MUSEUM FATIGUE

Shanghai Expo 2010: Better City, Better Line

June 19, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

Shanghai offers truly magnificent sights. To me, the city is at least as beautiful as any of China’s famous natural scenic spots such as Huangshan or Guilin. It is even more impressive, however, because in a mountain or forest all you need to do is build some trails, chain off some vistas, and set up a few hotels—the scenery is already there. Shanghai, on the other hand, as been nearly entirely rebuilt over the past two decades and everything in […]

Categories: Bodies, China, Essays, Exhibitions and Fairs, Photo Essays • Tags: Expo 2010, lines, Shanghai, waiting

I Love Beijing’s Sensitive Words!

June 11, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

Right in the middle of my visit last summer, Facebook disappeared. It was added to the list of sites blocked by the Chinese firewall. At the time I was in China, hanging out with my friends, so we really didn’t miss not seeing each other on Facebook. When I mentioned it at a dinner, the feeling was that it was only temporary blockage that would surely pass. Someone at the table even thought it might have just been a glitch […]

Categories: Fieldwork, Random Reflections • Tags: China, internet, 敏感词

A Haunting Photograph Revisited

June 9, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

In late spring 1999 I spent nearly four weeks traveling from Nanjing, where I was living at the time, overland through Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan. Fodor’s had hired me to update some chapters in their China travel guide, and after a year of fieldwork the opportunity to do some solo travel–and get paid for it–was a welcome opportunity. While most of my memories of that trip have faded, a select few are still very clear. I can’t remember […]

Categories: Essays • Tags: China, memory, Nanchang, Photography, revolutionary martyrs

Leave a comment

Late Evening, June 3, 2010

June 8, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

Late in the evening on June 3rd I was enjoying Sichuan hot pot in downtown Beijing. Twenty-one years later, rather than writing a reflection, I thought a video clip might be a better commentary.

Categories: Random Reflections, Video clips • Tags: hotpot, June 4

Leave a comment

Performing Cultural Revolution Nostalgia

June 7, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

I have been mulling over and trying to make sense of what exactly took place at the Cultural Revolution theme restaurant that I visited last week. I have photos, video, and some notes I wrote after returning to my hotel room that night, but none of them help very much. I thought maybe some time to reflect would make a difference, but the past seven days have just made things seem even more unreal. It all comes back to one […]

Categories: China, Food, Play, Politics • Tags: Beijing, China, Cultural Revolution, memory, nostalgia

2012 Apocalyptic Anxieties

June 5, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

For most of the last decade whenever I have visited China I have always been impressed with how positive everyone seemed when compared to the U.S. Sure China’s income gap is ginormous and growing, the environmental issues are huge, and the dislocations of urban and rural residents are unprecedented in human history. In the face of all of this,however, most of the Chinese people I have encountered in recent years–from close friends to taxi drivers–have been generally upbeat. While back in the U.S. we have had […]

Categories: China, End of Times, Mythologies • Tags: 2012, apocalypse, China

Leave a comment

Using an iPad in China

June 3, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

I often travel to China with student groups or for research and never leave home without my MacBook. It is the place I keep things to read, write fieldnotes, store the many photos I take and keep in touch with friends and family through e-mail, Skype and Facebook. Lugging it around always seemed a bit much, and after a drop at the Tokyo airport last January that left a nasty dent in the corner of its otherwise immaculate aluminum frame, […]

Categories: Essays, How To • Tags: Anthropology, China, fieldwork, iPad

Does the Market Have a Flavor?

May 3, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

Every year in my fall semester class, Development to Globalization, we begin by reading Sidney Mintz’s classic book, Sweetness and Power. The book serves as a very accessible introduction to some aspects of colonial history and the way that markets and culture interact. For the average American student who is accustomed to thinking about markets as operating according to rational economic rules and the exercise of power as an overt threat to violence, Mintz describes a different perspective. He looks […]

Categories: Random Reflections • Tags: Minnesota State Fair, Sidney Mintz, sugar

Leave a comment

Gramsci’s grave

May 2, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

I was just looking for another image to post to test posterous’s integration with Facebook and found this picture from last summer. Our last day in Italy we dashed down the street from the apartment we were renting to the cemetery were Antonio Gramsci was buried. It was a beautiful morning to walk in the cemetery.

Categories: Photo Essays • Tags: Gramsci, graves

Leave a comment

Replicating Terracotta Warriors

May 2, 2010 by Museum Fatigue

Last summer while doing a research visit at the Terracotta Warrior Museum in Xi’an and some associated tourist sights, I noted the proliferation of images and reproductions of the warriors. In this collection of images can you spot the “real” from the reproduced? Of course this is a trick question, because even the “real” warriors have been pieced together from fragmented remains! (This post is also a test of the photo-posting function on posterous.)

Categories: Fieldwork, Photo Essays • Tags: China, museum

Leave a comment

← Older posts

Newer posts →