Square Inch Anthropology

The improvised security system rigged to the entrance of this building alerts the (perhaps snoozing) door guard to the arrival of late-night entrants. An antique-looking bell is suspended in the corner of the sliding glass door. Along the top of the door, parallel to the bells, are taped several expired batteries. When the risk for sleep for the door guard seems imminent in the wee-hours, he will detach the bell from the length of string holding it away from the door, causing it to rest directly against the door. The course of the said door sliding open brings the batteries into contact with the bell, causing several clearly audible rings in succession.

On a long walk beneath the elevated highway abutting the Jialing River, one will naturally encounter people settled in varying degrees of formality, with a particularly sharp contrast between the different worlds above and beneath it. Above is the world of ultra-lux highrises with million-kuai views surrounded by cranes and the accompanying rubble of rapid construction. Beneath the highway, a contextually adjusted version of prosperity hinges upon something as seemingly trivial as access to water that comes out of a PVC pipe off of the road above.

Those who dwell beneath this particular stretch of elevated highway have developed a few methods for off-grid subsistence. For example, water that drips through the cracks in the concrete overhead or flows from plastic drainpipes overhead is collected in buckets and used for drinking, homemade fertilizer production (brewed in a repurposed bathtub, in this case), and irrigating small gardens. The often lush and orderly rows of the vegetable patches beneath the highway stand in contrast to the jumbled nature of the nearby residences which are formed primarily from scavenged construction materials and wedged amidst piles of rubble.

Judging by the clustering of water vessels both around the highway’s few formal drainage pipes and the bases of the support columns upon which rivulets tended to form, there seems to be a potential argument for the design of more formal water outlets into the highway – that is, assuming that urban gardening on unused land is something Chongqing’s city planners desire to promote (perhaps assuming too much). Framing this as the optimal deployment/recycling of resources, does it count as an element of a "smart city" if it is "accidentally smart"? It worked for penicillin, I suppose.

There is a wide array of techniques and behaviors around public drying in China - from vegetables and meats, to clothing, to the inventory of a store specializing in calligraphy brushes placed upon a patch of sidewalk in front of the store. Noteworthy drying behaviors aren't limited to space-constrained urban densities, either - I've recently seen stone walls become lettuce drying racks, and odd-length branches in wood piles hung with recently-washed shoes. 

Consider the practices that surround drying of different sorts of objects in your context - indoors/private or outdoors/public (and whether that varies by season)? Machine, line or rack (or monkey bars)? What are the infrastructure (built-in or improvised) and customs that support or discourage particular drying behaviors - and to what those behaviors apply ? Consider the factors causing that to vary (population density, education, income, electricity access, and so on).

Looking, one will notice a small gap surrounded by metal plating and sporting interesting wear patterns. This stool is actually an important element of a tool: A long bar is fit into the gap, with one end bracing against the ground and the other straddled by the user. The curved shape of the protruding end of the bar allows the user to place a just-patched cooking pot or metal bowl upon it, and hammer the recently affixed (and un-rounded) patch into a rounded shape so that it matches the surrounding material in curvature. During such operations, the customer will switch seats with the repairman, sitting on the taller stool while the repairman manipulates this stool-derived flattening tool.

What was once this mototaxi driver's worn out vest has been repurposed as a combination of windbreak and additional storage (the zipper-equipped pockets are still functional).

Across from (unsurprisingly) an auto repair shop. A barrier remains a barrier, though what is being repelled (and from what) has changed.

Follow enough construction vehicles around as part of your research in China and one eventually arrives at the built (and ever-expanding) edges. In observing small urban China up close in Heqing last week, the journeys between interviews/neighborhoods are often as engaging as the interactions between those journeys. A hitched ride on the back of a tractor was the ideal pace to experience the transition from Heqing's mud-walled central alleyways out to its open frontiers of concrete and rebar. Motorcycle too fast, car too enclosed. After thanking my ride and some directed wandering, I encounter a driver parked at a construction site engaged in unloading rebar but nonetheless eager to talk - the usual half-scripted, half-exploratory/contextually specific question flow follows.