#livefieldnotes

[triciawang]

I’m sitting in a room with 5 retired adults watching a TV show of children competing in a dance competition. In this video, the 5-7 year old toddlers have braids attached their hair, padded butt and breast inserts, and heavy make up. After they finish their dance to Freaky, a song by a K-pop artist, @hyunah_aa, the camera cuts to the judge’s reaction, “ you are dancing with a lot of passion and energy…” It’s dizzying to think about all the levels of cultural appropriation going on here. And what’s equally interesting is that the 5 retired people weren’t even into the show, they just are bored and willing to watch anything. Half of them were on WeChat talking to people back in their home town. None of them have grandkids, and they openly express their bitterness and anger about this situation. Just 1 hour before the show, we were all eating a hotpot lunch and one of them said to me that she preferred her daughter just to marry to make a baby and then she can get divorced, because then at least they would have a baby, which is better than nothing. #triciainchina #livefieldnotes (at Beihai)

[triciawang]

19 year old male showing me his two phone system and how he manages his porn storage. The iPhone is his public phone, while his Samsung is his “work phone” where he stores his porn and pictures of women he has dated. He has two WeChat accounts that he sends the pictures back and forth to. He finds the porn on Baidu cloud #百度云 storage system, then he downloads them to his android. One of the sites showed the message that site was illegal (porn is illegal in China), but then it listed the new site. I asked him why he has to separate it out into two phones, and he explained that if he had a girlfriend, she would have access to all his passwords and check on him regularly. He said he would see it as a caring action, 她很关心我她才会看我的手机. Even though he didn't have a girlfriend at the moment, he said that when dating, girls will ask for his phone and look over it to ask questions about the pictures. It's quite typical for couples to divulge passwords and to regularly check up on each other's communication history with other people. My initial reaction (that I have to work hard to hide) is that this is clearly a sign of distrust, but with most young people I talk to, they don't even mention trust or privacy, they mention the word "caring" 关心 - that to be checked upon is to be cared for. #triciainchina #livefieldnotes (at 上海外灘)

[triciawang]

Upon entering into the #internetcafe you have to give your national identification card to be swiped at the front desk so that all information can be monitored and traced back to the individual user of the computer. After the identity check, you can get food and snacks to set up for the night. #livefieldnotes #triciainchina #网吧 #internetcafe (at Hangzhou, China)

[triciawang]

#Officespace or #internetcafe ? This is one is the most visceral changes I've experienced on this trip. This is how the new Internet cafe looks in many parts of China - not a single person watching porn, everyone is playing games, no heavy clouds of cigarettes, totally lit, no garbage anywhere, shiny floors...this looks nothing like the #网吧 from even a few years ago. #livefieldnotes #triciainchina (at 杭州西湖風景區)

[triciawang]

Front entrance to the #internetcafe - looks like it could be any office of a startup in china. #网吧 #triciainchina #livefieldnotes (at Hangzhou East Railway Station)

[triciawang]

You can now rent your own room at the #internetcafe for a couple hundred RMB for a group of people. #网吧 #triciainchina #livefieldnotes (at 杭州西湖風景區)

[triciawang]

People always ask me what is Christmas like in China? Considering that most of the world's Christmas decoration is produced in China, it's not that surprising that Christmas is a visual masterpiece in china. But I think it may be hard to imagine how much Christmas is everywhere. Here's a great example of how much and how Christmas is embedded into everyday life. Even inside an #internetcafe, Santa Clause and stockings are decorate the bookshelves. But im pretty sure no one has any contextual understanding of what stockings are - these are just objects associated with Christmas. #triciainchina #livefieldnotes #网吧 #internetcafe (at 杭州友好飯店旋轉景觀餐廳)

[triciawang]

This is a screenshot of Listening Together, #一块听听 , an official account within the Wechat platform, the most popular messaging platform in China. Listening Together offers educational material (audio, essays, videos, discussion groups) on a wide range of topics covering self help and professional development. that cost 1RMB to 1000 RMB. Payment and delivery of class materials are done within the WeChat platform. The classes listed here are in the following order: Everyday English, How to Improve Your Sperm Quality in 1 Hour, How To Improve Your Writing Skills in 7 Days, 1 hour to Master the Necessary Psychological Skills to Say Hi to Strangers, A Harvard MBA Teaches You How to Stop Being Single. These topics reveal some of the most pressing anxieties among the middle class. There's a big public discussion of the increasingly low-sperm quality amongst Chinese males. The unbalanced male to female gender ratio makes it hard for males to even date in the first place. And the reality of the gender is that a large portion of males will remain unwedded. So to secure a marriage, many makes are working on their hooking up/dating skills and profesional communication skills such as writing in order to move up the white collar chain. #triciainchina #livefieldnotes (at China)

[triciawang]

While spending time with a migrant family who is working in the city, I asked about their child, who is living in their village. They said he was doing well and the mother opened up her purse and took our her identity card, flipped through some other papers, and then took out this piece of paper for me to see. This paper captures all the test scores for each student in the 3rd grade and is sent to every parent. It lists every student’s name (blurred) and their test scores for each subject (language, math, English, social behavior, science). She pointed out her son’s name, and I asked how do you feel about his scores, sh said at least he’s not causing the family to lose face - to be embarrassed. Open test score viewing is standard practice for the entire Chinese education system from villages to cities, starting from 1st grade through the end of high school, though some colleges still continue this. After parents receive the score, the main teacher holds a meeting with all the parents, openly comparing test scores. The main goal is to shame the parents whose children have low-performing test scores and to praise the high scoring ones, asking them questions like how many hours does your child study a day and what are you doing to raise your child’s scores. This creates a competitive environment, as the even the high scoring students can become anxious about being supplanted. This is an everyday instance that exemplifies how privacy is understood and identity is shaped in China. In the West, test scores with this level of detail are a private matter that is up to the individual to share, but in China it’s conceived as an open topic. An individual’s test performance affects how other parents, teachers, and the entire school views the student’s family. Students aren’t judged for trying their best, rather the idea is that you’re judged for how you compare to others. No special snowflakes here. #triciainchina #livefieldnotes

[triciawang]

Rediscovered this photo from my 2009 fieldwork archives of me doing a stomach fire treatment at a #traditionalchinesemedicine clinic in Beijing. I did it partly for ethnographic reasons to become friends with the migrant workers at the clinic but also i really was curious if a stomach burning could improve my digestive system. The practitioner put a layer of Saran Wrap around my body and then put on a fire proof mat, poured fire starter on the mat and lit it on 🔥 for a ~20 minutes while putting acupuncture needles in my head and feet. #TCM #livefieldnote

[triciawang]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tricia Wang (@triciawang)

My obligatory night time dancing in a public square to #bollywood music. You can't avoid it even when you try. I'm surrounded by men and women in their 40s-70s - and this is just one of an estimated 10 dancing groups in this square alone. I'm going to do one dance with every group. Some are more advanced than others. #livefieldnotes #triciainchina (at Beihai)

[triciawang]

I've watched so many hours of participatory streaming videos with people on this trip but this prob one of my faves - it's a boy in a school dancing to a Jpop star and he's mesmerizing to watch. #triciainchina #livefieldnotes

[triciawang]

Sitting in a hostel watching a Chinese remix of the #Uvuvwevwevwe #TheHardestNameInAfrica meme that first started out in Kenya. This is a remix from @mrlemonix on Weibo and now it's ended up on a streaming app. Remixing of memes that cross international borders is nothing new. What's interesting is the stream of words that are crossing the video. Those are all realtime reactions from people who are also watching this video on the same video streaming app. 2333333 means 哈哈哈 which means “hahahaha.” While putting words on videos comes from a long time practice in anime communities, it's gone mainstream in China recently. Whenever I see young people eating meals on their own in public, they usually are watching videos and half of the time it's some streaming site on their mobiles. #livefieldnotes #triciainchina

[triciawang]

One of the families I’ve been following for a while just gave me a 2 hour introduction into their tea table setup on the 27th floor of their Beijing apartment. They explained that they’re catching up with experiencing and recovering this traditional part of their culture that was lost over the last half of the 20th century. Then he made a joke, “anyways, we have to find more indoor things to do anyways with how bad this terrible air.” The air outside of this window isn’t weather-related haze, it’s mostly dangerous levels of smog. #livefieldnotes #triciainchina

[triciawang]

I’m at the newly opened Disneyland in Shanghai eating a turkey leg from the Tortuga Treats, a restaurant with an 1.5 hour line, the longest out of all the food stands. This is very surreal as I remember the last time gnawing on bones at a Disney was as a child at Anaheim Disney with my brother and my mother bringing out chicken legs and tea eggs from her bag for our lunch. I so badly wanted to eat burgers like everyone else. And even though I understood that it wasn’t financially easy for us to even come down to Disney in the first place, it didn’t take away how much I realized that we were not only different, but seen as weird. So it’s pretty crazy that a few decades later, Chinese people going to Disney don’t have to bring their own chicken drumsticks, they can just buy them now. But that won’t stop Chinese people from trying to bring in their own food still. Also protip - I didn’t stand in line for the turkey legs. I found a person buying 1 leg and bribed him to let me be his second leg (each customer can only buy max 2 legs). Thanks May for making this visit happen. #triciainchina #livefieldnotes (at Shanghai Disneyland Park)

[triciawang]

I came across this jacket at a wholesale market with a label on the arm, “I AM WHO I AM, JUST DEAL WITH IT.” This message captures so much of what I’ve been researching in the last decade - watching a generation of people figure out who they are, and trying to find ways to tell themselves and the people closest to them to accept it. I'm watching them figure out which institutions are allowed to determine their lives. And they have to figure this out in a society where the boundary between facts and propaganda aren't clearly defined. This ambiguity is one that is becoming a reality for the USA, and in many ways I think we have a lot to learn from a generation of people who have grown up in a world of #alternativefacts . #livefieldnotes #triciainchina (at Shanghai, China)