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Keywords of the Greater Bay Area

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Cao Fei

Seed

The moment Jules was born, the New Nature Life Education Consulting Institute learned from her umbilical cord blood sample that her IQ, EQ, and learning ability were lower than 75% of children born in the same year. The Seed Astrological Institute offered a prediction and analysis report on Jules' future marriage and childbirth, the types of illnesses she might develop, the probability of her having an accident, and even the time of her death. The Seed Astrological Institute is known as one of the most accurate fate-prediction agencies in this century.

Jules' mother, Lyle, was the third daughter of the second wife of Mr. James, the founder of the Caton Automation Group. Lyle had an affair with a landscaper at the age of seventeen, and Jules is their daughter out of wedlock. The Group's landscapers come from the Nuur region, which is rich in labor. The Nuur population's IQ is 75% below the national average. Still, their physical performance is 75% above the national average. So is their tendency to be more compliant than other regions, making the Nuur people a competitive labor force for major technological provinces of the intelligent age. The Caton Automation Group campus is highly automated. For example, the robots have taken over landscaping tasks such as watering, pruning, and pest control. However, the more delicate floral management, grafting, and cultivation work still requires skilled workers. Especially since Lyle has enjoyed viewing Japanese cherry blossoms, the Vanda Miss Joaquim flower from South Asia, and the Alpine snow lotus, since childhood.

As a multinational group listed for 135 years, the Caton Automation Group monitors the genetic information of every family member through iris scanning and announces it publicly every five years. Suppose Jules and her father, also from the Nuur region, are accepted into the family. In that case, they will bring down the composite index of the James family by 15 points, which affects the Group's reputation and its market performance. Even if Jules receives the highest quality education in the future, it would not undo this inherent flaw.

On the 18th day after Jules' birth, Mr. James discreetly gave Jules' father a large sum of money, allowing him to take the infant back to the Nuur region. Jules has recently turned sixteen and is studying domestic technical services at the Service Engineering Technology Institute in the Nuur plains. The latest test report from the Institute shows her physical performance and compliance are both below the Nuur average by 25%, while her EQ and IQ are 25% above the norm. Her data does not meet the requirements for technicians in large organizations such as the Caton Automation Group. What awaits her may likely be to stay in the Nuur region for the rest of her life. By intermarrying with other Nuurs, Jules' offspring may decrease their EQ and IQ while hoping to improve their level of conformity, which might be their chance of getting out of the region in the future. Although the Seed Astrological Institute may have predicted Jules' time of birth and death, it has never portrayed her life’s journey.

About Keywords of the Greater Bay Area

The "Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area" is a new construction envisioned from a top-down perspective and territorial integration. It is a blueprint for a future urban development based on efficiency, speed, and mobility. What if we conceive the Greater Bay Area as an experiment, an imaginary experiment? On the one hand, there is the question of 'diversity'. When we talk about smart cities, artificial intelligence, automation, ecological crisis, information security, the future of virtual reality, global trade, etc., where does this view of the future come from, and what determines it? On the other hand, a profound political, spatial, historical, and geographical significance is present in the Greater Bay Area. Is it possible to develop a different imagination based on the history and culture of the "Pearl River Delta-Greater Bay Area;" meaning, to consider a development departing from local knowledge production, negotiating with accelerating technologies, facilitating collaborations between art and other disciplines, and reshaping the vision of institutions of art and technology? By exploring the diversity of technologies, human and non-human ecologies, and reproduction of social relations, might it be possible to reposition the "Greater Bay Area" as a pioneering experiment of southern China's technological and cultural imagination beyond a mere economic zone?

Editors: Jianru Wu, Guo Yun
English editor: Christy Lange

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