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评估报告 “啊！看温州”
Evaluative Report
‘ArchiWenzhou’
November 25th, 2024
制造业城市如何促进市民积极探索城市文化意义？-温州市案例研究
How can manufacturing-based cities facilitate citizens’ active exploration
of their own cultural significance?
- A case study of Wenzhou City in China
How can manufacturing-based cities facilitate citizens’ active exploration
of their own cultural significance?
- A case study of Wenzhou City in China
项目简介 Introduction
自中国上世纪八十年代实行改革开放政策以来，温州抓住了发展制造业的黄金机遇。市政机构和民营企业都在朝着更快的经济增长这个目标进行努力。在过去四十年间，快速复制成功的商业案例在城市产业转型中被证明是发展最有效的方式（Shen，2023）。
然而，在这个过程中，这座千年古城的文化遗产同时在物质和精神这两个层面衰落：传统被潮流取代，方言被年轻一代遗忘……作为一个在温州出生的孩子，在成长的过程中，那些鲜活的城市景象在我的脑海中逐渐凝结成记忆碎片，长大后不再能够轻易地被大脑调拨。
因此，我的研究项目“啊！看温州”旨在通过尝试不同的方法，激发市民积极参与城市文化的探索，从而将日常生活中一部分的注意力再次聚焦于温州的地方文化。
本报告将介绍这个项目如何从“与历史对话”和“参与式档案”的这两个概念中获得理论支持，以及我如何在研究过程中通过不断的实践与反思，从而持续发展和更新适用于本项目的研究策略。
Since the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy in China in the 1980s, Wenzhou seized a golden chance in its development of the manufacturing industry. Both municipal institutions and private sectors of Wenzhou have been pursuing the road to the faster economic growth. In the past 40 years, the rapid replication of successful cases in city industrial transformation has proved to be the most efficient way for urban development (Shen, 2023).
However, during this process, the cultural legacy of this thousand-year-old city was gradually diminished both physically and spiritually: traditions were replaced by trends, the dialect was being forgotten by young generations… As a person born in Wenzhou, I condensed those vibrant city images in my mind into the fragments of memories, which were no longer able to be rewired after I grew up.
Therefore, my research project ‘ArchiWenzhou’ aims at refocusing the attention of citizens on the cultural significance of Wenzhou through experimenting on different methods to triggering their active participation in the exploration of the city’s culture.
This report will introduce how the interventions developed by this project were theoretically supported by the concept ‘think with history’ and ‘participatory archiving’, while practically evolved through the ever-lasting reflections throughout the research journey.
研究过程 Research Process
我一直惊讶于在不同场景中，当人们被赋予权利时所激发的能量——小到协同工作时的一场头脑风暴会议，大到群众实现地区自治。正是这种想法引导我将参与式档案应用于这个项目，以此作为促进市民积极探索城市文化的基础。
I have always been surprised at the energy activated by empowerment in different scenarios – from the smallest as a collaborative brainstorming session to the biggest where people exercise their autonomy as a state. Such an idea directed me to apply participatory archiving in this project as a foundation to explore different ways facilitating citizens’ active exploration of city culture.
“我们透过现在的眼光看待过去。”（Bogdanor, 2009）
‘We look at the past through the eyes of the present.’ (Bogdanor, 2009)
传统观念认为，档案应该记录过去发生的事情。正如Spohnholz（2014）所言，在十九世纪初，档案被新史学家视为“听到过去几个世纪声音的最直接途径”。
如果想要近一步利用档案，对档案中的内容进行反思将对现代社会产生更大的益处。Carl Schorske（2014）提倡“与历史对话”，这有助于人们“意识到许多历史发现对公众理解的意义”（Tosh, 2008）。正如Schorske所解释的，历史揭示的时间流展现了变化的叙事，并最终形成了我们现在所见的历史。当我们将现在，过去与未来联系起来时，我们或许就能发现当代的独特性和潜在机遇。
这就是为什么当这个项目采用参与式档案这一研究方法时，研究主题中使用的关键词是“文化意义”而非“历史文化”，因为这个项目的目标在于帮助人们利用存档，及回溯过去这一动作提升自我意识，即自身的存在对于发扬当地文化的重要性。
In the traditional mindset, archives were supposed to document what happened in the past. As Spohnholz (2014) stated, archives ‘were seen to offer the most direct access to voices from past centuries’ by the new academic historians in the early 19th century.
To take full advantage of the archives, further reflections on them would be beneficial to the modern society. Carl Schorske (2014) encouraged the act of ‘thinking with history’, which helps people ‘be alert to the implications that many of its findings have for public understanding’ (Tosh, 2008). As explained by Schorske (Ibid.), the temporal flows revealed by history demonstrate narratives of change and subsequently form our historical present. When we relate the present to the past and the future, we might find the distinctiveness and potential opportunity in the contemporary era.
That is the reason why ‘cultural significance’ rather than ‘cultural history’ was stated in the research question while the archive was used in this project. The objective is to help people realise their influences in reinvigorating the potentials of city cultural assets during the archiving process.
参与式档案 Participatory Archiving
Les Roberts（2014）提出了“城市即档案“的隐喻。城市被理解为“文本”，其景观以多种方式承载着在不远的过去进行的考古痕迹，而“城市即档案”这一隐喻可以被理解为一个充满可能性、创造力、能动性和“多用户”民主的空间。
Zinn（1977）倡导档案管理员：“用心汇编一个全新的文献资料世界，这个世界包括了关于普通人的生活、愿望和需求”，并“开始在创造真正的民主中发挥一些小的作用”。无论是借助现代通信工具，还是遵循一些传统的档案活动例如中古物件的收藏，参与式档案都鼓励用户“被重新概念化为共同构建历史理解的积极参与者”（Benoit & Eveleigh, 2021, pp. 15-16）。
“城市即档案“解释了城市文化资产的持续存在，而关键之处在于鼓励市民对其的积极探索。运用参与式档案的方法论，本项目所采取的行动研究核心点得以确定：邀请市民成为温州的共同档案管理员。
Les Roberts (2014) proposed the metaphor of the city as archive with the rationale that cities are “texts”, whose landscapes bear the archaeological traces of the recent past in any number of ways, and the archive city can be conceived as a space of possibility, creativity, agency and ‘multi-user’ democracy.
Zinn (1977) advocated archivists to:
‘take the trouble to compile a whole new world of documentary material, about the lives, desires, needs, of ordinary people’ and ‘begin to play some small part in the creation of a real democracy’.
Whether being facilitated by modern tools of communication or following some traditional archiving activities like antiquarian collecting, participatory archive encourages users to ‘be reconceptualised as active participants in the co-production of historical understanding’ (Benoit & Eveleigh, 2021, pp. 15-16).
The city as archive explains the lasting existence of cultural assets in the city, and the crucial thing is to encourage citizens’ active exploration of it. With the methodology of participatory archiving, the key idea leading the action research in this project was identified: to invite citizens to be the co-archivists of Wenzhou.
第一阶段干预（2024年7月-9月）
Intervention Phase I (July – September 2024)
在第一阶段，我虽然已经确定了初步的研究方向，但在明确研究重点方面还存在一些模糊之处。在当时，我提出的研究问题是：制造业城市如何探索自身的文化意义？
在这一问题的指引下，我在2024年七月启动了一场为期两周的“以酒换故事”活动，邀请了32人在轻松的氛围下与我进行面对面谈话。与每个人的谈话时长平均控制在一小时左右，且谈话没有固定结构，只是邀请参与者们自由讨论他们的生活经历，从而在对个人经历的回溯中引出一系列有趣的温州文化话题。在每次会议之前，参与者需要填写同意书，确认本人已了解收集的数据在未来被公开的可能性，数据包括了以不同形式收集的录音和照片。
最初，该项目得到温州永嘉楠溪江风景区一家民宿的支持，目标参与者是入住民宿的本地客人。而随着时间的推移，我开始在温州四处走动，以寻找更多机会与不同类型的人交谈。
本阶段预期实现两个目标。首先，它是对参与者的第一次干预措施。谈话结束后，我开始追踪每位参与者对这次谈话的反应与回馈。在32名参与者中，超过半数的人以不同的方式与我进行了进一步互动，包括帮助我与其他人或地点建立新联系，提供与当地文化或他们自身爱好相关的物件，甚至讨论未来潜在的合作。这些互动可以作为很好的证据，证明第一阶段的干预措施能够对参与者们的未来行动产生一些影响。
此外，本项目中收集的数据也会被用作“啊！看温州”档案库的初始文件。对采集数据的归档工作自2024年八月份开始持续进行，并通过建立一个独立网站（https://archiwenzhou.cn）进行存档。为了探索接触更广泛的受众的可能性，这些初始档案也将被用于研究的下一步行动——一个基于互联网的干预措施。
通过这次与人们面对面接触的机会，我发现这一阶段的干预措施能够有效地建立与参与者之间的互相信任，并帮助他们参与到对城市文化的积极探索中。这一发现也促使我对研究问题的再反思，从而将研究重点从城市本身进一步具体到温州市民，明确了该项目的目标：寻找促进市民积极探索城市文化的方法。
除此之外，我还在这个过程进行了两方面的思考。首先，当公众的声音被放大时，市民之间存在的共同精神遗产、爱好或其他共同兴趣也会逐渐浮出水面，而这些内容是无法由传统意义上的专家来代表发声的，这也呼应Cook（2013）提出的档案权力的民主化。其次，为了激发人们的积极参与，大众档案库的组织机构应该表露出足够谦逊及尊重的态度，同时努力营造激发人们分享意愿的氛围。
然而，我发现一些参与者倾向于避开讨论他们生活中不光彩的经历。这让我开始思考如何创造一个安全空间，帮助人们谈论消极的生活经历，因为一座城市的文化意义不应该仅仅由简单且积极的叙事构成。注意到这一点后，我也意识到可以尝试观察下一阶段所利用的互联网平台能否有机会打造这样的安全空间。
At the first stage, my research question was shaped with a preliminary direction but showed some ambiguities in clarifying my focus. The question was: How can manufacturing-based cities explore their own cultural significance?
Guided by the question, I initiated a two-week programme Drinks for Stories in July, during which I invited 32 people to participate in my face-to-face chatting sessions (one hour per person on average) with a relaxed atmosphere. Sessions were non-structured and let free flow to participants’ discussions on their life experiences, consequently revealing a range of interesting cultural topics of Wenzhou. Before each session, participants were required to fill in participant consent forms that notified potential disclosure of collected data including audio records and photos gathered in different forms.
Originally, this programme was supported by a hotel in a locally well-known holiday resort in Wenzhou and targeting at local hotel guests as potential participants. As time went by, I started moving around within Wenzhou to seek more chances to talk with different types of people.
Two objectives were expected in addressing achievements during this phase.
Primarily, it worked as the first intervention for participants. After the chatting sessions, I started tracking how people reacted to the programme to evaluate the effect. Among 32 participants, more than half of them interacted with me further in different ways: assistance in building the new connections to other citizens or places, providing artefacts concerning cultural heritage or their own interests, or even discussions on future cooperations. These interactions might work as good evidence that the first phase intervention was impactful in involving stakeholders into the theme.
In addition, the data collected in this programme functioned as initial documents by ArchiWenzhou. The editorial work for these data has been conducting since August and a website (https://archiwenzhou.cn) was built as a carrier for the archive for the next phase, which would be an internet-based intervention to reach a wider audience.
Through such an opportunity in having face-to-face contacts with people, I found this phase was effective to build the trust with participants as well as help them feel engaging in proactive exploration of city culture. This finding also led to the refinement of my research question, which further identified the goal of this project: to find the effective methods facilitating citizens’ active exploration of city culture.
Apart from this, there were also two key insights I encountered during the process. First, when the voices of the public were magnified, the shared heritage, hobbies or other common interests of citizens will also be highlighted and cannot be represented by the experts in the traditional sense. This reflected the democratization of archival power (Cook, 2013). Second, to motivate people’s active participation, it is effective to place the programme organiser in a modest position, while creating the atmosphere which triggers people’s willingness to share.
However, I found some participants tended to skip dishonourable experiences in their life. These made me wonder how to create a safe space for people to talk about the negative life experiences, since culture significance of a city should not be composed of simple and positive narratives. Having noticed this point, I would like to observe how the virtual spaces adopted in the next phase could help.
第二阶段干预（2024年10月-11月）
Intervention Phase II (October – November 2024)
第二阶段干预旨在通过中国不同的社交平台测试两种在线参与式档案的形式——利用小红书，一个鼓励人们与多元生活方式联系的社交平台，作为对公域的测试；利用微信，中国最大的通讯应用，作为对私域的测试，开展“流浪相机”活动。
10月份，我在小红书上创建了一个新的社交媒体账号，同样命名为“ArchiWenzhou”。最初设置的用户形象是一只来自温州的小羊，而非我本人的背景，这有助于减少网络用户对账号形象可能产生的偏见，使得账号容易被更多人接受。这个账号被用于测试人们如何与不同类型的笔记进行互动，笔记大致分为这几个类型：介绍参与式档案的理论和现实实践，分享一阶段干预所收集的档案员故事，以及发起对档案员故事的分析所归纳出的城市文化话题的线上讨论。
该账号于10月14日发布了第一条笔记。截至11月22日，已发布19条笔记，共获得145个关注者和280条评论。在所有笔记中，有两条在数据表现方面与其他帖子相比较为突出。
第一条是向温州市民发出的求助，在其中我表明了我在英国的研究生身份以及正在进行的关于温州文化的研究课题，从而表达了我对自己没有收集到足够的内容在毕业展上进行展示的担忧。出乎意料的是，这篇帖子吸引了超过一百名回复者分享他们对温州不同方面的知识。我将这条笔记定义为问题解决型互动，它为人们提供了一个在特定主题下参与解决特定问题的空间。在这种情况下，市民出于对这座城市的骄傲和热情，产生了希望向外界展示温州这座城市的魅力的念头，从而增强了他们对城市文化探索的积极性。
第二条分享了第一阶段收集到的档案员故事中的一个片段——一位退休的语文老师分享了温州籍作家琦君（后移居台北）描述童年时期在温州生活的一些文章。帖子下数十位市民表达了对这些文章的共鸣，并且根据他们的知识储备提供了关于琦君与温州之间额外的一些联结线索。
在不同笔记下的评论区内容也反映了，参与式档案鼓励人们参与当地文化话题的作用也适用于在线环境。
而“流浪相机”活动可以被视作线上社区和线下人际互动相结合的产物。这可以看作是一个小型实验：通过一台一次性胶卷相机在市民之间的传递，观察市民如何使用该设备捕捉温州的有趣景象。这项活动始于10月18日，截至11月22日，相机已传递到第七个人手中，拍摄了八张照片。虽然相机的传递尚未完结，它目前在旅途中的进展也体现了每个参与者在参与这项任务时的责任感。
至于前文中提及的打造鼓励对消极经历进行讨论的安全空间，目前为止的线上实践尚未能提供有用的线索，但我将在之后继续思考并解决这个问题。
The phase two intervention aimed at testing two forms of online participatory archiving through different social platforms in China – using RedNote, a social platform that inspires people to connect with diverse lifestyles, as a test in the public sphere and using WeChat, the biggest messaging app in China, as a test in the private sphere with the campaign The Wandering Camera.
On RedNote, a new social media account, again called ‘ArchiWenzhou’, was created in October. The image of a sheep from Wenzhou rather than myself as the account owner was set initially to help the account appear less biased in terms of public image and more approachable for everyone. This account was used to test how people would interact with different types of posts: introduction of theories and real-world practices of participatory archiving, sharing of the previous archivists’ stories, and initiating different topics concluded through the last phase.
The account made its first post on October 14th. Until November 22nd, with 19 posts published, the account had got 145 followers and 280 comments altogether. Among all the posts, two of them distinguished from the others in terms of data performance.
The first one was a question toward Wenzhou citizens regarding the Festival of this course, in which I shared my concern that I had not collected sufficient content to demonstrate during the Festival and sought advice from the public. Unexpectedly, this post attracted more than a hundred respondents to share their knowledge in different aspects of Wenzhou. I generalised this post as problem-solving interactions, which provided people with a space to engage in a specific problem under a certain theme. In this case, the active exploration of city culture might be empowered by the citizens’ desire to present the charm of Wenzhou to the outsiders out of their pride and passion toward this city.
The second one was an episode of an archivist’s narratives collected in the first phase. As a retired teacher in literature, the archivist shared some articles by a famous writer Qi Jun, who was born in Wenzhou and moved to Taipei afterward, about her childhood in Wenzhou. There were dozens of citizens showing their resonance with these articles under the post or providing extra details about Qi Jun based on their knowledge.
With the accumulated clues documented under different posts, it proved that the power of participatory archive to encourage people’s engagement in discussing cultural topics also worked in the online environment.
The campaign The Wandering Camera was a combination of online community and real-life interactions between people. This could be viewed as a small experiment: use a disposable film camera, pass it between citizens, and find how the citizens use this device to capture the interesting views in Wenzhou. This campaign started on October 18th. By November 22nd, the camera had been passed to the seventh person with eight photos shot. Even though the camera was still on its journey, the progress was smooth and showed participants’ responsibility in dealing with this task.
For the attempt to encourage the discussions on the negative parts of people’s life in Wenzhou, the practices in the virtual space up to now have not been able to give useful answers, but I would keep thinking and working on this issue afterward.
结论 Conclusion
这个项目中的每一步都充满了不确定性，但每一步于我而言都充满启发，促使我不断前进，因此我对于能够见证目前阶段所取得的成果感到非常感激。
自2024年九月起，我需要回到伦敦，由此无法继续待在温州本地继续进行项目。受限的地理位置可能在一定程度上影响了该项目的可持续性。由于条件的变化，第一阶段干预中吸取的经验教训并非一定适用于第二阶段，即关于面对面深入交谈需要注意的事项。所幸两个阶段之间并没有出现难以过渡的情况，甚至促使我对这个项目有了更深入的理解。
通过尝试线下和线上模式支持的不同形式的参与式存档过程，这个项目成功收集了不同类型的内容：通过与人面对面接触收集的故事和观点更深入、更详细，但难以涵盖足够广泛的话题，而在线归档过程则弥补了这一缺点，但存在内容较为碎片化这一问题。
幸运的是，这两种模式所展现的互补性意味着未来结合两者持续运营的潜力。通过这种方式，城市文化的参与式档案可以长期通过线下与线上相反性质的内容实现互补和成长，该项目中所进行的实践也可能适用于中国其他制造业城市。
我有时会觉得这个项目难以控制，因为我无法独自处理不断增长的数据库。但转念一想，这个不断增长的档案库恰好符合我的预期，因为这是该项目逐渐吸引更多温州市民参与城市文化讨论、探索和思索的最好证明。
这也让我进一步思考了自己在这个项目中的作用。“抛砖引玉”这一中国成语或许最能代表我的想法，意思是利用粗浅的意见来引出高质量的东西。或许我就是那个抛砖人，不曾拥有足够的知识和专业水平，但却能够在对公共话语的探索中收获宝贵的思想。
Every step in this project was full of uncertainties but thought-provoking enough to push me forward. I am grateful to witness what has been achieved in the present stage.
The constrained geographic location of myself since September was the main limitation in this project. It to some extent led to unguaranteed continuity of this project and made the project risky in terms of the progress. What had been learned from the first phase intervention were not necessarily applicable to the second phase due to the changes in conditions. Fortunately, the transition between the two phases was smooth and even led to my further understandings of ArchiWenzhou.
Through the different forms of participatory archiving supported by both offline and online modes, this project has successfully collected the content with different characteristics: the stories and opinions collected through face-to-face contacts were more in depth and detail but hard to be inclusive, while online archiving process just made up for this shortcoming but had the problem of being imprecise.
Fortunately, the complementarity demonstrated by these two modes revealed the potential to combine them for the sustainable operation in the future. In such a way, the participatory archive for the city culture can be nourished interactively by their opposite natures in the long term. The practices in this project might have the potential to adapt to other manufacturing cities in China.
I sometimes felt the project was getting out of control because I was incapable in dealing with the growing database. However, on second thought, this growing archive exactly matched my expectations. It was the best proof that this project had gradually engaged more Wenzhou citizens in the city culture discussions, explorations and reflections.
This also made me consider further about my positionality. One Chinese idiom might best represent my thought - ‘throwing out a brick to attract a jade’, which means using rough opinions to elicit the stuff in high quality. I was exactly the one who threw out the brick, not knowledgeable and professional enough but able to provoke valuable ideas in the public discourse.
参考文献 Bibliography
Benoit, I.E. and Eveleigh, A. (2021) Participatory archives: Theory and practice. London: Facet.
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