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The Economic
Logic of Chinese
Cultural-Creative
Industries Parks
Shenzhen and Guangzhou
Vivian Yuan Yuan
The Economic Logic of Chinese Cultural-Creative
Industries Parks
 Vivian Yuan Yuan

The Economic Logic

of Chinese Cultural-
Creative Industries
Parks
Shenzhen and Guangzhou
Vivian Yuan Yuan
Shenzhen Culture Research Center
Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

ISBN 978-981-15-3539-0    ISBN 978-981-15-3540-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3540-6

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
­institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-­01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
For my dear father Taiping Yuan who had always trusted me and
encouraged me to achieve anything I like.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Correlated Concepts and Theory Developments 11

3 Research Methodology 49

4 The Case Study on the Business Model of OCT-LOFT 59

5 The Case Study on the Business Model of 289 Art Park125

6 Comparison of the Two Cases197

7 Research Implications and Conclusions263

References279

Index289

vii
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Open gate 63

Fig. 4.2 Xiangshan East Street between Southern District and
Northern District 66
Fig. 4.3 OCAT 69
Fig. 4.4 Old Heaven Bookstore 79
Fig. 4.5 Little Thing 84
Fig. 4.6 A3+ 89
Fig. 4.7 B10 90
Fig. 4.8 C2 91
Fig. 4.9 My Café 96
Fig. 4.10 My Noodle 97
Fig. 4.11 Loft Shop 98
Fig. 4.12 Starbucks 99
Fig. 4.13 The leisurely Donkey Bar 101
Fig. 4.14 T-Studio 103
Fig. 4.15 Chi Cha Qu 105
Fig. 4.16 Bridge gallery 117
Fig. 4.17 Barn gallery 118
Fig. 5.1 Cartoon map 126
Fig. 5.2 Bean2Cup café 133
Fig. 5.3 Cross Fit 133
Fig. 5.4 Cultural landmark 142
Fig. 5.5 Citizen space 143
Fig. 5.6 Internet celebrity made preparation work for photo in
front of a restaurant 147
Fig. 5.7 Grand View Garden furniture shop 182
Fig. 5.8 Louis (right) in his café in my interview 183

ix
x List of Figures

Fig. 5.9 Hennessy campaign in the park 186

Fig. 5.10 Sculpture and play 187
Fig. 5.11 WP flagship store 194
Fig. 6.1 Organization structure of OCT-LOFT in OCT Group 220
Fig. 6.2 Organization structure of Guangzhou 289 Art Park 221
Fig. 6.3 Business activities of OCT-LOFT 227
Fig. 6.4 Business activities and divisions of Guangzhou 289 Art Park 230
Fig. 6.5 Development and expansion model of OCT-LOFT 234
Fig. 6.6 Development and expansion model of 289 branded CCIP 235
Fig. 6.7 Funding resources for construction and operation of
OCT-LOFT236
Fig. 6.8 Funding resources for construction, operation management
and brand development of 289 Art Park 237
Fig. 6.9 The “cultural highland” business model of OCT-LOFT 249
Fig. 6.10 “Modular system” business model of 289 Art Park 253
Fig. 6.11 4C model for the business model design framework of CCIP:
black solid arrows represent the systematic relation design;
blue solid arrows represent the observable activities for value
creation; black dotted arrows represent the implied process of
value capture 259
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 The information of in-depth interviews on Shenzhen

OCT-LOFT55
Table 3.2 The information of in-depth interviews on Guangzhou 289
Art Park 56
Table 4.1 List of the annual cultural activities in OCT-LOFT 93
Table 6.1 Comparison of the two cases 207
Table 6.2 Comparison of two case models 259

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Cultural-creative industries park (CCIP) is a recently emerging important

issue with the rise of cultural-creative industries. Since it’s an integrated
issue, connected with many different topics such as industry, policy, city,
space, geography, creativity, economy, community and so on, literature
discussing on this issue seems extremely diversified. Different disciplines
contributed lots of academic literature from different perspectives, with
different methodologies. Added with the development of practices in dif-
ferent countries during the past 20 years, there came out many different
theoretic concepts and specific experiences.
The discursive usage of a series of correlated concepts made the research
difficult, and sometimes even impossible. Papers published in the interna-
tional academic journals have discussed the concepts and cases of culture
district, artistic district, cultural street, cultural cluster, creative cluster,
creative industry cluster, creative industries park, cultural-creative indus-
tries park and so on at the same time. These correlated and different con-
cepts demonstrated the chaos in academic literature at the early stage of
creative cluster development.
In China, this kind of chaos seemed more obvious. In the first decade
when this new phenomenon emerged, from the titles of several main cit-
ies’ policy papers, we can clearly find the “anxiety of influence” from the
West—“cluster” as a keyword and the diversified or random usage of con-
cepts. For example, the Beijing municipal government published
“Administrative Measures for Registration of Cultural and Creative

© The Author(s) 2020 1

V. Yuan Yuan, The Economic Logic of Chinese Cultural-Creative
Industries Parks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3540-6_1
2 V. YUAN YUAN

Industries Cluster of Beijing” (2006), Shanghai municipal government

published “Administrative Measures for Registration of Creative Industries
Cluster of Shanghai” (2008) and Hangzhou municipal government pub-
lished “Administrative Measures for Registration of Cultural and Creative
Industries Base of Hangzhou” (2007). Almost at the same stage, the three
cities respectively used three different notions—“cultural and creative
industries cluster”, “creative industries cluster” and “cultural and creative
industries base”—in their policy papers to name the similar new phenom-
enon. However, with the development of practices and studies, not only
the academics but also the policy-makers found it more and more neces-
sary to give a clear definition and comparatively unified academic or offi-
cial name to describe the main trend of Chinese-styled creative cluster.
Both in the international academic papers and in the Chinese municipal
policy papers, there are jumbled concepts to identify some kind of similar
phenomenon, which is more and more beyond the automatic clustering of
creators in space and is more and more becoming a policy tool of the local
government to push the development of regional economy and city
(Mommaas, 2004; Westrick & Rehfeld, 2003). Confronted with this chal-
lenge, Mommaas (2009) once pointed out that the concept of cultural
cluster is too narrow, for not taking into account other cultural forms of
creativity besides culture, such as the communication technology, science
and engineering, research and development, marketing and communica-
tion, while the notion of creative cluster is too broad, for not sufficiently
differentiating different forms of creativity. Hence, Mommaas made a pro-
posal of using the phrase “cultural-creative” to deal with the dilemma.
The proposal of an eclectic notion of “cultural-creative” reflected that
the understanding and research of creative clustering are experiencing a
process of deepening. In this newly coined phrase, “culture” hinted that
the features of cultural-creative clusters should be definitely different from
those of the traditional industry clusters.
Although industrial agglomeration theory had been used as the theo-
retic resource to explain the creative cluster from the perspective of econ-
omy since the very beginning, the recent development of cultural cluster
or creative cluster has brought this issue to diversified cross-disciplinary
perspectives. Some research identified cultural-creative cluster as a dynamic
network of social interaction (Zarlenga, Ulldemolins, & Morato, 2016);
some took it as the policy tool to regenerate the downtown city (Stern &
Seifert, 2010); and some concluded it as an innovation-encouraging
approach (D’Alise, Giustiniano, & Peruffo, 2014), a long-term
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

developing strategy of a city (Florea, 2015) or an urban planning strategy

of sustainable district development (Sacco, Blessi, & Nuccio, 2009). All of
these researches made great efforts in transcending single economic or
industrial perspective. They tried diversified and integrated approaches
and made advantage of multiple theoretic resources. In these academic
papers, culture, economy, society and urban development have all been
connected with each other. As a result, these discourses extended the
meaning and function of “culture”. Based on these cross-disciplinary
researches, the practice of cultural-creative industries park (CCIP) has also
been constantly experiencing a version-changing process.
However, it’s the historically developing and self-transcending pro-
cess of cultural-creative industries park that made the notion or concept
of cultural-creative industrial cluster/park a confusing thing. In main-
land China, it has been a long time that many cities identify a special
district, several neighborhood streets, newly built architectures and the
regenerated old factories with the same notion—cultural industrial park
or cultural-creative industries cluster. The adverse impact of this notion
chaos leads to the constant lack of specific development strategies of an
individual cultural-creative industries park. How to design, operate and
manage a cultural-creative industries park is a new topic waiting to be
proposed.
In this research, my basic opinion is that cultural-creative industries
park (CCIP) is a brand-new and special issue integrating culture, indus-
tries and urban space, which makes it a totally different case from the
ordinary or traditional industrial parks. The traditional industrial parks are
normally located at the outskirts of the city and related to a specific indus-
try, with clear cooperation or co-creation along the industrial chain. In
economics history, there are a series of theories to account this phenom-
enon, such as industrial agglomeration theory, external economies, scale
economies, urbanization economies, the new industrial districts theory,
industrial clusters and diamond model theory. But as a lot of scholars
emphasized, cultural-creative industries park has their particularities. First
of all, there are a lot of actually different industries under the umbrella of
“cultural-creative industries”, and in different countries there are different
classifications and definitions. Secondly, since most of CCIPs are regener-
ated from abandoned or old factories of industrial era, the location of
CCIPs is usually in the downtown districts of the cities which have entered
into post-industrial stage. Thirdly, as to the business model, the pure rent
model has a paradox at two levels: in the first level, it either leads the CCIP
4 V. YUAN YUAN

finally to a sheer commercial place, which deviates from its original policy
goals, or unavoidably goes to an upper limit of income, which falls short
of its economic target; in the second level, for the small and medium
enterprises, especially in creative industries, the rental cost they can bear
has a ceiling, but the golden zones of the post-industrial city where CCIPs
usually located will logically ask for higher economic value creation. This
paradox which is ubiquitous in creative industries was given a metaphor by
scholars as the paradox of “diamond and water”, which means the use
value of culture is just like the air and water that human being’s living or
existence is accounting for, but the exchange value of it is as rare as dia-
mond that is precious and irreproducible.
In that sense, it’s impossible to use the traditional economic theory to
account for cultural economy and to use the traditional industrial agglom-
eration theory to explain the cultural-creative industrial cluster. What
makes the issue more complex is that the phenomena of cultural-creative
industrial cluster have been in a change process, for example, it developed
from the accidentally original bottom-up model to the prevalent top-­
down model, and it had many different notions and concepts in different
countries based on different political and economic context.
In present mainland China, the national and local government con-
sciously took advantage of CCIPs to accelerate the urban regeneration or
push the village development. Hence there emerge a series of new notions,
new trends and new practices, which urgently call for corresponding new
theories or studies to generalize or support them.
Because the development of CCIP is involved with the land policy,
industrial policy and cultural policy, it has distinct differentiations among
regions. This study wouldn’t discuss the status of its development across
the world, but will take it into the specific political and economic context
of mainland China and examine the sustainable developing strategy of a
single CCIP from the perspective of operation and management. Its goal
is to find out if there is any sustainable business model or business model
design framework which could give inspirations or references to CCIP
managers and meanwhile help the government to make more moderate
policies to really support CCIPs, then realize its policy target.
Considering that most of the existing researches focused on the policy,
or the urban space transformation, or the development condition of
cultural-­creative industries, this study will fill the theoretic gap on this
issue with its concern mainly on the business model of a specific CCIP and
will provide a guiding framework of designing a proper business model of
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

CCIP for its manager or investor on the practical level in specific condi-
tions or contexts. Below are the book’s main ideas and the structure of the
research.
In order to give a theoretic definition of CCIP of mainland China based
on the comparison and contrast with other notions of different countries
or different developing stages, Chap. 2 contributes an elaborate literature
review on this issue. It discussed the evolution of some correlated con-
cepts, such as “culture industry”, “culture industries”, “creative indus-
tries” and “cultural-creative industries”. Then it differentiated some very
close notions among “culture district”, “cultural industries district”, “cre-
ative cluster”, “cultural-creative park” and “cultural-creative industries
park”. With the review of all these concepts as the background, this study
picked “cultural-creative industries park” as the convergent notion for the
consideration that this notion embodied the integration of culture (with
the term “cultural-creative”), economy (with the term “industries”) and
bounded urban space (with the term “park”). Actually, we can find the
notion echo in cultural policy—since 2010, after the first decade of cre-
ative cluster phenomenon becoming a hot topic in creative communities,
researchers and governments of different cities of mainland China have
gradually changed their former concept terminologies and gradually
tended to use “cultural-creative industries park” in their policy papers,
such as Hangzhou (2010), Shenzhen (2013), Shanghai (2014) and
Beijing (2017). Based on the literature review of notions and the academic
papers on CCIP and the definitions of business model, Chap. 2 pointed
out that the perspective of management on this topic is extremely weak
and scarce, but it’s exactly what this study tries to contribute.
Chapter 3 illustrated the methodology of this research, which contains
the features of the research fields, how to collect field data, how to do
qualitative interviews, how to analyze the content of the interview with its
scripts and what are the analysis methods of this qualitative research. The
reason why this research took the methodology of multiple case studies is
that the objectives of this research are to challenge the existing research
perspectives on CCIP and try to propose a brand-new theoretic perspec-
tive and theory framework. And the advantage of qualitative research is
exactly to propose new theoretic constructions. As to the choice of the
CCIP cases for the study, there are some common standards: firstly, it was
a top-down developed CCIP, which means the manager has to consider
the business model from the very beginning; secondly, it was regenerated
from the old or abandoned factory, which is defined in the study as the
6 V. YUAN YUAN

“classic CCIP”; thirdly, there are cases from the recognized post-industrial
cities and the first-tier cities of mainland China—Shenzhen and
Guangzhou; and fourthly, they are developed in a sustainable way, either
sustainable vertically, which means it has been prosperous for at least a
decade, or sustainable horizontally, which presents its reproductive power
in a very short time and shaped a CCIP brand—developing different
CCIPs in different cities with the same brand.
Specifically speaking, the Shenzhen case is OCT-LOFT,1 while the
Guangzhou case is 289 Art Park. The OCT-LOFT is one of the first well-­
known top-down designed CCIPs in mainland China. And since 2006, it
has been the National Model CCIP named by the National Ministry of
Culture. With more than a decade past, it had become more and more
prosperous. Not only it enlarged its areas from the original South District
to North District, and then to C District, but also it enjoyed a great fame
across the country, which attracted famous galleries2 from 798 Art Park or
other creative institutes from Beijing or Guangzhou to open its southern
branch galleries or offices here.
If we see OCT-LOFT as a case of sustainable development in a long
time, then the 289 Art Park of Guangzhou is a case of another style of
sustainable development. Although 289 Art Park was opened in 2016,
which is very late compared with OCT-LOFT that opened in 2006, it
successfully reproduced the 289 CCIP brand with another two CCIP
projects, respectively, in Shenzhen and Foshan in 2017 as what the devel-
oper and manager expected when they were designing the 289 CCIP
business model for Guangzhou 289 Art Park. This kind of taking advan-
tage of CCIP brand value and swiftly realizing the CCIP reproduction in
different cities is a very innovative case across the world. And what makes
it more interesting is that the 289 CCIP brand is held by a public-private
joint enterprise. In this case, we can find many innovation efforts of busi-
ness model in creative industries. Some of the efforts realized its objec-
tives while others not, which pushed the managers to adjust the model
along the way of persistent exploration. This case vividly presents the
complexities and dynamism of CCIP development in mainland China.
Certainly, besides the two cases chosen in this study, there are still many
other models of CCIP development—especially in Shanghai, the city with

1
Overseas Chinese Town (OCT) is a central state-owned enterprise having its headquarter
in Shenzhen. The CCIP it created is named OCT-LOFT.
2
Such as the Bridge Gallery (桥舍画廊) and Hive Centre for Contemporary Art (蜂巢
当代艺术中心).
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

the biggest amount of old factories in China, most of which were estab-
lished since the early age of Chinese industrialization stage in the last cen-
tury, hence having the largest amount of CCIPs in China. There are also
many prominent CCIP brands in Shanghai, such as Dobe (德必), M50,
Bridge No. 8 and so on. But according to field studies, interviews and
their manager’s presentations at symposiums, we found that among all of
these famous CCIP brands, until now, their incomes from rent still amount
up to 90%. So from the perspective of business model, Shanghai and
Beijing’s cases haven’t contributed enough new experience that could
transcend the two cases from Shenzhen and Guangzhou. And the two
cases have either vertically or horizontally representative meaning in sus-
tainable development styles. If this qualitative study finds out a strategy
framework for designing a CCIP business model based on the two case
studies, then it would be beneficial for all the managers of CCIPs in the
practical work.
Chapter 4 enters the first case study, exploring the business model of
OCT-LOFT. OCT Group, as a central state-owned enterprise, took out
part of their self-owned old factories to develop a CCIP, called OCT-­
LOFT. What is the secret that this CCIP keep on flourishing for over
ten years? As the first and maybe the most renowned CCIP of Shenzhen,
what is the inner connections among the city, the OCT Group and OCT-­
LOFT? Recently, this CCIP has been a very hot research object for interna-
tional scholars, and there are several academic papers published in academic
journals (O’Connor & Liu, 2014; Sonn, Chen, Wang, & Liu, 2017), which
made OCT-LOFT a model and star CCIP of China. But these scholars are
mainly foreigners, limited by their field study time and living experience in
Shenzhen, and their research perspectives are not from the management.
This chapter’s case study is based on the data from the researcher’s ten
years’ living experience, intensive field studies and in-depth qualitative
interviews with key managers and some entrepreneurs working in it and is
analyzed from the perspective of business model and creative management,
which would make the case study literature on OCT-LOFT more diversi-
fied for the future researchers and more inspiring for CCIP managers.
Chapter 5 enters the second case study. It explored how a private “space
operation” enterprise—No. 1 Business Holdings—cooperated with a pro-
vincial state-owned enterprise, South Media Group which is a media mag-
nate of South China, to successfully develop and manage Guangzhou 289
Art Park, which helped the No. 1 Business Holdings finish its strategic
transition and become a well-known “Urban Cultural Space Professional
8 V. YUAN YUAN

Operator”. Under the success of the business model concept of “repro-

ducible” CCIP, they received quite a few invitations from local govern-
ments or other state-owned enterprises to “reproduce” the 289 CCIP
brand model all over the country. This chapter elaborates the developing
process of 289 Art Park and analyzes this new kind of CCIP business
model based on in-depth qualitative interviews and field studies.
Chapter 6 is the very key chapter of this research. It generalized two
kinds of CCIP business models through the comparison of the two cases.
One is “cultural highland model” represented by OCT-LOFT, while the
other is “modular system model” represented by 289 Art Park. And then
by comparison of the similarities of the two cases and with the examina-
tion of the four constructs in business model definition given in Chap. 2
through literature review, the chapter proposed a 4C model (context, cul-
ture, community, correlation) for CCIP business model design, which
would be very useful for practitioners in CCIP development and
management.
Chapter 7 will go back to the literature of CCIP research and conclude
the research and practical implications of this study. And finally, the con-
cluding part of this chapter will point out the limitation of this research
and give some suggestions on future research directions.

References

English References
D’Alise, C., Giustiniano, L., & Peruffo. E. (2014). Innovating through clusters.
International Journal of Engineering Business Management, Special Issue:
Innovations in Pharmaceutical Industry, 1–14.
Florea, C. A. (2015). Clusters—A strategy for long run development. Eurasian
Journal of Social Sciences, 3(1), 20–24.
Mommaas, H. (2004). Cultural clusters and the post-industrial city. Urban Studies,
41(3), 507–532.
Mommaas, H. (2009). Spaces of culture and economy: Mapping the cultural-­
creative cluster landscape. In L. Kong & J. O’Connor (Eds.), Creative econo-
mies, creative cities: An Asia Europe perspective (pp. 45–60). The Netherlands:
Spring Press.
O’Connor, J., & Liu, L. (2014). Shenzhen’s OCT-LOFT: Creative space in the
City of Design. City, Culture and Society, 5, 131–138.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

Sacco, P. L., Blessi, G. T., & Nuccio, M. (2009). Cultural policies and local plan-
ning strategies: What is the role of culture in local sustainable development? The
Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, 39(1), 45–63.
Sonn, J. W., Chen, K. W., Wang, H., & Liu, X. (2017). A top-down creation of a
cultural cluster for urban regeneration: The case of OCT Loft, Shenzhen. Land
Use Policy, 69, 307–316.
Stern, M. J., & Seifert, S. C. (2010). Cultural clusters: The implications of cultural
assets agglomeration for neighborhood revitalization. Journal of Planning
Education and Research, 29(3), 262–279.
Westrick, D. G., & Rehfeld, D. (2003). Clusters and cluster policies in regions of
structural change-comparing three regions in North Rhine Westphalia. Paper
presented at the International Conference of the Regional Studies Association,
Pisa, Italy.
Zarlenga, M. I., Ulldemolins, J. R., & Morato, A. R. (2016). Cultural clusters and
social interaction dynamics: The case of Barcelona. European Urban and
Regional Studies, 23(3), 422–440.
 CHAPTER 2

Correlated Concepts and Theory

Developments

2.1   Cultural, Creative or Cultural-Creative

Industries? A Historic Perspective
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, in terms of practical and prag-
matic level, the three words “cultural”, “creative” and “cultural-creative”
industries have been used in an extremely intertwined way under different
contexts for a long term, which makes an easy misunderstanding for nor-
mal people that the three terms can be used equally. In mainland China,
the term “cultural industries” has been used on the national official papers
or cultural policies since the very beginning and up until now. But in sev-
eral cosmopolitan cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, the city
cultural policies demonstrated a changing attributes in the choice of terms,
which witnessed the usage of “cultural-creative industries” taking place
over the old-fashioned “cultural industries”. In my view, the differentia-
tions of term reflected the concept and mindset evolution in historical
development and also implied the uneven regional development from the
perspective of political economies.

2.1.1  Cultural Industry and Cultural Industries

In Chinese characters, the “cultural industry” and “cultural industries”
share the same character shape. But in the development history of con-
cepts, the two terms have very huge distinctions in their academic

© The Author(s) 2020 11

V. Yuan Yuan, The Economic Logic of Chinese Cultural-Creative
Industries Parks, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3540-6_2
12 V. YUAN YUAN

implications. There is a basic consensus within present academia that “cul-

tural industry” used as a specific term should be traced back to the well-­
known classic work Dialectic of Enlightenment written by Horkheimer and
Adorno, the two renowned representatives of the Frankfurt School, a very
influential Marxism critical theory school. In this critical work, they named
a chapter with “cultural industry”, where this concept was firstly and for-
mally proposed. However, as Hesmondhalgh (2002) points out, the sin-
gular form “cultural industry” in the sense of Horkheimer and Adorno is
totally different from the plural form “cultural industries” as we latterly
used. The singular form cultural industry is a critical concept proposed by
the Frankfurt School to criticize the more and more commercialized cul-
ture in the United States in the 1940s. Culture commercialization means
that culture or culture products were created according to the demand of
the popular markets, thus losing its original independent value and tran-
scendence implication.
However, this singular-formed and critical notion hasn’t been used too
long. With more and more specific case study, many scholars found the
restriction of this notion. Some French socialists and policy-makers started
to explore the definite meaning and the complication of industrialized
“culture” from the perspective of realistic observations. Based on their
researches, the plural form notion “cultural industries” began to be used
to refer to a series of industries, incorporating publishing, film, TV and
recording and so on, which all have been existed for a long time since the
modernization stage started.
From the singular cultural industry to the plural cultural industries in
the notion propositions, there implied a very significant turning point.
Especially in the German and French social study circle which usually has
very strong critical thinking tradition, this evolving and developing notion
finally improved the legitimacy of “the Industrialization of Culture” in its
realistic development. Among these scholars, the most representative and
influential one is the renowned French socialist Bernard Miège, who
thought that the critique of Horkheimer and Adorno on the cultural
industry was a sort of cultural nostalgia lingering on the premodern stage.
Another important German socialist Walter Benjamin, who was a good
friend of Horkheimer and Adorno, also took the view that it was not
wrong that the new technology and industrialization encouraged the
commercialization of culture, but at the same time the culture had a better
tool to get broader communication and swifter innovation, which should
be seen as a great social progress with no doubt. Accordingly, there was a
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 13

danger of simplifying the problem if we criticize the cultural industry from

a totally negative perspective. The phenomenon of commercialization and
industrialization of culture surely deserved more concern with its negative
influence, but its large-scaled emergence in modern societies also has its
positive meaning and liberal implication. Both Miège and Benjamin
opposed to the pessimistic view from Horkheimer and Adorno on cultural
industry, but they didn’t take the extremely optimistic attitude. In their
arguments, the industrialization and commercialization of culture was a
very complicated evolving process, which is full of contradictions and con-
troversies. So it’s quite necessary to do specific analysis and detailed indus-
tries research, which is exactly the theory background and academic
context of the development of cultural industries and culture economy as
independent and cross-disciplinary fields in recent years.
Compared with the critical thinking tendency of French and German
scholars, Australian scholar’s research took a more pragmatic strategy.
David Throsby’s classic work Economics and Culture was published in
2001, one year earlier than David Hesmondhalgh’s representative work
The Cultural Industries. Opposite with the European scholars’ discussion
approach from culture study to cultural industries, Throsby, as an econo-
mist, focused his research on the descending process of culture from meta-
physics to economy and how the economic value of culture was intentionally
explored and developed as a sector of economy in the past ten years before
his book was published. By taking advantage of value theory, Throsby put
“culture”, this very controversial and ambiguous word, into the economic
context to do specific research, which was very different from the meta-
physical perspective developed by Horkheimer and Adorno. With the
common notion of “value”, the “foundation stone connecting economics
and culture”, Throsby successfully redefined “culture” in contemporary
context. In Throsby’s sense, culture had experienced a process of capital-
ization as “nature” had experienced in the new stage of capitalism devel-
opment, and thus it has dual values known as cultural value and economic
value. Due to closely focusing on the notion of “value” and taking value
theory as the bridge between culture and economy, Throsby’s definition
of cultural industries was specifically related with intellectual property,
which allows the cultural products both having “economic value” and
symbolic meaning which gives the cultural products “cultural value”.
Therefore, Throsby constructed the well-known “concentric circle model”
(Throsby, 2001) to classify the different cultural industries for policy-­
makers to stimulate the industries’ developments by different correlated
14 V. YUAN YUAN

policies. In this model, the core circle contains those industries with the
highest symbolic value by given standards, and from this core circle to
outside circles, the cultural implication of products of corresponding cul-
tural industries is lessening circle by circle, while their commercial value is
ascending with the circle diffusion. As a result of the emphasis on symbolic
value of cultural industries and relating the creation and production of
symbolic meaning to creativity, Throsby’s concept of “cultural industries”
is similar to the “creative industries” proposed by the English central gov-
ernment in 1997.

2.1.2  Creative Industries
Throsby’s “concentric circle model” met challenge later, which was based
on the different understanding between “creative industries” and “cul-
tural industries”. The term “creative industries” has very clear origin. It
was proposed by the New Labour Party after Tony Blair was elected as the
prime minister of the Great Britain in 1997. So quite distinct from other
concepts, “creative industries” was first articulated by policy-maker in pol-
icy discourse, rather than by scholars in academic literature. The rooted
reason came from the new strategy planning of the New Labor to boost
the economy of Britain. Correspondingly, they reconstructed the National
Heritage Department into the Department for Digital, Culture, Media
and Sport (DCMS) as an approach of “rebranding” Britain and rethought
the other value (e.g., economic value) of artistic department beyond the
cultural value which traditionally asks for public subsidy. According to a
report of DCMS in 1998, the GDP of creative industries accounted for 5%
of the whole national GDP in 1997 and the creative industries were one
of the fastest-growing economic segments in contemporary Britain.
Therefore, when the New Labor put forward the concept of “creative
industries”, there were very specific context, economic value-producing
motivation, systematic institutional adjustment, concept definition and
classified segments.
First, the reason why the “creative industries” concept originated in
1997 could be simply seen a strategy designed by the Labor Party to win
the election. At that time the United Kingdom was enduring high layoff
rate, economic boost failure and glory-losing as an old capitalist country,
which practically backed the new approach and made the idea necessary
and feasible.
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 15

Second, the cultural assets that accumulated in the Empire period of

the United Kingdom has been consuming a huge amount of fiscal allot-
ment every year in the name of art, but cannot generate corresponding
economic value. How to creatively take advantage of these cultural and
artistic assets to produce more economic value and improve the employ-
ment rate was the main purpose of the “creative industries” policy.
Third, to facilitate the development of creative industries, the
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was established, and
the think tank—“Creative Industries Task Force”—was specially orga-
nized as an auxiliary institute to do professional research and provide pol-
icy advice. All of those presented the Labor government’s efforts on
shaping the new concept of “creative industries”. And the replacement of
“cultural industries” in existent academia with “creative industries” in new
policy discourse implied that the concept upgrading was intentionally
given by the government leaders. On the one hand, it could avoid the
ambiguity of historic disputes; on the other hand, the new concept
expanded the new economy boundary with “creative industries” com-
pared with “cultural industries”. As a positive response to the new devel-
opment demand of the era, the Blair government defined “creative
industries” as engaged in “those activities which have their origin in indi-
vidual creativity, skill and talent and which have potential for wealth and
job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual prop-
erty” (DCMS, 1998), which specifically contains 13 sectors: advertising,
architecture, arts and antique, craftsmanship, design, fashion, film and
video, electronic game, music, performing arts, publishing, software and
computer service, TV and radio.
Almost ten years later, UNESCO (2009) and UNCTAD (2010) gave
their own definition or understanding of creative industries. But it was on
the basis of the British pioneering definition that creative industries have
been included into the national economic statistic framework as an inde-
pendent segment. On the opposite of “cultural industries” as the pure
academic discussion and generalization, the “creative industries” was more
pragmatic and started its concept identity from policy discourse, then
directly influenced the reality and became a part of economic statistics.
With the drive power from the Britain national government and many
stimulating policies, creative industries had been witnessed prompt devel-
opment. Not only their GDP surpassed that of financial service segment in
Britain, but also they alleviated the problem of youth employment and
some social problems. Following the Blair government, across the world
16 V. YUAN YUAN

there emerged a popular trend to improve creative industries development

with the policy encouragements and viewed them as a hopeful approach to
boost economy of sustainable development.

2.1.3  Cultural-Creative Industries and Others

However, the process and pattern of creative industries accepted as an
economic segment and developing strategy was revised into different ver-
sions according to each country or district’s history, systematic mecha-
nisms and rituals. Especially in Asian countries and districts, “culture” was
still given more emphasis on purpose, and hence there came up with a new
notion “cultural-creative industries”.
We can find that Taiwan was the first Asian district which employed the
notion “cultural-creative industries” in their official papers. In May 2002,
Taiwan government initiated Challenge 2008: The Significant Plans of
National Development, in which “The Plan of Developing Cultural-­
Creative Industries” was included as a sub-plan. This was the first time the
concept of “cultural-creative industries” was officially stated by an impor-
tant political paper. And then in 2010, the government launched
“Cultural-Creative industries” Development Act, which kept the usage of
the notion “cultural-creative industries”.
On the opposite of the concept consistency of Taiwan, Hong Kong gov-
ernment’s attitude seemed a little bit ambiguous and changeable on the
notion adoption. In a meeting of the Hong Kong Arts Development
Council in 1999, the idea of developing “creative industries” was put for-
ward for the first time. And then, the two crucial and official papers The
Creative Industries of Hong Kong, released by the Hong Kong Trade
Development Council in 2002, and The Baseline Research of Hong Kong
Creative Industries, finished in 2003 by the cultural policy research center of
Hong Kong University under the commission from Hong Kong central
government, evidenced the consistent employment of “creative industries”
as the echo of British ritual, which implied the traditionally close relationship
between Hong Kong and the United Kingdom before 1997. But the situa-
tion changed in 2005, when the chief executive of Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region Mr. Dong Jianhua began to use “cultural and cre-
ative industries” in his policy address. After that, whether in the official
paper or in formal contexts, the term “cultural and creative industries” had
been persistently used. For example, on the website of the HK government
statistic department, a related article was named with “Hong Kong Cultural
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 17

and Creative Industries”. And also, this new concept was used in a big offi-
cial expo supported by the Hong Kong government and the Beijing central
government since 2013, which was called “Hong Kong International
Cultural and Creative Industries Expo”. These subtle adjustments in the
literature of the official paper and large-scaled event exposed the ambiguous
attitude of Hong Kong government in the development of creative indus-
tries. As we all know, the core of Hong Kong economy has been financial
service and trade, which helped shaping a kind of pragmatic ideology uncon-
sciously. Added by its comparatively non-displaceable economic status as a
significant bridge between mainland China and the world, which would
ensure its sustainable prosperity and competitive advantage among world
cities, Hong Kong seemed not to account much on the development of
creative industries to stimulate its economic vitality as urgent as other post-
industrial cities which suffered a lot from the move-out of manufacturing
industry. That’s why there hadn’t been any long-term and holistic strategic
development plans or policies proposed by the government for the creative
industries promotion. Although it was as early as in 1999 that the Art
Development Bureau suggested to initiate the “creative Industries” devel-
opment, it was not until in 2009 that the Creative Hong Kong Office which
is specifically responsible for the development of creative industries had been
established under the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau.
Even since then, various stimulus plans have been mostly in the form of
project funding. There is no holistic cultural policy or officially enacted law
coming out later. The government added the word “cultural” before the
formerly used “creative industries”, which could be understood as the gov-
ernor’s thought that the GDP of creative industries was too small compared
with other main industries in Hong Kong, like service industry or trades; so
the so-called creative industries were more related with the culture develop-
ment; or maybe the change of the official term from “creative industries” to
“cultural and creative industries” was from the mindset of keeping pace with
the central government’s policy which used the term “cultural industries”.
However, no matter which logic is closer to the reality, it could reflect that
the position of creative industries is a little bit awkward in Hong Kong.
On the total opposite with Hong Kong, the central government of
China has been using the classic discourse of “cultural industries” coming
from the French theory literature since the very beginning, which embod-
ied the acceptance of the phenomenon of culture economy generalized by
a nation with the similar tradition of centrally governed culture. In 2009,
the central government issued the Plan on Reinvigoration of Culture
18 V. YUAN YUAN

Industries, becoming the first authorized announcement on the impor-

tance and development strategy of cultural industries from the national
level. With the term “cultural industries” used in the title of this docu-
ment, we can understand that at the very beginning the Chinese central
government tended to develop the industrialization and economization of
culture according to the traditional definition in a French way more than
in a British way which already created a new term “creative industries” in
1997. But on the civil government level, things seemed slightly different,
especially in those first-tier cities of China with developed economies, such
as Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and so on. As the cultural industries in
these cities have significant influence on the vitality of production and
consumption and contributed a visible amount of GDP, even gradually
demonstrated the tendency of integrated development with other indus-
tries, so in their issued cultural policies, there emerged evident term
change from “cultural industries” to “cultural-­creative industries”. For
example, the Beijing civil government issued Measures for the Identification
and Management of Beijing Cultural and Creative Industries Clusters
(Trial) in 2006; the Hangzhou civil government issued Measures for the
Identification and Management of Hangzhou Cultural and Creative
Industries Base (Trial) in 2007; and the Shenzhen civil government issued
Plan on Reinvigoration of Cultural and Creative Industries of Shenzhen
(2011–2015) in 2011. Moreover, among those developed cities, the
Shanghai civil government went farther away with the term “creative
industries” in the document Measures for the Identification and
Management of Shanghai Creative Industries Clusters (Trial) in 2008.
And what’s necessary to be noticed is that in the documents Outline of
Shenzhen Cultural Industry Development Plan (2007–2020) issued in
2008 and Regulations on the Promotion of Shenzhen Cultural Industries
issued in 2009, the term “cultural industries” was used consistently, which
revealed that the change of the term used in later (2011) policy paper was
a consciously deepening process in concept understanding.
In fact, with the national promotion in innovation and entrepreneur-
ship, millions of small and micro enterprises in high-tech or digital indus-
try experienced swift development with the indirect encouragement and
support from BAT.1 The trend of integration between culture and tech-
nology has become more and more clear; hence some new terms started

1
B is for Baidu, A for Alibaba and T for Tencent, all of which are Internet giant company
in China.
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 19

to appear in several important national strategic planning documents, such

as “digital content industry”, “digital creative industry” and so on.
Specifically speaking, in the Plan on the Development of National Strategic
Emerging Industries during the 13th Five-Year issued in 2016, there were
five industries named “emerging industries”, including information tech-
nology, high-end manufacturing, biology, green low carbon and digital
creativity. In the plan, it proposed

to facilitate the development of cultural creativity and creative design indus-

tries and to promote the deep integration of culture and technology and the
mutual permeation and by 2020, the developing structure in digital creative
industries would have been formed with culture as the guide, technology as
the advantage, and not only the industry chain has been established entirely
but also the related industries scale will amount to 8 trillion RMB.

From this recently issued official plan, we could see that the central
government of China put the significance of cultural industries into a for-
ward step with the industries integration strategy based on the original
national strategy, which embodied the dynamism of concept and policy
development on the national level.
Certainly, there are still other understandings and discourses related
with “creative industries” such as “cultural content industries” in Korea
and Japan and “copyright industries” in the United States. But with the
frequency of international academic exchange and the renewal of different
countries’ policies, more and more countries or districts would more likely
use the term “creative industries” or “cultural and creative industries” to
synchronize the research target and academic discussion.
The above was a particularly detailed understanding of the concepts
development among different, especially, Asian countries or districts and
demonstrated the extensive contexts behind the terms “cultural indus-
tries”, “creative industries” and “cultural and creative industries”. This dis-
cussion is important because what’s behind the term change in the policy
documents is how the policy-makers or the governors understand the sec-
tors of creative industries and how they value the emerging industries and
is about the depth and significance of creative industries development in
these countries or districts. Considering the influence from the West, the
policy documents of some Asian districts, like Hong Kong and Singapore,
on the one hand, followed Britain at the very beginning with the term used
as “creative industries”, while on the other hand experienced consistent
revision and adjustment according to their own traditions and
20 V. YUAN YUAN

development contexts based on respective history, politics, economy and

cultural traditions. Actually, as what we analyzed above, some new terms
gradually grew up in Asian countries and districts and step by step shaped
as a common view, which made the whole map of creative industries devel-
opment around the world more colorful and diversified. And this research
will use the term “cultural-creative industries” to reflect the adjusted accep-
tance of the influence of British “creative industries” and to emphasize the
unique development approaches of Asian countries.

2.2   “Cultural District”, “Cultural Industries

District”, “Cluster” and “Park”
The second section of this chapter will focus on the creative space for
industries development. How do different countries and districts take
advantage of special geographic space to develop cultural and creative
industries? Or what’s the relationship between the development of cul-
tural and creative industries and the urban space.

2.2.1  From “Cultural District” to “Cultural

Industries Quarter”
Although most academic literature about cultural-creative industries park
(CCIP) have traced the theoretical origin to the cluster theory in indus-
trial economics, more and more scholars admitted that the creative cluster
has its own rules and distinctions. So Hans Mommaas, a Netherlands
scholar, proposed another approach in tracing the theory developing his-
tory from an urban geography perspective to understand the creative clus-
ter strategy. In his view, the agglomeration of cultural enterprises and
cultural community in specific urban space can be traced back to the con-
struction of cultural, art and entertainment district. And the rooted reason
of these phenomena came from the cultural-led regeneration of city
(Hannigan, 1998; Wynne, 1989). One of the most renowned cases is the
art-led regeneration of South of Houston (SoHo) District in New York.
Salon Zukin, the famous geographer from New York University, has con-
tributed a lot of significant research and literature on this case (Zukin,
1989). On the practice level, there were thousands of urban planning or
urban regeneration cases around the world followed the model of SoHo. In
this model, artists and creative workers rented the abandoned factories or
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 21

old buildings in the inner city at a very low price. Then with their personal
artistic reconstruction, decoration or interior design, this original shabby
environment magically changed into a place with Bohemian taste and
post-industrial aesthetic charm, which unprecedentedly attracted a horde
of new middle-­class people or families to buy properties around the area
and settle there. On the one hand, the middle class made the place more
diversified in demography and then brought the dynamic of community
vitality and the economic vitality, while on the other hand, the high-
income class’s entering led to the rise of rent, which consequently forced
some low-income artists or creative workers to leave this district for the no
longer affordable rent. And frequently, what made things worse is the
developer’s violence in breaking the creative ecology by purchasing the
property from the original owner and then developing it into a totally new
and expensive one. This model had been automatically repeated all around
the world and been criticized by scholars as “gentrification”, in which they
thought the developers take the benefit while the artists are exploited and
the creative energy are actually destroyed with the leave of the usually poor
but talented creative communities.
With all these failures in sustainable creativity and the sharp critics,
although in 1980s the culture and art had still been taken advantage of by
the developers and policy-makers as an obviously popular stimulus, the spe-
cific operation approach had become more complicated and diversified, in
which the “mixed use” was more and more like a main stream. Culture and
art had been interwoven into a more extensive, multifunctional and Public-
private partnership (PPP) regeneration model. Multifunctional spaces of
culture, business, housing and retail had been designed and constructed
into a super huge complex, which has established a new model for urban
regeneration. However, as some scholars argued, behind this model still is
the speculative motivation of developers. For example, Hannigan (1998)
pointed out the element of culture in these cases was mainly viewed as the
tool of attracting financial investment from the government to lessen the
investment cost and risk of the developer and strengthening the magnetism
of the inner city to finally attract the new middle class back to the down-
town from the suburbs property. So critics tend to generalize that the
rooted target of this model of cultural-led regeneration is to develop cul-
tural consumption. Then the creativity and display space, music studio,
theater, cultural events and festival, fancy bar and restaurant, designer
brands and shops, and artistic hotel could be found scattered around this
district to add the place attraction. The most well-known cases included the
22 V. YUAN YUAN

Temple Bar District of Dublin and the urban regeneration of the art district
of Glasgow and the Barcelona downtown regeneration, and so on.
Another trend on the applied level that paralleled the instrumentaliza-
tion of culture was redefining culture as a new source of innovative econ-
omy and promoting the economic value of culture by the government. In
order to encourage the creative industries, the policy-makers thought the
cluster theory of traditional manufactory industry can be similarly applied
to the new defined creative industries. In fact, before the proposal of cre-
ative industries concept by the Blair government, the thoughts of com-
mercialization of culture had been tested and practiced by the Thatcher
government. The Department of Cultural Industries had been set up in
the Greater London Enterprise Board (Bianchini, 1989). The difference
was that the concept of “cultural industries” had been used to encourage
the development of traditional cultural enterprises with the methods of
business management, including marketing, management and the consul-
tation on new technology.
The classical cases in this model contained the Sheffield Cultural
Industries Quarter, Manchester Northern Quarter and the cultural regen-
erated North Rhine in Germany, and so on. These several places had been
the central district in industrial era, full of abandoned factories and suffer-
ing a lot because of the declined economy. Hence, the economization of
culture was seen as a very important part of economic recovery policy at
those places. For example, in the case of Sheffield Cultural Industries
Quarters, there emerged a music studio called the Red Tape Studio. The
studio rented an old factory there as an accidental experiment and then
the government planned the whole quarter as cultural industries quarter,
shifting the land function from industrial land to commercial land and
renting the cultural enterprises to promote their developments. After
1990s, this quarter had really transferred into a mature cultural cluster
with some extent of scale, covering affluent varieties of businesses from
cultural studio to cultural economy training, from cinema production to
live house, display spaces, night clubs and bars.

2.2.2  The Concepts of “Cluster” and “Park”

The concept of cluster was first applied in the field of industrial economics
and could be traced back to the “external economic theory” proposed by
an England classical economist Marshall in the nineteenth century. The
basic idea of this theory was that the enterprises could benefit from the
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 23

mutual proximity in space, which made the scale economy possible, and
then the cost of production and distribution could be reduced to almost
the minimal. The cluster theory had been developed and deepened in the
twentieth century (will be discussed in the next section of this chapter),
but generally speaking, the original object of this theory was for the devel-
opment of enterprises in the same industrial sector. Therefore, it’s a classi-
cal economic concept.
Since the economization or commercialization of culture had been
converged from different directions and levels, either from the perspective
of urban regeneration or from the perspective of regional economic devel-
opment, the role of culture was transferred from some sort of indirect
“tool” of developing property to a redefinition of economic value called
for the necessities of systematic strategies both from the theoretical level
and the applied level. Although the booming of cultural economy finally
depends on millions of cultural enterprises full of vitality, the government
still could play some kind of role in the sense of “external economic the-
ory”. As the core concept of external economic theory, the cluster theory
provided the enterprises some inspiration on exploring innovative approach
from the outside, which means consciously taking advantage of the geo-
graphic proximity with other enterprises in the same industrial chain to
benefit from the external economies of scale.
Therefore, the possibility of applying cluster theory to cultural-creative
industries relied on the redefinition of culture as a source of new economy
or even directly, a new economic sector, which made the logic of “cultural
cluster” or “cultural industries cluster” seem sound. And the success of
this redefinition of culture came from two forces, one of which is from the
Blair government’s promotion of the concept of “creative industries” sev-
eral years before the new millennium and the other is from a series of
academic publishing and literature emerged in the first several years of the
twenty-first century, such as Creative Cities (Landry, 2000), Creative
Economy (Howkins, 2001), The Rise of the Creative Class (Florida, 2002)
and so on. With these two significantly influential forces from politicians
and academia, the ideology of “creativity” had been pushed to the cutting
edge of economic, social and cultural trends and become an important
intersection point of urban development, economic growth, regional
competition and community identity. In the dual processes of theory
application borrowing from industrial economics and the theoretical
evolvement from cultural industries to creative industries, the sub-concept
of “cultural/creative cluster” was created under such logic and gradually
24 V. YUAN YUAN

replaced the formal concept of “cultural district/cultural industries quar-

ter” in new historic and global context.
From the retrospection of the origin and development of concepts, we
could found that the combination of “cluster” theory and creative indus-
tries became a strengthened dividing mark between “cultural industries”
and “creative industries”. Hence, we have the old-fashioned concept and
practice of “cultural district” and a new term and research issue of “cre-
ative cluster”. The concept of “cluster” is closely connected with industrial
economics, and the shaping and development of “creative cluster” con-
cept has been deeply rooted in the context of European culture, econom-
ics and urban development and presented a clear theory evolvement map
with rich implications.
Comparatively, “park” is a special concept more likely used in Asia.
Either traditional industrial park or high-tech industrial park, or the
cultural-­creative industries park emerged in the new millennium, Asian
countries or districts, especially China, are inclined to use the term “park”,
because there are very specific differentiations between “park” and “clus-
ter”. In Chinese, “park” means the space has distinct boundaries and been
planned and designed in a top-down style by the government or some
companies or institutes, while “cluster” is more like a phenomenon arising
spontaneously in a bottom-up way and usually has no fixed geographic
limits. In Taiwan, mainland China and Japan, “park” is more popular. But
in Hong Kong or Singapore which has special colonial history and rela-
tionship with England, they are more ambivalent. Normally, in the name
of some kind of creative agglomeration, they tend to directly use the place
name in English, such as Telok Kurau in Singapore and PMQ in Hong
Kong. And in the academic literature or official documents, “cluster” is
the term they frequently apply.
The different usage contexts of “park” and “cluster” in Asia embodied
the revision of Western concepts in practice. And more importantly, it
reveals a very special developing approach different from cluster rule or
cluster theory in Asian specific policy context and political-economy envi-
ronment, which is exactly the issue that will be discussed and examined in
this research.
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 25

2.3   Several Primary Research Perspectives

on Creative Cluster or CCIP

2.3.1  Cultural Economic Geography Perspective

Before the concept of “creative industries” proposed by the British Labour
Party government in 1997, there was another economic research branch
exploring the economic value of culture called culture economics, whose
initiator was normally referred to an American economist William
J. Baumol with his renowned “cost disease” theory published in 1966.
In addition to economists, scholars from other disciplinary background
developed culture economics in a cross-disciplinary way. Among them, the
American geographer Allen J. Scott from UCLA was a very distinguished
one. His influential work The Cultural Economy of Cities (2000) made a
good example on how to think with the integration of place, culture and
economy, which discovered the economic logic and economic structure of
modern cultural industries and explained the tight relationship between
cultural production and industrial cluster in cities. For Scott, it is extremely
necessary to find out the space logic of cultural economic production to
understand the rule of cultural economy. So he did a lot of case studies
from different cities all around the world to explore the reasons why these
cultural economic clusters could be shaped in the specific places and what
were the special organizational forms of these cultural economic produc-
tions. What needs to be mentioned is the primary awareness of Scott’s
research question, which focused on why the central place or core cities of
modern capitalist have the most developed cultural economics, which
means that the geographic cluster in his discussion was taking the city as
the research scale. For example, in this book he carefully studied the jew-
elry industry of Los Angeles and Bangkok, the film industry of Paris, the
multimedia industry and the visual industry of South California.
Until 2005, Scott had published a research work specifically on the
Hollywood cluster of film industry, named On Hollywood: The Place, The
Industry. In this book, he concluded five key factors that Hollywood clus-
ter could arise as the global center of audio-visual and media industries:
(1) it invented the drama film and film star system; (2) it has the institu-
tion of vertically integrating industry chain; (3) it has systematic support
from government and intermediary organization; (4) the geographic
agglomeration helped the cluster to become the learning district for prac-
tical techniques and abilities needed by film industry, hence it has a very
26 V. YUAN YUAN

dynamic and special local labor market; and (5) it has efficient marketing
skills and the strategic system for global distribution.
The cultural economic geography perspective on creative cluster could
easily be attributed to the cluster theory of industrial economics, but it
also came from some kind of common emphasis on the face-to-face knowl-
edge communication and interaction to enhance the competition power
of enterprises under the present context of knowledge economy. The lat-
ter factor actually gradually formed a basic theoretical hypothesis that the
geographic agglomeration could add the chances of tacit knowledge dif-
fusion between enterprises. The companies or enterprises which enjoy the
space proximity could monitor their competitors, and then by direct
observation, they are able to discover or imitate the new technology or
products (Malmberg & Maskell, 2002). And beyond the competitive rela-
tionship, there are also possibilities of cooperation based on the formal or
informal connections among companies and then result in knowledge
exchange and creation. The key points rely on the mutual trust, the social
capital, the shared views on the problems and targets and the acceptance
of common rules or behavior discipline (Camagni, 1991; Putnam, 1993).
And Storper (1995) emphasized the importance of informal relationship
in a space cluster of innovative industries. The innovative enterprises which
depend much on the knowledge innovation will invest a lot in the internal
R&D, but at the same time should also be good at taking advantage of the
external innovative sources, such as universities or research institutes.
Hence, for the knowledge-intensive clusters, those kinds of intellectual
institutes are very crucial resource factors. Similarly, the local network is
also very pivotal for innovation of enterprises and companies in creating
the shared knowledge, information and other resources (Cooke &
Morgan, 1998). Therefore, the enterprises in the cluster could receive the
“spillover” effect, theoretically, technologically and socially on the basis of
frequent interactions among the network (Cooke, 2001).
The empirical researches on the creative industries produced in the last
decade had an apparent trend in examining the above hypothesis in cre-
ative cluster theory. Based on different places and diversified situations,
there come out some conclusions supporting the above hypothesis
(Etzkowitz, 2014; Fung & Erni, 2013; Krogh & Geilinger, 2014), while
some didn’t have evident supports (Bayliss, 2007; Lysgard, 2012; Zheng
& Chan, 2014).
For this reason, the research from the cultural economic geography
seems not able to convincingly explain why the creative clusters emerged
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 27

out so rapidly in a global scale. So we need to notice that there are a lot of
scholars having done abundant researches and theoretical development on
the phenomena of cultural and creative clusters/parks from the perspec-
tive of cultural-led urban regeneration and urban planning.

2.3.2  Urban Regeneration and Urban Planning Perspective

The agglomerations of cultural infrastructures, cultural enterprises or cul-
tural communities in some district of cities could happen in two ways: one
is the so-called organic or bottom-up way; the other is in a top-down man-
ner, usually planned or led by the local government or some business
group. No matter developed in which way, what existed behind this new
urban landscape is the not new problem of urban decay and rejuvenation.
That’s the academic background where the urban regeneration and urban
planning perspective on cultural and creative cluster extended from.
Perhaps, the most well-known and classical bottom-up case is the SoHo
Art District of New York. In the 1980s, with the middle-class lifestyle
featured by automobile culture and suburb housing, the urban planning
of New York also had a tendency to develop the suburb as the housing
land. Meanwhile, the accelerating of economic globalization witnessed the
shift of manufacturing industries from the Western developed countries to
those undeveloped or developing countries and then left quite a lot of
abandoned factories in the inner cities of developed countries. These two
factors in habitation and industrial production transformations led to the
downtown hollowing effect. The dual “moving out” factors made the low
rent of central New York possible, especially the obsolete industrial facto-
ries with unique internal space structure. Cheaper and affordable rent
attracted a lot of artists and creative workers and then gradually the former
decaying district formed an artistic and creative community. These artists
reconstructed or renovated the space with their creativity and personality,
which added some sort of creative milieu or fancy image to the streets or
community. Consequently, this new urban landscape attracted more and
more young creators, craftsmen and cultural entrepreneurs to start their
business or workshops there with comparatively low cost and less pressure.
And if considering the rebuilt loft-styled space structure could function as
both working and living place, it would be even cheaper. This growing
creative community shaped a whole new renting market and business clus-
ter, around which extended many brand chain shops, fancy restaurants,
night clubs and other creative spaces or consuming items. With the rise of
28 V. YUAN YUAN

creative economy and knowledge economy, the original discarded facto-

ries or hollowed blocks had been transformed into creative spaces by a
group of poor or unestablished artists and thus been added with cultural
capital in Bourdieu’s sense. More and more young creative middle-class or
young elite couples are eager to live there, rather than the suburb house
anymore. Finally, the cultural capital of SoHo had the chance to be trans-
formed in economic capital under the operation of smart developers with
good investment instinct. But unfortunately, the first group of artists who
actually rebuilt the nature of the district had to move out to other aban-
doned places, as they were not able to afford the soaring rents anymore.
This notorious dynamism of urban landscape regeneration had been theo-
rized by scholars as “gentrification”. For the group of artists, creative
workers and local habitants, the gentrification phenomenon became a
curse or nightmare, which made them the victims of profit-chasing capital.
That’s why the top-down cultural district planning later led by govern-
ments experienced so many disputes and doubts. For example, the West
Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong had a long way of 20 years’
discussion and planning since 1999 and only had one building at Xiqu
Centre in operation now.
Although endangered by the side effect of gentrification, the cluster or
agglomeration of artists and cultural community has indirectly promoted
the redevelopment of decayed inner cities. In that sense, for the policy-­
makers or private developers, the construction of cultural district is exactly
an effective tool for urban regeneration or land developing, which was
generalized as a trend of “cultural-led urban regeneration”. That’s why in
the international academic literature there are so many researches viewing
the cultural district as a space existence or several proximate streets. But
gradually the research went deeper into the operational level beyond the
superficial space regeneration. Some scholars proposed that the internal
relationship in the cultural district should be paid more attention to
(Valentino, 2003). And Santagata (2002) defined the cultural district as a
network having the feature of geographic agglomeration, where a variety
of cultural operators who produce the cultural products exist based on
their creativity and intellectual property, and among them have a codepen-
dent relationship.
But the complexity of the reality makes it hard to differentiate between
a top-down and a bottom-up creative cluster. Some scholars argued that
cultural district should be seen as a complex urban development style
combining the planned or top-down project and the self-organized or
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 29

bottom-up space ecology (Sacco, Blessi, & Nuccio, 2009), while other
scholars suggested a clear classification among different natured cultural
districts or creative clusters and gave them distinct definitions. For exam-
ple, Cooke and Lazzeretti (2008) emphasized the necessities of legible
distinctions between creative commercial cluster and the agglomeration of
cultural facilities; Stern and Seifert (2007) took the view to differentiate
the “organic” cultural cluster and the cultural district pushed by the pol-
icy; and Santagata (2002) divided the cultural districts into four models:
the industrial cultural district, the institutional cultural district, the
museum cultural district and the metropolitan cultural district.
Generally speaking, the academic literature on the cultural district
focused on two issues: one was on the definition and the explanations of
the clustering phenomena of cultural industries and cultural events (Cooke
& Lazzeretti, 2008; Lazzeretti, Boix, & Capone, 2008; Lorenzini, 2011;
Pratt, 2008; Scott, 1997; Santagata, 2002); the other was on the urban
planning about how the cultural policy is promoting the cultural cluster
and then facilitating the cultural production and consumption (Frost-­
Kumpf, 1998; Le Blanc, 2010; Mommaas, 2004; Sacco, Tavano, &
Nuccio, 2008; Stern & Seifert, 2010). The concept of cultural district or
cultural cluster has been accepted over the world, but there are diverse
contexts and operation model, respectively, in Northern America, Europe
and Asia. For example, the American Mount Vernon Cultural District in
Baltimore of Maryland state was constructed under the cooperation of
government, private sectors and non-profit organization, whose main pur-
pose was to rejuvenate the downtown with long history and the main
measure was by regenerating cultural facilities and historic heritages to
re-drive the vitality (Ponzini, 2009). However, in European cities, like
Vienna or Berlin, it was the civil governments that had put more invest-
ment in agglomeration of museum and cultural facilities to develop cul-
tural district (Roodhouse, 2010), while in Asia, as the government was
more powerful and strong and thus cultural policies could be implemented
more directly and with high efficiency, then they would more likely con-
struct iconic or landmark cultural projects to win global cultural visitors,
such as the West Kowloon Cultural District project in Hong Kong (Raco
& Gilliam, 2012) and the Saadiyat Island mega-development project in
Abu Dhabi (Ponzini, 2011).
30 V. YUAN YUAN

2.3.3  Cultural Sociology Perspective

The concept of “creative industries” coined in the late twentieth century
comprised 13 specific industries in the British DCMS’s definition, which
are advertising, architecture, arts and antiques, crafts, design, fashion, film
and video, music, performing arts, publishing, software, TV and radio,
and video and computer games. The basic supporting idea behind this
classification is viewing the human creativity as a significant and sustain-
able production element in capitalist system and as the strategic resource
of facilitating the growth of national economy. Then how to push the
development of creativity and how to promote the transformation from
creativity to economic value became the realistic challenges for creative
industries research. Whether from the production part or from the con-
sumption part, creative industries are more closely involved with the aes-
thetics, emotions, psychology and feelings of human. So the research of
creative industries has been different from the traditional economics
research or the industrial research and has obviously cross-disciplinary
implication according to the special nature. On this account, the sociology
research perspective had been emphasized by a lot of scholars in different
literature contexts.
But the researches on the cultural-creative cluster/park from the
sociology perspective sometimes have intersects with the researches
from economic geography perspective or the urban planning perspec-
tive. For example, in a given economic geography, some scholars’ inter-
ests focused on how the social relations are established and whether the
face-to-face interactions are just limited within the companies or on the
economic exchanges among cooperators to maximize the economic
benefits. Through some kind of empirical and cross-disciplinary
researches, Glaeser (1999) argued that the hypothesis of more frequent
and convenient knowledge exchange was just as opaque as a “black
box”. Yet some other scholars still emphasized the importance of social
dimension in the case of cultural-led urban regeneration, such as
Comunian (2011) who pointed out that present analysis on the social
relations and spontaneous personal interactions in the cultural and cre-
ative cluster was not efficient and precise, thus leaving much room for
further researches.
Although there existed some uncertainty in the actual effect of the
highly expected knowledge exchanges and social relations in the
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 31

hypothesis about cultural and creative cluster, quiet a lot of scholars had
developed some new concepts from the sociology perspective. Lloyd
(2010) defined the informal get-togethers and information exchanges
among creators in the creative cluster as “the third space”, borrowing this
term from Edward W. Soja; Currid (2009) took the view that the infor-
mation or knowledge were more likely to exchange and the agreements
of project cooperation were more easily to achieve in popular bars, cafés,
night clubs through her well-mentioned empirical research on New York
creative circle, while Storper and Venables (2004) called such kinds of
places as “buzz”. And what made the discussions more diverse is the
introduction of audience dimension, like the “art scene” concept pro-
posed by Molotch and Treskon (2009), which mapped another interac-
tive possibility between the creators and the public participants—the
creative workers who agglomerated in this cluster would cooperate to
create valuable cultural products and then attracted the community habi-
tants or visitors, some of whom would be very possible to be cultivated as
future buyers for those aesthetic productions or the future culture con-
sumer. Because they had gradually and unconsciously developed the habit
of cultural consumption by the influence of the so-called art scene in
creative clusters.
The sociology approach in the research on cultural cluster hasn’t been
given enough development and still in a start-up state, compared with the
other two approaches introduced above in this section. Presently, the
main direction in this approach was in discovering the rules about how
the interactive network in the cultural and creative cluster/park was set
up and how many models of this kind of social interaction could be.
Recently, Zarlenga, Ulldemolins and Morato (2016) took Barcelona as
the study case to classify models of the social interactive dynamics in cul-
tural cluster into three types: bureaucratic-dominated model, associative-
dominated model and community-dominated model. This sort of
classification demonstrated the tendency that Western research on cul-
tural cluster has grown beyond the original cluster theory borrowing
from industrial economics and the research conclusion started to lead to
a more specific direction.
32 V. YUAN YUAN

2.4   The Cultural-Creative Industries Park

as a Creative Product and the Business
Model Perspective
2.4.1  Defining “Classic” Cultural-Creative Industries
Park (CCCIP)
Although the discussion on creative cluster at the initiative stage was taken
as a branch of traditional industries cluster, both Florida (2002) and
Howkins (2001) put forward that the rule of creative economics is distin-
guished from traditional industrial economics. Kong (2009) advanced
that each creative cluster has its own individual and special type and actu-
ally enjoyed differentiated features from traditional commercial cluster
and industrial cluster. Above arguments pushed forward the significance
of research on cultural-creative industries park, but whether in the policy-­
making or in the practical operation of specific projects, researches about
how to manage a cultural-creative industries park in details are still in
deficiency.
The researches on the cultural-creative industries park from the man-
agement perspective are still on the start. Firstly, just as we discussed ear-
lier, the concepts and terms related to CCIP are too interweaved and there
is no unified term accepted by the intellectual circle; secondly, different
national or local policy contexts indirectly encouraged or facilitated distin-
guished cultural-creative clusters with various models and managing log-
ics. Ling’s (2014) literature review of a research on the management of
CCIP mentioned:

In our country’s CCIP theoretical researches, there seldom have ones presenting
detailed norms about the CCIP classification and especially lack analysis on the
management issue of CCIP. On the one hand, this proved the lagging state of
the theoretical and practical research on CCIP; on the other hand, the unclear
identification of different CCIPs will directly lead to the deficiency of perti-
nence and effectiveness of related researches.2

2
Ling, Q (2014). Study on the hybrid management model of Chinese Cultural Industries
Park. Master Thesis of Hunan University.
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 33

It’s exactly for this reason that my research set its subject on a specific
CCIP type—“classic cultural-creative industries park” (CCCIP) in a spe-
cific political economic context—in mainland China.
The concept of CCCIP is proposed by this research to respond to the
deficiency in the literature of detailed researches on some specific model.
As in mainland China, the distinct definition of CCIP is still short, so that
some central streets,3 one or several clustered buildings would all be self-­
claimed as “cultural-creative industries parks” to make themselves quali-
fied to apply for some policy supports or government subsidy, such as tax
benefits, rent subsidies, grants or anything like that. Confronted with this
multi-definition and multi-model status quo in China and in order to
explore the creative cluster theory in a more detailed way, this study is
planning to focus on a specific type of CCIP which was purposely reformed
from devastated or abandoned factory buildings or industrial heritage.
Considering the original bottom-up styled CCIP or creative cluster exactly
started from the cultural or artistic regeneration of old factories heritage
by the artists and the trend of CCIP construction closely related with the
transformation from industrial society to post-industrial society, I named
it “Classic Cultural-Creative Industries Park (CCCIP)”. In mainland
China, this type of CCIP is in the majority, from some single bottom-up
case to quite a lot of planned and top-down construction tendency, which
could be seen as a logic result to the urban regeneration and urban eco-
nomic development policy of “retreating from secondary industry to third
industry”. Of course, with the adjustment of new economy structure, the
necessities of CCIP also came from the office space demands from some
start-ups or many micro-small entrepreneurs.

2.4.2  
Defining Business Model and Literature Review
on Business Model of CCIP

2.4.2.1 What Is a Business Model?

There is an obvious lack of clarity, consensus and consistency in the defini-
tion of “business model”. According to an extensively cited research (Zott,

3
For example, the cultural core district around Beijing Street in Guangzhou was granted
with “National cultural industries model park”; and the so-called Changsha Tianxin Cultural
Industries Park in policy paper is actually a group of six distinguished cultural districts and six
characteristic cultural streets.
34 V. YUAN YUAN

Amit & Massa, 2011),4 there were at least 1177 articles about business
model published on the peer-reviewed journals. Although the discussions
on business model are more and more popular, even in an “exploding”
way, the commonly accepted research constructs of business model are
still inexistent.
With literature review, we found some main definitions of business
model: different scholars defined it as an architecture (Dubosson-Torbay,
Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2002; Timmers, 1998), a conceptual tool or
model (Osterwalder, Pigneur & Tucci, 2005), a structural template (Amit
& Zott, 2001), a method (Afuah & Tucci, 2001), a framework (Afuah,
2004), a pattern (Brousseau & Penard, 2006) or a set (Seelos &
Mair, 2007).
After analyzing the titles, keywords and abstracts of 1253 articles, Zott,
Amit and Massa (2011) concluded that although different researchers had
different concept frameworks, there were still some common themes: (1)
Explicitly or implicitly, the business model is considered as a new unit of
analysis differentiated from product, company, industry and network.
Some researchers view the business model closer to the firm (e.g.,
Casadesus-Masanel & Ricart, 2010; Hurt, 2008), while others place it
closer to the network (e.g., Tapscott et al., 2000). No matter in which
way, most business model scholars would agree that it is a new, distinct
concept. (2) Business model researchers more and more adopt a holistic
and systemic (as opposed to particularistic and functional) perspective on
how business do it (e.g., how they bridge factor and product markets in
serving the needs of customers). (3) The activity perspective is recurrent
in many business model definitions, performed either by a focal firm or by
any of its suppliers, partners or customers. (4) Business model scholars
generally promote a dual focus on value creation and value capture.
Based on these common themes generalized from 1253 papers by Zott,
Amit and Massa (2011), this book will take such an integrated view on
discussion of the CCIP business model definition, which is to explore the
specific activities of CCIP and to discover how the value creation and value
capture were realized from a holistic and systemic scale.

4
According to the author’s research on Google Scholar, this paper has been cited 1293
times until July 8, 2018.
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 35

2.4.2.2 Literature Review on the CCIP Business Model

Due to the uncertainty of CCIP definition and its different geographic
and historic context (“CCIP” is used more in Asian countries, while “cre-
ative cluster” is more common in English literature), and for a long time
CCIP or creative cluster has been considered as an issue of urban planning
or city cultural policy, the academic researches on the business model of
CCIP are very insufficient.
If we expand the literature to extensive industries park, we can find com-
paratively abundant papers. For example, Fan Qiao and Guo Aijun (2013)
identified the business model researches as the discussion of basic princi-
ples, theme and pattern, internal institution setting and internal managing
institutions’ functions of industries park; Huang Tianmin (2013) took
Changzhou Information Industry Park as an example, generalized the
“government-assisted private” model and proposed to enrich and adjust
the management model of information park through the improvement of
service and successful experience at home and abroad; and Wu Shenbin
(2004) summed up the management system of the world science and tech-
nology parks and obtained several different management systems of the
world science and technology parks: government organization manage-
ment, nongovernmental organization (such as foundation or association)
management, specialized company management, university management
and government plus university, enterprise joint organization management
(i.e., “industry, government, university” co-management).
If we refocus the business model from the extensive industrial park to
the cultural and creative industry park, we will find that the management
research of the CCIP is also considered as a “major problem that needs to
be solved urgently” among scholars in mainland China (Ling Yi, 2014).
From the domestic and international academic literature review, sporadic
research on related topics has emerged one after another. For example,
Wang Xuan and Shi Tongjian (2012) summarized three basic manage-
ment models based on the types and characteristics of cultural industry
parks in mainland China: government-led, developer-led and government-­
park integration; Jiang Ling and Ni Hongyi (2013) summarized the basic
centralized management model of Shanghai Cultural Industry Park:
owner-led, government-led, real estate-led, professional institutions-led,
integration of spontaneity and management. However, these similar
inductions of management models of cultural and creative parks mostly
stay at the initial stage of classifying the types according to the different
36 V. YUAN YUAN

operators or describing a general situation, without the details of the oper-

ation. Thus it is difficult to play a real guiding role for the actual operation
practice or policy-making.
From the English literature, because it is difficult to reach a consensus
on the detailed definition of creative agglomeration (Bourletidis, 2014),
there are few literatures to study cultural-creative agglomeration/park
from the perspective of operation and management. However, there are
still some pioneers who try to explore from the management level and
organizational model of the agglomeration area. Among them, Darchen
and Tremblay (2015) clearly proposed and advocated the study of creative
agglomeration from the perspective of economic organization and man-
agement. Smith, McCarthy and Petrusevich (2004) also defined the
agglomeration model as “a special economic organization that can give
economic advantage to an unpredictable and changing environment”.
Porter (1998) initially defined agglomeration as the geographical concen-
tration of interrelated companies, specific suppliers, service providers,
companies in related industries and organizations in related special fields,
which led to the emergence of competition and cooperation among them.
And this kind of agglomeration will bring three main advantages: lower
transaction costs, accelerating the cycle of capital and information and
strengthening social ties and loyalty based on transaction patterns
(Scott 2000).
In fact, creative agglomeration and CCIP are not only different in
motivation and process (one is more likely to be “bottom-up”, the other
is more likely to be “top-down”), but also there exist a variety of explana-
tions for the exact understanding of creative agglomeration. Lazzeretti
et al. (2008) defined it as the Creative Local Production System based on
the case studies of Spain and Italy, arguing that creative industries tend to
cluster in large urban local production systems, thus “demonstrating the
nature of their urbanism”; De Propris, Chapain, Cooke, Mac Neill, and
Mateos-Garcia (2009) found that creative industries tend to pile up with
each other in search of technological complementarity; and O’Connor
(2004) believes that practical soft knowledge is more dependent on the
particularity of the region than hard knowledge, and that the cultural
industry relies heavily on this “learning by doing” practice and the ability
to diffuse through special relevant networks. And it is these related char-
acteristics of creative industries that determine the organizational form
and management of creative agglomeration is different. Therefore, there
is still a great deal of ambiguity and theoretical incompleteness in
 2 CORRELATED CONCEPTS AND THEORY DEVELOPMENTS 37

generalizing cultural and creative industry agglomeration or parks by cre-

ative economic organizations.

2.4.3  
The Essence of Classic CCIP: “Mixed Creative
Economic Products”
In order to analyze the business model of classic CCIP, we need to sort
out the multiple attributes of such parks and locate their essential attri-
butes in the new economic context.
As I mentioned in the above analysis, the concept of CCIP is both
policy-oriented and historical. In the so-called policy-oriented, the prede-
cessor of the classic cultural-creative industries park is the old industrial
factory or the old traditional industrial space, so the original land attribute
is industrial land. After being transformed into a cultural-creative industry
park, its function is bound to undergo an obvious change. This change
must be approved by the government at first. And the consideration of the
government in approval for a temporary land-use change is to promote
the development of “cultural and creative industries” with the effect of
agglomeration. This is a popular logic widely accepted by cultural policy-­
makers, which is supported by the agglomeration theory of traditional
industries and extensively promoted by academic discussions on such top-
ics as “creative milieu” and creative network. This is also the source of the
basic legitimacy of the “classic cultural-creative industries park” in main-
land China. Therefore, as this book has repeatedly emphasized in under-
standing the concepts in the literature, CCIP should be taken first of all as
“policy-oriented”, or it should be first identified as having public benefits
or industrial infrastructure effects.
However, although the government plays a decisive role in the legiti-
macy and necessity of the existence of cultural-creative industry parks, few
governments will directly invest money or human resources into the opera-
tion of a CCIP. Undoubtedly, this style would allow the government to
maximize control over the functions and original intent of the park. But it
after all is a professional undertaking and actually a business to continuously
operate and manage an industrial space which has a certain cost. So whether
the government has the ability and the necessity to intervene directly is
worth exploring. However, this is obviously another topic, and it is not the
actual situation of most park operations. Most of the cultural-­ creative
industries parks involve private enterprises in mainland China. If the park
land is the property owned by the government, most of the governments
Another random document with
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one, was a very sensible idea, as I certainly felt I should be much
more comfortable in a house I could call my own, without interfering
with the ways and the convenience of others. Miriam was particularly
anxious that I should make myself as much “at home” with her, as
possible; still I found, that Walderheros and myself occupied the
whole house, to the exclusion of her and her two children. For the
accommodation thus afforded me, I paid a rent treble the amount of
what she would have received from any one else; three ahmulahs a-
week is considered a most extravagant price for lodgings in Shoa,
and I gave Miriam two dollars a month, being ten ahmulahs a-week.
Unfortunately for me, Lieut. Barker had resided in the same house
nearly four months, and having always had a plentiful supply of cash,
I could see my economical housekeeping greatly disappointed the
expectation of Miriam’s friends, who, on my taking up my quarters in
her house had congratulated her on the favour of Allah, which was
so evidently shown to her by another “Gypt” coming to reside with
her.
The poor woman herself, however, was very thankful for the few
salt pieces I could offer her weekly, and being sensible that it was
only because I had not more to give, she never annoyed me with
hints of disappointed expectations, or invidious comparisons with the
habits of my predecessor; although others, who had no business to
expect anything from me, were much less delicate in their allusions
to the liberality of the “Kapitan,” who, to judge by the kind inquiries
respecting him, made by male and female, old and young, seemed
to have been a universal favourite among the inhabitants of Aliu
Amba.
Walderheros, whose greatest weakness was to be considered the
servant of a most powerful and influential master, felt any sneers at
my poverty a great deal more acutely than myself, and which, after
all, he generally excited himself, by his assumption of importance,
and the affectation of swearing by my name, “Ahkeem e moot,” “may
the doctor die,” if a thing was not so and so, as if I had been a
magnate of the land; for besides swearing by the life of the Negoos
upon all important matters, the dependents of Abyssinian noblemen
are accustomed, in private life, or on trivial occasions, to asseverate
the truth of anything by similar imprecations upon the lives of their
masters. This practice has not a bad effect upon a listening stranger,
being a very pleasing characteristic of the natural affection that ought
to exist between master and servant.
Several affronts that Walderheros had received about my
economy, and the small establishment I kept up, determined him at
length to put it to Tinta himself, if such a scandalous little place I lived
in was fit for a friend of the Negoos, and as I supported this
expostulation by a direct request to have a proper domicile
appointed for me during my stay in Shoa, my worthy balderabah
undertook to see the Negoos next day about the matter. This was so
far satisfactory to Walderheros, who could now talk about nothing
else but my new house, and a large garden which was to be
attached to it, and where, according to his account, teff grass,
jowarhee, and cayenne pepper plants would all flourish most
advantageously, especially as regarded my expenditure. According
to his account, there could be no question about the success of my
housekeeping. Everything was propitious, and he amused me by the
manner in which he used to endeavour to convince me how
comfortable we should be. He had a wife, and he had a slave girl,
caught by himself on some Galla expedition; besides these, I was to
buy a donkey, and then there was himself, all of whom were to work
like horses, and save me three ahmulahs a-week, about seven-
pence halfpenny, and, in fact, my whole expenditure, by his making
out, was to be a dollar a-month, one-half for his wages during that
time, and the remainder for the purchase of poultry and sheep.
Tinta, in two or three days, brought a reply from the Negoos, that I
was to look out what house would suit me, and if I were well enough
to visit him at Ankobar, where he was coming to from Angolahlah, in
the course of the week, he would then give the necessary directions
to put me in possession of my choice.
Night and morning we were now to be seen, Walderheros and
myself, slowly walking along the narrow confined lanes in search of a
house that would suit us. I leaning upon him on one hand, and in the
other, to assist in supporting my weakened frame, I carried a slender
rod, about seven feet long, called a “zank,” in common use, as an
aid when walking, by the people of Shoa. We visited every vacant
house in the town to examine their condition and character, and
occupied ourselves entirely by suggesting alterations and repairs, or
devising sundry projects of domestic comfort, in connexion with the
expected grant by the Negoos of the one which I should prefer. For
five or six days we thus amused ourselves, and when the eve of the
day came on which I was to see the Negoos at Ankobar, we were as
far from having come to a decisive choice, as upon the first day we
commenced the search. Some were too old, some stood in a
crowded neighbourhood, the repairs of others would have required
an outlay of five or six dollars, here the thatch was nearly all gone,
and there the garden was too small, and the last was worse than all,
for, by a curious accident, the roof settled down on the top of us as
we entered, the wattled wall on the outside giving way as we pushed
open the dilapidated door to get in. There was not one, in fact, that I
could fix my mind upon, and Walderheros being equally difficult to
please, we might have continued a long time without coming to a
decision, had not the next day’s visit to the Negoos rendered it
necessary to fix upon some one, that I might be prepared to answer
the Negoos’s usual question, “What is it you desire?” in return for the
memolagee or offering I had prepared for his acceptance, and which,
as it was of a peculiar kind, it shall be treated of in the next chapter.
 CHAPTER XIII.
Custom of giving Memolagee.—​Sugar boiling.—​Success.—​Gratify
the Negoos.—​Receive house.—​Claims of kindred.—​Remarks
upon intestate property.—​The two brothers of late owner.—​
Removal to new residence.
A custom exists in every Abyssinian court, which requires that no
one shall go empty handed into the presence of royalty. Every visitor
to the Negoos of Shoa in this manner brings with him some present,
which, after having been registered by an officer appointed for that
purpose, is deposited at the feet of the monarch. In return, it is
expected that some request on the part of the inferior is to be
graciously acceded to, and if what is asserted be true, the Negoos is
obliged by the law of custom to consent to whatever is asked, should
he accept, in the first instance, the proffered gift. A monstrous
exaggeration of this system of presenting gifts, to be returned by
some greater amount of property, is, at all events, practised very
considerably, by the Abyssinians, upon ignorant strangers, for the
custom is not confined to an interchange of favours with royalty, but
is general also among all classes. I have myself frequently been
imposed upon, or at least have had attempts made to impose upon
me in this manner, when ridiculously small presents were offered,
and then on my acceptance followed some exorbitant request. A
memolagee of eggs, for example, would usher in a modest demand
for as many dollars; when, from a calculation I have frequently made,
one of the latter would purchase one thousand eggs, at the rate of
five eggs for a needle, of which two hundred could be bought for a
dollar. Again, a jar of ale, containing about five gallons, which would
cost the third of an ahmulah, or salt-piece, or the third of two-pence
halfpenny, would be deemed quite a sufficient gift to ask in return a
slave girl, or a mule. To prevent all mistakes, after I had discovered
that I had given considerable offence, in some cases, by refusing
what had been demanded, I made it a rule to know previously to my
accepting it, what was the object for which the memolagee was
offered, and even then it was very seldom I would consent to give
more than the market value of the pumpkins, water melons, and
smuggled honey, which generally constituted these propitiatory
offerings.
The memolagee I had prepared for this visit to the Negoos, at
Ankobar, was about two pounds of sugar which I had managed to
manufacture from cane growing in the neighbourhood of Aliu Amba. I
calculated upon the effect that such a present would have upon the
naturally sagacious mind of the gifted monarch of Shoa, and that the
usefulness of such an article, introduced as a manufactured product
of his own country, would strike him as being of more importance
than many richer presents, the use and value of which he could not,
from the circumstances of his situation, have any idea of.
On my arrival in Shoa, I found that the Wallasmah Mahomed
cultivated sugar-cane in a valley, at the foot of the prison hill of
Guancho, and that he supplied the table of the Negoos with it as a
sweetmeat, small pieces being cut off with a knife, and masticated
as I have seen the inhabitants of Ceylon enjoying it. Whilst staying at
Miriam’s house, I conceived the project of boiling down some sugar
as a mode of employing myself when confined indoors by the fever,
or the wet weather. For this purpose I sent Walderheros to the
Wallasmah with a canister of gunpowder as a memolagee for some
sugar-cane, and got in return as much as my zealous servant could
stand under, considering that he had to carry the bundle upon his
head and shoulders for nearly six miles, along roads of no ordinary
kind in the wet season, for that rich, greasy, slipperiness of surface,
where toes well stuck into the mud, alone admits of any chance of
the barefooted wayfarer, pulling himself up the steep “banks and
braes” he has to surmount.
Possessing no means of crushing the cane properly, I was obliged
to have resort to simply pounding it in a large wooden mortar, two or
three of which, of different sizes, are generally to be found in every
house in Shoa. Miriam, her son, Walderheros, and myself occupied
ourselves one day peeling and slicing the long stalks before we
could place the cut-up cane in the mortar, and then we were
employed two days more in triturating it, during which process a little
water was added to take up the saccharine juice, and to free it,
according to my idea, more readily from the cane. Two handsful of
the beaten mass were then placed at a time, in one of my towels,
which being folded up, the two extremities were collected together,
and by dint of a great deal of twisting and screwing by two of us, we
managed to force out the liquid portion, leaving a hard round ball of
woody fibrous substance, which, however, had been pounded
sufficiently fine to receive and retain, very visibly, the diaper pattern
of the cloth in which it was strained. These refuse cakes were very
greedily eaten by some goats, and I dare say, such food would be
highly nutritious to animals. The expressed juice having been
received into my copper cooking vessels, they were placed
uncovered upon a low fire, where they continued until more than
one-half of the liquid portion was driven off. The remainder was then
poured into some shallow earthenware dishes, which, with stones
carefully placed under the lower edges of the vessels, to obviate the
inconvenient slope, were exposed upon the conical roof of the
house, to the evaporating influence of the temporary and dodging
glimpses of sunshine, that struggled through the vast number of
clouds, which at this season of the year obscured the sky.
How well I recollect my querulous anxiety, and the patient
watchfulness of Walderheros, as all day long we were obliged to be
on the expectant quick move, to bring out of the passing showers
these evaporating dishes, and which, at length, we were obliged to
submit to the continued action of a slow fire indoors to effect our
object, for we discovered, that what between the moisture in the air,
and the frequent falls of rain the season was not at all propitious for
sugar making. In the end we succeeded in obtaining about two
pounds of very excellent brown sugar, as the result of our joint
labours, and very well pleased all parties were with their success.
It was curious to observe the interest that was taken in the
process by the inhabitants of Aliu Amba, nearly all of whom visited
me during the three or four days we were employed, and not a few
insisted upon helping us. Of these latter, Walderheros was especially
jealous, as he wished all the honour and glory as the actual
manufacturer to devolve upon himself, giving me only the credit of
knowing how it should be done, and of directing him. When the
sugar had crystallized and assumed the shape of the much-desired
luxury, a new class of visitors then came begging for a little as a
medicine for their sick children, and these became so numerous, and
I could not well refuse their request, that at last Walderheros, in
despair, complained to Tinta, who had all along been much
interested in the success of the experiment, and who immediately
came, and advised me to put the sugar into his charge, if I wished to
save any for the Negoos.
Here I must observe, that although the very simple art of
extracting the sugar from the cane was unknown to the inhabitants
generally of Shoa, still a few visitors from Ankobar, and a messenger
from the Negoos, who had been sent to Aliu Amba on purpose to
learn if the rumour was true which had reached the palace, that I
was engaged in this manufacture, had seen Shoan sugar before.
These assured me that the French traveller, M. Rochet d’Hericourt,
when he was in Shoa, had made sugar for the Negoos, so that
although I observed on this occasion great ignorance of a simple but
important art among the Shoans, still I do not wish to be understood
as claiming the honour of having first introduced sugar-making into
their country.
It was fortunate for me that I had thus turned my attention to
subjects likely to benefit the good people of Shoa, for as it so
happened, in the middle of the night, I was attacked with a paroxysm
of fever so violent that it quite disabled me for the rest of the next
day, and prevented me making any attempt to proceed to Ankobar.
As, however, I had sent word by the messenger of the Negoos that I
was coming, and my balderabah Tinta had arranged everything for
our starting together by sunrise, I considered that it would be as well
to send my servant with the sugar, and a verbal message to the
Negoos, stating why I could not attend myself in person. Tinta also
considered, that circumstanced as I was, it would be the best plan
for me to adopt, and readily agreed to accompany Walderheros, and
explain my wishes respecting the house. After a little conversation,
we also fixed upon the one most likely to suit me, and they then
departed with the sugar, which I had packed up for them in an old tin
powder-canister.
They returned early in the afternoon attended by a long train of
Tinta’s servants, and three palace affaroitsh, bearing presents of
wheaten bread, honey, and a jar of preserved butter called “natta
kibbee,” the only kind that can be obtained in Shoa during the times
of the rains.
The reception of my balderabah and envoy, Walderheros, at the
palace had been most nattering, and my request for a house
complied with immediately by the gratified monarch, who also
ordered one of the affaroitsh to remain in Aliu Amba to see me
comfortably settled in my new quarters.
The next morning was a very busy one for Walderheros, as from
my illness everything had devolved upon him. He had first to arrange
with two surviving sisters of the late owner of the house, who came
forward to claim sundry articles of furniture that had remained in the
house after the death of their brother. In Shoa, when a man dies,
leaving no male heirs, the King takes all that he died possessed of;
even the widow and female children have no claim to anything but
that which is granted to them by the justice and compassion of the
monarch. These relations are, however, so far considered, that a
small “memolagee” only is expected, and they are then generally
allowed to retain the personal property of the deceased, but the
landed estate is always retained and granted to some other male
servitor capable of bearing arms. This concession, small as it is,
does not extend to other ties of kindred, for a person dying and
leaving only sisters or brothers, all kinds of property possessed by
the deceased is seized by the governor of the town in which he had
resided, for the benefit of the Negoos, and an account of all such
intestate property is annually drawn up by that officer. When a
governor himself dies, before his successor takes office, an
inventory of every thing contained in a large store house is made,
and sometimes all the articles, generally household furniture, are
taken to be examined by the Negoos, who, retaining the most
valuable himself, returns the remainder to the charge of the new
governor. From these repositories are rewarded minor meritorious
acts, and sometimes the things are exposed to sale by a kind of
auction, and thus disposed of. It is not unusual for household
furniture and utensils, instead of being carried to the gimjon bait, the
King’s store house, the only public building found in the towns and
villages of Shoa, to be allowed to remain in the house to which they
have belonged, and in that case, the next holder upon whom the
King has conferred it, comes in for these conveniences. It was so in
my case, for I found that I had not only obtained possession of a
house, but found it ready furnished also. One little drawback from my
apparent good fortune was the circumstance that everything was in
such a dilapidated and rotten condition, that I was not surprised at
the governor not insisting upon such rubbish being taken to that
general repository, the “gimjon bait.” The fact is, the good people of
Shoa manage, as in every other country, to remedy by some
conventional subterfuge any political or social injustice; and here,
where the descent of property is diverted from its natural course by
an arbitrary custom, the evil is counteracted by the exchange, during
illness, of everything valuable in furniture or household utensils with
near relations, for the most worthless description of the same
articles, so that in case of death the Negoos gets a very sorry
collection as the heir-at-law to the deceased.
No sooner did Tinta proceed to the house to put Walderheros in
possession, than the two women, sisters of the late possessor, came
forward, and improving upon the general system, of making the
exchange of old worn out things for nearly new ones, they now
appealed to a cloud of witnesses, who took part with them, to testify
that many of the jars, baking pans, and instruments for clearing and
spinning cotton that were in the house, absolutely belonged to them,
and which at various times they had lent to their deceased brother.
Tinta, to prove his devotion to me, for being now considered to be in
great favour with the Negoos, my friendship was valuable, demurred
to the claims of the women; but Walderheros, who knew me a little
better, put an end to their vociferous claims, and recommending
them to see me upon the subject, said it would probably be all
settled satisfactorily without a complaint being made to the Negoos,
which had been threatened by Tinta.
 The market value of every thing that formed their claim did not
amount to half a dollar, but as the matter seemed to interest all the
inhabitants of the town, it must have been considered of some
importance in their eyes, so when they came to appeal to me, and I
fully understood, by the interpretation of some Arabs resident in Aliu
Amba, what it was that was required, I told the two women they had
my consent to take away whatever they chose, only to be quick
about it, so that on the morrow I might enter upon my new
possession without any more trouble.
July 23d.—This morning, my house having been well swept and
dusted, I was summoned by Walderheros to come and superintend
all other arrangements myself. I managed to walk down from
Miriam’s, and a new large alga, or bedstead, had been sent from the
King’s store for my use. It was placed for the present in the garden,
an ox skin, as usual, being spread over it, so I had nothing to do but
to throw myself upon it, and as my boxes and cooking utensils were
brought in, direct Walderheros where to place them. Fortunately, no
rain fell this day, and my new neighbours, anxious to testify their
happiness to have me among them, kept thronging into the garden,
amusing themselves also by surveying the premises, suggesting
repairs and improvements with the most officious good feeling
possible. As all the inhabitants around were Mahomedans, several of
my visitors sent to their houses for their gourd shell water pipes, and
placing large stones beneath them, took up their several positions in
a semicircle around the front of my bed. Miriam, to whom I had given
three dollars, pleasingly surprised at receiving so much, seemed
most anxious that I should be comfortably settled in my new
residence, her son helping Walderheros in arranging everything
properly, whilst she busied herself preparing coffee for my numerous
visitors.
I was tired and worn out by the time sunset sent them to their
several homes, and left me to move into the house, where I sat upon
one of my boxes until the alga had been forced into a narrow recess
between the double walls, and my bed reported by the indefatigable
Walderheros to be at length ready for me to retire to rest. The pretty
wife of Sheik Tigh had brought me some teff bread for supper, as
she expected there would be a deal too much for us to do on the first
day of my removal, not to feel obliged to any one taking the trouble
of baking off our hands. The “wort,” or cayenne soup being also
prepared, after a light Abyssinian supper, I slept better than I
expected, or could have hoped for.
 CHAPTER XIV.
Division of time.—​My new servant, Goodaloo.—​Thatching house.—​
Islam assistants.—​Kindness of Tinta.—​Finish roof.—​Feast upon
the occasion.—​Remarks upon practice of eating raw meat.
The Abyssinians divide the day and night into eight portions of three
hours each, and as they commence their fasts the evening
preceding, it is to be presumed that they begin a new day at sunset,
like the Jews and Arabs. Three hours after sunset is leilet, “evening,”
all the time intervening between nine o’clock and twelve being so
called. From “night’s noon,” or aculilielet, until duro-oitshiart,
“cockcrow,” is another term of three hours, and from cockcrow to
twart, “sunrise,” is three more; after twart is arrafat, or “nine o’clock;”
then aculican, “mid-day,” between which and sunset is tuzziart, or
“afternoon.”
During the first night after taking possession of my new house,
about the hour of “duro-oitshiart,” (here let the reader learn a little
Amharic), I was awakened, by a loud thunder-storm, to the
disagreeable discovery that my new residence was not water-proof,
for the roof admitted a great deal more rain than it threw off, and had
not Walderheros constructed a kind of pent-house over my bed with
a stiffly-dried ox-hide, I should have been very soon wet through.
The necessity, too, of having some kind of candle or other on
emergencies, was forcibly suggested to us, by the difficulty we
experienced in getting the damp fire-wood lighted, by the blaze of
which alone we could see to arrange our substitutes for umbrellas.
Walderheros, however, soon overcame all difficulties, and after
extending his bed, the aforesaid skin, over me for my protection, he
coiled himself up under a huge Amharic shield, tilted upon its edge,
and supported by a stick in that position.
It is unnecessary to say we did not go to sleep again, but kept
talking away about what we would do to the roof, as soon as the sun
had risen, and we could only get out. Accordingly by twart (sunrise),
Walderheros had started on a long walk nearly to Ankobar to get
some straw, and also to engage a “wandum,” that is, a near relation
of his whom I had determined, at his request, to receive as an
additional servant. His wages were to be only five ahmulahs a-
month, about one shilling and a half-penny, and as he was stated to
be the very first of all modern thatchers, I did not consider this an
extravagant demand, particularly as I required his services so much
at this time.
“Wandum” is, strictly speaking, brother, but with the Shoans it is
used as a general term for all male relatives. An uncle is the
“wandum,” of the mother or father, as the case may be, whilst
cousins, especially between opposite sexes, appear to be more
affectionately related than our brothers or sisters. A friend is called
“wordage,” a name derived from some relation between them and
one’s own bowels, “word,” signifying that viscera, which reminded
me of a scriptural passage, where, describing the affection of some
one for another, it is said that “his bowels yearned towards him.”
“Bal-ingero,” is another expressive term for a companion, signifying
“the possessor or sharer of bread.” And as I am on the subject, I may
mention, that an additional term of friendly relationship among this
very social people, is derived from the circumstance of the marriage
tie in this country, being but very loosely observed. “Leech enart,”
mother’s child, is sometimes bestowed upon a very dear friend, as
being expressive of a great deal more affection than “Leech abat,”
father’s child.
By “arrafat,” nine o’clock, a.m., Walderheros, and his wandum,
Goodaloo, appeared at the rude misshapen wicket in the small ring
fence of jowarree stalks, that enclosed my garden. Both were
bending beneath huge bundles of the straw-like cimbyllal grass, but
being too large to admit of passing through the narrow entrance,
they were thrown down in the little lane that led from my house, and
from a few other neighbouring ones, into the principal street on our
side of the town, to the market-place.
Goodaloo, was spare, short, and active, seemingly designed by
nature for the ticklish occupation he professed; for the frail stick
skeleton roof, when divested of the old straw, looked as if it would
have given way beneath the foot of a cat. After a professional
survey, and a most important consultation with Tinta, his deputy, a
Christian like himself, and half-a-dozen rich Islam inhabitants, it was
determined to be most advisable, that only a portion of the roof
should be renewed at once, so that I might have the shelter, either of
the old or of the newly finished roof, to sleep under, during the three
days required to put all to rights. The Governor and his Deputy,
however, were the only useful members of this Council, for the
former directed his servants to supply me with the necessary grass,
whilst the latter assisted Goodaloo in thatching. The Islam
gentlemen, with the cool dignity which, somehow or other, they do
assume most naturally, sat down upon the skins brought for that
purpose, and proceeded to call for coffee, and to give directions to
their Christian superiors, in a manner that would have delighted
Satan himself, to have observed, if he takes any pleasure at all, in
seeing honest, simple humility, treated with the most evident
contempt.
All this time, I was glad to keep out of the way, lying upon the alga
inside; but when actual business commenced, I began to think I must
retreat into the open air. Black, sooty flakes, now began to fall thickly
from the glistening well-smoked roof frame, which consisted of long
bamboo canes, that diverging from an elevated centre spread
around in a wide circumference, to rest upon a round wattled wall of
sticks and mud. To this annoyance, was soon added falling bits of
rotten thatch, that descended upon my bare head and shoulders,
until I could stand it no longer, but rushed out of the dirty mess and
seated myself upon a quantity of clean straw near to my
Mahomedan visitors, who appeared to have made my garden a
public café, for they kept coming and going all day, staying a little to
watch if the proceedings were going on to their satisfaction, and
aiding, to the extent of an “Inshallah” (please God), “it would be
finished by to-morrow.”
Before evening, one-third of the roof was well covered in, for as I
had promised to give a couple of sheep at the conclusion of the
business, to the servants of Tinta, they worked away at his cimbyllal
grass, as if it had been all my own; and had I not inwardly resolved
to return his kindness in some way or other, my conscience would
have often induced me to call out, “Hold! enough!”
July 30th.—By cock-crow again Tinta’s servants were at my gate
with straw, and Walderheros and Goodaloo went out to recommence
upon the roof. We continued to be highly favoured by the weather,
only a slight shower or two interrupting the otherwise bright sunshine
in which I lay basking on my straw couch all day. A thick mist
enveloped the whole length of the Ankobar range in front, which
seemed to attract all the clouds, or at least condensed the moisture
in the atmosphere to the west of Aliu Amba, leaving the more
favoured country to the east beneath a clear and beautiful sky. The
heavy bank of fog, however, prognosticated rain to us, and every
time it caught the eye of Walderheros, he seemed to move as quickly
again, as he supplied with fast filled arms the bundles of cimbyllal to
the two workmen upon the roof. So expeditiously, indeed, did all
proceed, that before sunset the whole was finished, although, for
farther security and ornament, another day’s labour was required,
which was promised with much self-gratulation by Goodaloo, who
confidently asserted that had the house been thatched for the
Negoos himself, it could not have been done more quickly or more
scientifically.
It being too late, and the men too tired to kill and dress sheep,
Tinta’s servants partook, as last evening, of a plain repast with
Goodaloo and Walderheros, consisting only of dry teff pancakes, and
a sop or two in a shallow earthenware vessel of the cayenne soup.
To improve this very poor dinner, I gave Walderheros an ahmulah to
get some “tallah,” and he bought for that sum about fifteen gallons of
excellent ale. This he and two of his companions brought into the
house in three large jars, a girl following with the ahmulah, which, I
expect, she had changed for one of her mother’s smallest, and after
spanning the salt-piece before my face, with a very lackadaisical
look, intimated that it was a very thin one, and she hoped I would
give her a larger one instead. Walderheros, who was just as cunning
as any of his countrymen or women either, always kept the
ahmulahs he received in exchange for dollars in two bags, one
containing the larger, the other the smaller ones. With the former,
sheep and tobacco were purchased, as for these commodities none
but the best ahmulahs are taken, whilst the latter were generally
given in return for services performed by any of the neighbours, and
which I paid for, according to Walderheros’s idea, far too liberally. In
the present case, on my telling the girl she should choose for herself,
down came the bag containing the little ones, the trick of which I was
not then aware, and after a long search, none pleasing the lady, she
withdrew, keeping the one which had been originally given to her.
One of the jars being now placed upon a low chair that had come
to me as a memolagee for some medicine, a long mekanet, or girdle,
from the loins of one of the party was carefully wrapped around the
wide circular mouth of the jar, after the dirty dry seal of cow-dung
and clay had been removed. Over the lip of the vessel, slowly
strained through the cloth, flowed the now released liquor, which was
received into well-shaped drinking-horns of a conical form, and about
nine inches deep. One, full of the sparkling beverage, was handed to
me, Walderheros, in the first place, pouring a little into the hollow of
his hand and drinking it, as the tasters of food and of drink of old are
represented to have done previous to serving their superiors. This
little ceremonial, though its origin is entirely forgotten by the Shoans,
is never omitted by them, and we here find a custom, first
established by a fearful policy, still retained as a matter of form, and
as a dutiful obeisance of inferiors to their masters. The drinking party
sat together in the dark talking for some hours, industriously
replenishing the horns until two of the jars were emptied of their
contents, when, pretty comfortable, no doubt, Walderheros and his
friends quietly subsided upon the ground, where they had been
sitting so long; their busy talk was stayed at once, and all was soon
as still as the night should be.
July 31st.—Long before sunrise I was again disturbed by Tinta’s
servants, who were up and leaving my house to return home, so as
not to be absent at the first call of their master. This day was to be
devoted to the beautifying and adorning the new roof after the most
approved design. The broken neck of an old jar was soon found,
which served as a kind of coronet to gather the loose ends of the
thatch at the apex. Immediately below this were thrust two sticks
across each other, their projecting extremities preventing a tight
band of very pliant twigs from starting, and which beneath it had
been twisted several times around the loose ends, still farther to
secure this part of the roof, that, as the centre of the whole, was
something analogous to the key stone of an arch.
This being finished, the flat hands of Walderheros and Goodaloo
were applied to the irregular projecting straw ends of the lower edge
or circumference of the roof, which were patted gently back into one
even line, with something like the attention to detail of a careful
barber arranging the straggling hairs of a full-bottomed wig. The
circuit of the whole having been made, I was duly called upon to
inspect their work; but as I supposed that it was not so much to give
an opinion as it was to express my approbation, I took care
sufficiently to gratify them, by stating it to be my firm belief that no
“Gypt” could have done it half so well. To subdue unqualified
approbation, and that my praise should have the more importance,
as coming from a man of decidedly good taste, I suggested that a
brightly painted red earthenware crown piece to the whole, like those
used to beautify their churches, would have looked more religious,
and better than the ragged rusty looking neck of the broken jar,
which, not having been put on exactly square, but cocked a little on
one side, gave a rather saucy slovenly finish to my cottage ornée.
My indefatigable Islam friends now came to congratulate me upon
my roof being finished, and began asking about the cow, with the
blood of which I was to sanctify the door-posts, as they said, to keep
“Shaitan” from disturbing me. They contended that, to render the
charm efficacious, the animal must be killed by a Mahomedan. I
shook my head, and denied the necessity of this, or indeed of the
sacrifice at all; but I told them, as they had helped me so much, they
were very welcome to partake of the two sheep Walderheros had
already gone to purchase. They said not a word in reply, and many
of them considered my offer to be a gross insult, and stayed away
several days in consequence. However, as I had now begun to
speak a little Amharic, and did not require their assistance so much
as formerly to interpret for me, I was ungrateful enough to allow them
to come round again in their own good time.
The evening was spent by Walderheros and his friends killing the
sheep; and having boiled the meat in several earthenware vessels,
demonstrated, by a very hearty meal, that on ordinary occasions the
Shoans are as fond of cooked meat as the rest of mankind.
The customary practice of eating it raw, so singular, and
apparently so characteristic of a barbarous and savage disposition,
has, in Abyssinia, a natural inducement for its indulgence, which, I
think, is an apt illustration of the manner, in which man is led
instinctively, to the employment of such means within his reach, to
enable him fully to enjoy life, under whatever circumstances of
situation he may be placed.
The difference of food between the inhabitants of the Arctic region
and those of low intertropical countries is so great, that it has not
failed to strike physiologists, who have, from the comparison, been
led to the knowledge of an important truth in the natural economy of
man. It has been observed that human life is supported in these
opposite extremes of situation by different kinds of food, and that
whilst in the north, blubber and enormous quantities of raw meat are
devoured by the natives, that in the torrid zone, vegetables constitute
the principal diet. The reason is, that during the process of digestion
a considerable amount of natural heat is engendered in the system,
and this is found to be determined in quantity by the nature of the
food. An entirely fleshy diet occasions the development of its
maximum, and contributes materially to the comfort of man in cold
situations, whilst, on the contrary, vegetables are scarcely able to
excite sufficient heat necessary to convert them into nutriment; and,
in fact, beneficent nature has provided for such a want, by supplying
in hot climates a sort of artificial warmth, in the stimulating aromatics
which are the characteristic productions of the torrid zone.
The high table land of Abyssinia, although situated between the
tropic of Cancer and the equator, from its great elevation of ten
thousand feet or more above the level of the sea, possesses a
climate which is not less cold than that of the northern parts of
Scotland. Being a country but poorly wooded, the chief supply of fuel
being the dung of cattle, an instinctive feeling dependent upon the
pleasures of a state of warmth, has taught the Abyssinians that the
flesh of animals eaten raw is a source of great physical enjoyment,
by the cordial and warming effects upon the system produced by its
digestion, and to which I am convinced bon vivants more civilized
than the Abyssinians would resort if placed in their situation.
Travellers who have witnessed their “brunde” feasts can attest the
intoxicating effects of this kind of food, and they must have been
astonished at the immense quantities that can be eaten in the raw
state, compared to that when the meat is cooked, and at the
insensibility which it sometimes produces. Eating raw meat,
therefore, a usual practice with the Esquimaux, and which among
them is an absolute necessity, by the Abyssinians is considered a
luxury, or in fact as a kind of dissipation, for eating it in that state is
only indulged in by them at festivals, and it is then taken as a means
of enjoyment, and is not more barbarous or disgusting than getting
tipsy upon strong drinks.
 CHAPTER XV.
Market day in Aliu Amba.—​Toll of wares.—​Court of Piepoudre.—​
Appearance of the market.—​The salt money.—​Character of the
different vendors.—​The prices of several articles.—​No Jews in
Abyssinia.
July 29.—The next Friday, feeling somewhat stronger, I determined
to accompany Walderheros to the market-place. As in England, the
days of such weekly meetings, for the convenience of sale or barter,
vary in the towns of Shoa. In Aliu Amba the Mahomedan Sabbath is
found most convenient, whilst Ankobar market is held on Saturdays,
and in other places Mondays or Tuesdays are the appointed days.
Nothing, I think, characterizes a peaceful people, or a healthy social
condition, more than these weekly meetings for the mutual
convenience of buyers and sellers. The security of property is so
apparent, honest industry and prudent economy so evident, that
even in the most unfavourable positions for the increase of
knowledge, and the advance of civilization, wherever these
evidences of a people’s foresight and good disposition exist, I never
despair, but that when other more favourable opportunities are
vouchsafed, the soil will not be found unfruitful of the good seed that
may be scattered upon it. This struck me the more forcibly, from my
previous sojourn in Adal; for with what different feelings did I witness
the busy restlessness, and the not inharmonious murmur, of the
multitude of smiling contented beings that were gathered in the
market-place to-day, from those I have experienced, when startled
by the sudden cry, the confused rush to arms, and the silent
squatting of my Dankalli associates, either in the sullen muttering
calahm circle, or else, as with loud yells of defiance, they formed the
line of immediate fight; either of which characterized the only public
assemblies I ever witnessed among them.