Shuiwei () is an area of

Futian District Futian District () is one of the nine districts comprising the city of Shenzhen, China. The district is home to the government and Municipal Committee of Shenzhen, as well as the city's central business district (CBD). Name There are two theori ...

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern province ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Shuiwei's main public square features a wall displaying the history of the area, portraying the Guang family and a 1908 invasion of the area by the British; area residents were credited with repelling the said invasion.

History

The area is known as the home of a local family with the surname Zhuang, and historically residents spoke the

Weitou dialect The Weitou dialect (; Jyutping: Waitau Waa) is a dialect of Yue Chinese. It forms part of the Guan–Bao (莞寶片; , Dongguan– Bao'an) branch of Yuehai. It is spoken by older generations in Luohu and Futian districts in Shenzhen, a ...

and made their living through farming and fishing. Local legends stated that the founder of Shuiwei was Zhuang Luogong, a descendant of

Zhuangzi Zhuangzi may refer to: * ''Zhuangzi'' (book) (莊子), an ancient Chinese collection of anecdotes and fables, one of the foundational texts of Daoism **Zhuang Zhou Zhuang Zhou (), commonly known as Zhuangzi (; ; literally "Master Zhuang"; als ...

. Shenzhen-based American anthropologist Mary Ann O'Donnell described a statue of Zhuangzi, flanked by water, as being "the heart of Shuiwei". Water historically flowed through many areas of Shuiwei. Around the 1980s residents took goods from

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

and re-sold them on the Mainland side. At a later point factories became commonplace and industry became the heart of the local economy. The Shenzhen government pursued a redevelopment scheme, spending 1.2 million yuan ($178,000

U.S. dollars The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

) to acquire land on the Shum Chun River. The area authorities promoted the Shuiwei model of redevelopment, which was meant to attract employees of white collar firms with conversion of existing housing into apartments. By the 1990s some women who originated from other parts of China and did not have Shenzhen

hukou ''Hukou'' () is a system of household registration used in mainland China. The system itself is more properly called "''huji''" (), and has origins in ancient China; ''hukou'' is the registration of an individual in the system (''kou'' lit ...

moved to Shuiwei, with some of them doing so to evade issues related to the

One Child Policy The term one-child policy () refers to a Human population planning, population planning initiative in China implemented between 1980 and 2015 to curb Demographics of China#Population, the country's population growth by restricting many familie ...

. Circa the 2000s Shuiwei was in proximity to red light zones near Shuiwei checkpoint.Dong, Willa and Yu Cheng. "Sex Work, Migration, and Mental Health in Shenzhen" (Chapter 8). In: O'Donnell, Mary Ann, Winnie Wong, and Jonathan Bach (editors). '' Learning from Shenzhen: China’s Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Model City''.

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...

, February 7, 2017. , 9780226401263. Start: p
171
CITED: p
175

References

Futian District {{China-stub