With its emergence as a global power, China aspires to transform from made in China to created in China. Mobilised as a crucial source for solid growth and soft power, creativity has become part of the new China Dream. Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China engages with the imperative of creativity by aligning it to three interrelated phenomena: boredom, shanzhai, and digitisation. How does creativity help mitigate boredom? Does boredom incubate creativity? How do shanzhai practices and the omnipresence of fake goods challenge notions of the original and the authentic? Which spaces for expressions and contestations has China's fast-developing digital world of Weixin, Taobao, Youku, and Internet Plus Policy opened up? Are new technologies serving old interests? Essays, dialogues, audio-visual documents, and field notes, from thinkers, researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers, examine what is going on in China now, ultimately to tease out its implication to our understanding of creativity.|Introduction I. Jeroen de Kloet, Yiu Fai Chow, and Lena Scheen We Must Create II. Eitan Wilf 'Creative China' and Its Potential to Problematise Western-modern-romantic Ideologies of Creativity Section 1: Boredom Essays 1.1: Anneke Coppoolse Create No More! Clutter and Boredom, a Hong Kong Prospective 1.2: Wen Cuiyan Combating the Boredom of Traditional Performing Art? The Case of Muk-jyu-go Interlocuting 1.3: Esther Peeren You Must (Not) Be Bored! Boredom and Creativity in Global Capitalism 1.4: Christoph Lindner Boredom and Creativity in the Era of Accelerated Living Notes from the field 1.5: Laura Vermeeren Evaporating Ennui - Water Calligraphy in Beijing 1.6: Li Hao Male Cinderella on the Small Screen in Mainland China In Dialogue 1.7: Yin Shan Lo, Kingsley Ng, and Kung Chi Shing 'Performativity' in the Age of Banality Section 2: Shanzhai Essays 2.1: Anthony Fung and Yiyi Yin New Productive Culture: Shanzhai or Second Degree of Creation? 2.2: Louis Ho Creative 'Shanzhai Labour'? - Leung Mei-ping's 'Made in Hong Kong/Shenzhen' 2.3: Xiao Yuefan Maoism and Disruptive Creativity: Shanzhai - an Alternative Perspective Interlocuting 2.4: Lena Scheen 'Isn't that funny?': The Unsettling Effect of Shanzhai Products 2.5: Stefan Landsberger Shanzhai = Creativity, Creativity = Shanzhai Notes from the field 2.6: Feng Fan Bringing the Chinese Dream to the U.S.A.: A Curatorial Practice in Art Education 2.7: Arjen Nauta 'Banal Creativity': What Does It Mean to be Creative for Hunan TV Practitioners? In Dialogue 2.8: Yin Shan Lo, Dai Dai, and Deng Chunru Two Side of SZ (Shanzhai & Shenzhen) Section 3: Digitisation Essays 3.1: Michael Keane Creativity, Affordances, and Chinese Traditional Culture Interlocuting 3.2: Chen Siyu Digital Payment, Vernacular Creativity, and Governmentality 3.3: Zeng Guohua Shopping 'Natural' and 'Local' Food as Everyday Resistance: Digitisation, Platformisation, and Online Retail of Rural Products Notes from the field 3.4: Liwen Deng Participatory Art On-off a Digital Platform - a Mobius Strip: On Cyber Nails in Curated Nails 3.5: Rowan Perry On-going Digitisation and Independence Chinese Documentary: A Field Report from Beijing 2015-2016 In Dialogue 3.6: Yin Shan Lo, Janet Fong, and Isaac Leung Digitisation with (in/out) Borders Biography of Contributors Endnotes Index
