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Chinese Restaurant Menu, Chengdu Spring 1990

August 17, 2016 by Museum Fatigue

This morning while cleaning my office I happened upon a menu that I collected over twenty-five years ago in the spring of 1990 while studying in Chengdu, Sichuan. I don’t remember what restaurant it is from, but the fact that the first page lists Green Leaves Beer (绿叶啤酒) and that page two lists “guo kui” (锅魁) is a dead giveaway that it was from that time. The menu is an interesting look back, not only at the kinds of foods […]

Categories: China, Food, Uncategorized • Tags: 1990, Chengdu, menu, Sichuan

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Need Cash: Guangzhou, China

March 12, 2015 by Museum Fatigue

Walking along the street in Guangzhou yesterday evening I passed a scene of some folks at an ATM waiting for cash.

Categories: China, Photo Essays, Social Class • Tags: Guangzhou, homeless

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Roots of Chinese Culture Research Center

August 3, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

While walking in Chicago Chinatown I passed by a nondescript doorway in an old brick building. Next to three old doorbells was a small piece of white paper taped up with heavy layers of weathered scotch tape. On it were written the words: “The Roots of Chinese Culture Research Center” It was a great mystery and seemed like the location for some kind of Lovecraftian adventure story. I wish that I had had time to stop in and get a […]

Categories: "Swords and Silk", China, Mythologies • Tags: Chinese Culture, mysteries

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“Sing Red to Fight Darkness”: Chinese Urban Development as Apocalypse

July 23, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“Yes, people are constructed by their material world, but often they are not themselves the agents behind that material world through which they must live” (Miller 2009: 84). “The apocalyptic describes not just the spilling forth of the unseen, but also of the undifferentiated matter of the possible, of what could have been and was not, of what neither came to be nor what went away” (Williams 2011: 6). While in Dalian last month I found myself with a free […]

Categories: China, End of Times, Material Culture, Mythologies, Photo Essays, State of Emergency, Urban • Tags: apocalypse, Chinese Communist Party, corruption, 红色年代, Dalian, Daniel Miller, Evan Calder Williams, 钉子户, homes, Mao Zedong, nail houses, neighborhood, Omega Man, security, slogans, surveillance, tea, urban planning, 口号, 拆, 人情味

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Xi Jinping Meets Che Meeting Mao

July 23, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

While the Chinese media featured a photo of Xi Jinping meeting a geriatric and ancient-looking Casto—the Chinese leader in a dark business suit clashing with the revolutionary’s casual retirement whites—Venezuela’s newspaper El Universal offered an entirely different image. It featured a photo of Xi face-to-face with an image of Mao meeting Che Guevara. One can only wonder what Xi thought.

Categories: China, Politics • Tags: Che Guevara, Cuba, Mao Zedong, Revolution, Xi Jinping

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Selling Lucky Telephone Numbers in Shanghai

July 10, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

  “13661588868” “I want to bring forth wealth, wealth! I want fortune, fortune, fortuuunnneeee to arise! Let fortune flow!” While going through images on my office computer, I found some photos I shot in Shanghai quite a few years ago that I should post here to share. Following up on previous posts about lucky red sashes on cars in Shenyang and avoiding unlucky floor numbers in a hotel in Chengdu I thought I should post some of the images of this young […]

Categories: China, Everyday Things, Mythologies • Tags: 1, 6, 8, fortune, good luck, lucky numbers, superstition, telephone numbers, wealth, 八, 六, 一

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Adjusting Floor Numbers to Avoid Bad Luck in a Chengdu Hotel

June 19, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

When I teach Introduction to Anthropology I often like to use simple examples to relativise taken-for-granted categories. “Common-sense” examples usually communicate these the best—so I might talk, for example, about what categories of animal constitute food or how daily life is inflected by tiny habits, rumors or superstitions. I often mention, for example, lucky numbers in China—most often used for phone numbers or car license plates that have variations of one, six and eight in them. I usually also mention […]

Categories: China, Everyday Things, Mythologies • Tags: 4, bad luck, Chengdu, Chengdu Qixin Da Jiudian, elevator floors, hotel elevator, superstition, unlucky numbers, 四, 死

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Fashion is Most Glorious!

June 19, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Walking on Chunxi Lu in Chengdu I passed a full sized advertisement which draws upon the imagery and language of the Cultural Revolution. Featuring a worker, peasant, soldier trio the text plays on slogans common during the CR. The CR slogans I’m familiar with, but I’m a bit unsure about the exact translation of the edited ones in the advertisement, so hopefully someone can help me with this. Below I have given my best shot at these phrasings and then […]

Categories: Advertising, China, Nostalgia, Politics • Tags: Chunxi Lu, Cultural Revolution, 红色年代, 革命, fashion, marketing, nostalgia, Revolution, slogans, 口号

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What The Photograph Takes, What the Photograph Misses

June 12, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Fujiazhuang Beach in Dalian presents a dizzying array of of activities and actions, social and personal trajectories of participation and involvement—all jostling up against one another on a small strip of sandy shore. My first day there, as I walked its length I saw a huge group of Russian children having a squirt gun fight next to Chinese couples cuddling nearly fully clothed on beach blankets. While some young men fished at the shore, a large group of retirees sat sunning […]

Categories: China, Mythologies, Photography, Scripts • Tags: Dalian, wedding photographs, 婚纱

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Beijing Menu Designates Specific Foods to “Say No!” to Smog

June 11, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

At one restaurant in Beijing, market capitalism has found an answer to the city’s now legendary air pollution—ordering the right foods off the menu. While collectively dealing with the causes of pollution is not a political option available to Beijing residents, according to the restaurant menu the effects of the pollution can be addressed through correct individual consumption. On the menus at Jindingxuan Restaurant (金鼎轩地坛店) specific foods are designated as “resisting haze and clearing out toxins” (抗霾排毒)—specifically good for “saying no” to smog. The […]

Categories: China, Consumption, Food • Tags: air pollution, Anti-Haze, Beijing, 金鼎轩地坛店, market capitalism, menu, pollution, smog, 抗霾排毒

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