Square Inch Anthropology

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.

Drivers of a broken-down 20-liter water bottle delivery truck in downtown Yangon turn their cargo into hazard warnings through a bit of strategic placement and just-in-time repurposing.

Placed on a sidewalk next to a busy downtown Yangon road, these 20-liter water containers are exposed to dust, exhaust, grit, and grime that fill the air. The precaution taken by the owner/donor of this pair of water containers has been to wrap their bodies in plastic. This solution can only protect so much, though, and in the end functions mainly to keep dust off of the bits that thirsty pedestrians don't usually interact with anyways. 

If there were somehow a kind of adaptor made to fit on top of a 20-liter bottle that could cover the cup, and a means of protecting the spigot then better protection could be achieved (perhaps including it in the "plastic mummification" process while leaving it still grab-able, and attaching a short length of hose to it as a water outlet?). What I wish I had asked was why the owner decided to place two water containers outside, instead of just displaying one and then leaving an unopened one for when the first is depleted.

The legs of this bureau are each immersed in small clay bowls of water to keep ants from scaling the sides and finding their way into the owner's valuable spices and medicinal powders. A carefully calculated trade-off of the bureau's longevity (or at least the time before the legs must be repaired due to water damage) for the security of what is stored inside.

This water diversion/recycling system outside of a New York City restaurant relies upon a few basic parts: a plastic funnel, a repurposed plastic jug, and some tubing. Likely initially adopted in deference to customers who preferred not being leaked on by the air conditioner as they lined up outside or stepped out to take a cellphone call. The bonus of water conservation is notable, as well as the added convenience for the staff in charge of watering the flowers (as they no longer must perform the extra trip from an indoor faucet to the outdoor flowers when a container full of water awaits them outside).

This fruit juice vendor has taken steps insure his straws' cleanliness by elevating and separating them from the rest of the ingredients. What does this say about other ingredients' need to be seperated/elevated/clean? What is it that would make the straws "dirty" if they were placed on the same table along with the other ingredients? Is the proximity to other ingredients,  proximity to the road, or another factor altogether that classifies something as being at risk of becoming "dirty" or otherwise contaminated?

The straws could also serve as an informal marker of the business' success for the day, with the less straws left in the cup, the better.

A comparison of silverware behaviors between a small Indian restaurant in Yangon that shrink-wraps all of its cutlery and a cafeteria in a Bangkok mall that lets the diners play along by immersing their silver (or, in the case of chopsticks, their melamine) into scalding water. Does this reflect differences in conceptions of "clean", the disparity in available resources, or a consideration of scale/style of the dining establishment? Which method your cultural/ecological values have you prefer, and why? 

For the hypochondriacal amongst you, the Bangkok mall solution may be more satisfying, giving you direct authority over the cleanliness of your silverware. Does this have the risk of implying that the unwashed silverware sitting in the stainless steel trays are dirty unless you douse them in water, though? 

The Indian restaurant cleaning solution, while admittedly happening out of sight, leaves no room for "diner error" - these forks and spoons are (by someone's standards, at least) clean. There is also the ritual aspect of servers who, upon depositing the food at your table, go through the very deliberate motion of "unsheathing" the silverware from their plastic wrappers and placing them upon your empty plate. At the Indian restaurant, also, eaters using hands and those choosing the plastic-sheathed silverware were split about half and half, from my corner-of-the-eyes poll of fellow diners.

The tying of a phone to these bottles of water with plastic twine renders the water much more challenging to sell, basically making the bottles a permanent, un-sellable fixture on account of the challenges in removing a water bottle or, if you are a thief, removing the phone from the water bottles. The demonstrated need to secure this phone showcases an interesting downside to this "wireless" (battery-powered, cable-free) CDMA handset, within which is contained a thumbnail-sized piece of plastic and metal worth about US $1000: portability becomes steal-ability/liability when SIM cards are this valuable.

Indeed, this wire-free portability makes the microenterprise of "human telephone booths" possible, where people (usually children) act as a portable, common phone-bearer, running to hunt down people lacking landlines and cellphones that live within their rough "service range" and acting as message-takers when those being called are unreachable. 

PS: Article for the inaugural issue of Makeshift