Xi Li Li Li

《西沥荔丽》Xililili

Xililili is a collection of archives that I curated after my residency at Gazetteer-Novel x SallProject.

Benefiting from its special geographical environment and preferential policies in recent decades, Shenzhen was undoubtedly an excellent testing ground for China’s economic system reform. The rapid development of this city dizzies people so that they have ignored the region’s deep-rooted history in the land and been pretending to be the paver of the local culture. In fact, several editions of Xin’an County Chronicles compiled in the Ming and Qing dynasties have long recorded the landscape and humanities, and a series of cultural relics excavated with the development of the city also confirm the thousands of years of the human social history here. Among them, many of the sites located in the Xili area now subvert people’s stereotypes of this hilly area. The old cultural accumulation has yet to be discovered, and the new history has already begun to be written. Since the end of the last century, this mountainous land has gone through the stages of reform and opening up, rural urbanization, industrialization, and the transformation of emerging industries, which gave birth to the unique rural memories of the locals.

In December 2019, I participated in the joint residency project of Gazetteer-Novel and SallyProject in Shenzhen and wrote the flash-fiction collection Lychee Tower based on the oral history told by the residents. The work takes five characters born between the 1960s and the 1990s as the protagonists, telling stories that took place in iconic landmarks such as Xili Lake Resort, Dog-Racing Field, Tongfuyu Industrial Park, Dasha River, Wildlife Park, and Liuxian Cave. The book Xililili is a compilation documentary of these writing materials and also a record of this residency.

受益于特殊的地理环境和近几十年的优惠政策,深圳无疑是中国经济体制改革的优秀试验场。这座城市的飞速发展让人们目不暇接,却忽略了其深扎在土地里的历史、妄称自己为原生文化的缔造者。事实上,编纂于明清两代的几版《新安县志》早对这里的山水人文有了记载,而随城市开发被掘出的一系列文物也印证了此处数千年的人类社会史。其中,许多位于如今西丽片区的遗址更是颠覆了人们对这个特区里的山旮旯的认识。旧的沉淀还待被继续发现,新的历史已然开始书写。从上世纪末起,这片丘陵之地先后经历了改革开放、农村城市化、工业化和新兴产业转型等阶段,也由此催生了当地人独特的乡土记忆。

2019 年 12 月,笔者在深圳参加了方志小说与西丽计划的联合驻地计划,根据对本地居民的口述历史采访与文献调研创作了微型小说集《荔枝楼》。作品以五个生于 60 年代至 90 年代期间的人物为主角,讲述了发生在西丽湖度假村、赛狗场、同富裕工业城、大沙河、野生动物园和留仙洞等标志性地区的故事。《西沥荔丽》这本册子是对这些写作素材的文献整理,也是对本次驻地行为的一个记录。