thy Tran's review. Firstly, Delisle made it clear that he tried hard to converse with and get to know his translator but received no encouragement, which he found quite disheartening. The incident where they only begin to talk a short while before he leaves, when the formality and apparent awkwardness inherent in their situation fall away and parting is suddenly close at hand, is entirely true to life and happens to all sorts of people both within and across cultures. Also, Delisle obviously tried several places to eat and a variety of dishes with varying success and for him to settle on reliable favourites, as a semi-permanent resident, is quite natural. We all do it both at home and abroad while keeping our curiosity and options open. It seems to me that Delisle does all this in an understandably human way and I cannot see how this reflects badly on his attitude. He is obviously frustrated by many things and makes no bones about it, but he remains curious about the world he finds himself in and tries to find a way into it through the thing he knows and loves best, drawing - and by seeking out the work of Chinese artists that he has a powerful response to. I also fail to see any of the stereotyping that Thy Tran seems to infer from the book and on another flick through it I cannot readily see any of the "buckteeth" he finds so annoying. Like Delisle's "Pyongyang" this is a highly enjoyable and very human book and I recommend it.

Worth A Quick Trip
SHENZHEN, animator Guy Delisle's follow-up to the wonderful PYONGYANG, is an enjoyable and quick read about a city probably quite unfamiliar to many in the West. Shenzhen China is one of a number of free enterprise zones set up by the Chinese government and Delisle's three month stint there provides us a glimpse into local customs, the Chinese mentality and, most noteworthy in this book, the culture shock and isolation that this can produce.

There is a big issue right off the bat with SHENZHEN. No doubt many were first introduced to Delisle through PYONGYANG and, the fact is, Shenzhen China simply is not as interesting a place. Pyongyang, after all, is the capital city of the most psychotic and paranoid regime on the planet, where propoganda about the country's leader is a constant companion. There is nothing similar in Shenzhen and, indeed, the single biggest feeling of the book is isolation and boredom. Although the reader can appreciate those feelings through Delisle's writing and drawings, it produces a far different, and less interesting book.

Let us keep in mind, though, that this is a graphic novel. It is not like one needs the same amount of time to get through it as, say, WAR AND PEACE. The book is light-hearted, interesting (even if less so than his previous book) and provides Westerners a quick snapshot into a foreign culture that most of us will not experience firsthand. Is SHENZHEN worth the time one will actually expend on the book? Sure.

Enjoyable book, Shenzhen has since changed (for good and bad)
I first came to Shenzhen a year or two after Delisle spent his three months in the city, and I have been here since. Mr. Delisle should have gotten out a bit more and tried to get to know more expats at least, although understandable because his time was limited. There's no reason for a dull moment here. Nevertheless, many of his observations were spot on and made me chuckle about how things were and how some are still the same. The physical city has changed and it is so much easier to live a life with the comforts expats expect. Likewise, the outlook of the people here is much more cosmopolitan than before--although there are still many moments of cultural disjunction.

The inherent story of Shenzhen isn't as compelling as his book on Pyongyang, but Delisle has found plenty of observations that keep the book flowing fast. It's great snapshot of a city in the midst of a huge transformation. (BTW, that 15 story windowless building you saw once, but never saw again. It's a parking structure that is still around.)