Sated Cities – a workshop on the urban and sufficiency in Shanghai

By Tarjei Brekke, PhD student – MidWay

On the 25th of October 2024, 09:00-17:00 Beijing time, the MidWay project hosted a full-day workshop at the Nordic Centre at Fudan University in Shanghai. The workshop, titled “Sated Cities? Probing sufficiency in digitalization, land-use and consumption in China’s urban centres” had a total of 12 participants, of which 11 presented (full list at the bottom). The workshop maintained four guiding questions, presented at the beginning by Marius Korsnes, in order to stimulate discussion on how cities and urban culture interacts with sufficiency:

• To what extent do urbanisation, digitalisation and consumption in China’s urban centres co-produce one another?
• What social and environmental challenges are generated by the digitalization of consumer cultures in urban China? 
• Is sufficiency thinking within any of these areas at odds with the others? 
• What are the opportunities and barriers for sufficiency thinking within these areas?

After Korsnes’ opening remarks and reflections on the subject for the day, the first presentation was held by Associate Professor Chen LIU from the School of Geography at the Sun Yat-sen University. Professor LIU’s presentation, titled “Mapping digitally mediated urban foodscapes: 美食 as ‘good’ food or ‘good-looking’ food?”, analysed the advent of social media in the portrayal and conceptualization of food in China, using the example of sharing images of health foods in the online space to demonstrate the increasing role of aesthetics and presentation of food so that the food not only contains healthy ingredients, but looks pleasing to the beholder. Her research has produced three grammars of the digitalization of foodscapes, the first of which highlights the powerful role of scientification of foods by appealing to “science”, “technology” and “nature”; the second which points out “bullshit comparisons” wherein companies sell fad products meant to mimic competitors’ trending goods, often using inferior ingredients; and the third, which highlights the role of influencers (wanghong) in producing food trends. Throughout the whole presentation, we were encouraged to search up what sort of results the term “healthy food” (jiankang shipin) would yield on our respective online shopping apps (Jingdong, Taobao, Pinduoduo etc.).

The second presentation was held by Associate Professor Jing WU from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Professor WU’s presentation, titled “Care provisions for older people in urban settings: A cross-cultural comparison between China and the Nordic countries”, compared and contrasted the variegated approaches to aged care in the Nordics and China, focusing on the involvement of State and private actors, on the differing responsibilities and policies across the macro-, meso- and microscales of society, and the roles of technology and the home in the future of aged care. Professor WU not only dove into the details that separate the Nordics and China, but also the internal differences within the Nordic countries. Care systems such as peer-to-peer care in Sweden, aging-in-place in Norway and the 90/7/3 division in China all stress the importance of maintaining the home as a safe and accessible space for as long as possible before commitment to external homes or institutions. While the remaining presentations would continue to mostly focus on food, it was nonetheless very refreshing to hear Professor WU’s summary of the state of aged care in the Nordics and China.

The third presentation and the last one before we took a short break was Professor Huidi MA, from the Leisure Studies Center at Chinese National Academy of Arts, whose presentation, titled “Urban gardening: An alternative agrifood system sufficiency”, brought us into discussions on urban resilience and use of urban space by drawing on the examples of gardening (tingyuan zhongzhi). Professor MA’s presentation pulled a red thread through urban landscapes in China, England, France, the US, Spain and Prague to show that urban spaces for gardening exist all over and can be produced in the most unlikely spaces. She tied gardening to its agricultural heritage and its involvement in pre-Industrial spiritual practices with regards to the worship of the earth and nature. Drawing on both the writings of Petr Jehlička et al. (2017) and herself, Professor MA constructs gardening as an action beyond the market economy that is undertaken by non-farmer households and may produce stronger urban resilience, assist in the alleviation of climate change and help escape the stress of urban life.

Figure 1: Huidi MA presents on the importance of urban gardens.

After a short break during which we had coffee and chats, we resumed with the presentation of Dr. Jing JING from the Fudan Institute of Belt and Road & Global Governance, Fudan University, titled “The Chinese and British Way: the Role of Speed in the Recipe of Happiness — with cases from the delivery system”. After a brief bout of technical issues, Dr. JING shared with us her research on the contrasting approaches to food deliveries in everyday life in Chinese and British cities.

Figure 2: Jing JING presents on the differences between the UK and China in thoughts on speed in urban planning.

Professor Thomas DuBois offered some insights into heritagization and making of a new local cuisine in Beijing, sharing the discussions over what constitutes good food and national or geographically significant foods. Through the examples of Chinese cuisine staple cities such as Chengdu and Yangzhou, he illustrated some historical approaches to branding and re-branding city cuisines, and why certain concepts work and why others cannot seem to stick. In Beijing’s case, he argued that existing traditional dishes typically associated with Beijing (luzhu, douzhir, zhajiangmian) would not work, but that the working group on this matter instead proposed seasonality as a way of distinguishing Beijing cuisine from approaches further south. Through seasons, Beijing cuisine would be rooted in the specific times and raw materials available at certain times of year, simultaneously also shifting the sourcing of ingredients away from the global food industry and towards localized conditions.

Figure 3: Thomas DuBois presents on rebranding urban diets.

Thereafter Dr. Chenjia XU presented a study using kitchen diaries and autoethnography to study how food waste continues to be created even in spite of consumer efforts to reduce it. Dr. XU proposed that food waste is not only dependent on planning, but also self-reflection and insight into own tastes: It helps little to plan for meals using ingredients one has no familiarity with. New and strange foods such as trend foods or new diets may limit consumer will to follow through on meal plans. Furthermore, knowing when a food is good to eat and when it isn’t is a negotiation between the consumer, the producer and regulatory bodies, but to eat past the expiration date requires the skills to identify whether the food has gone back. She also explained how some autoethnographers may seek to reduce waste at the cost of their own wellbeing through overeating to limit leftovers. Lastly, social gatherings proved to also be sources of food waste due to cultural imperatives to order more than people can eat so as to not appear stingy.

Figure 4: Chenjia XU presents 

We then took a lunchbreak at the Danyuan cafeteria on campus, yet for all our eating and all our numbers, it seemed that neither we were able to finish everything. Thematic perhaps, but possibly also the result of the menu being ordered by Norwegians who have little preconception of the fluctuations in dish sizes in Chinese university cafeterias. There was quite possibly an existent fear of there not being enough for everyone, especially since vegetarian food made up the vast majority of dishes (there was also one fish dish, however). 

Participants enjoyed a nice, vegetarian lunch at the Danyuan cafeteria.

After lunch, Professor Dunfu ZHANG illustrated the consumer situation in China and underlined the importance of considering alternatives to growth-based economies. With a humouristic take, he also shared the “social history of poo”, showing how both historically and temporarily, manure makes for an important business as a locally produced source of fertilizer, highlighting North Korea and a fertilizer plant in Slough, UK, as cases. He also explained that Shanghai has been experimenting with using sewer sludge as “human-made coal” and that trial projects will enter into action next year. To end, he shared some thoughts regarding the sharp increase in water bottle pollution caused by the skyrocketing use of bottled water in the Global South, primarily China, which stands in contrast to local water sources such as water wells and water pipes. Water collected from here would be boiled before consumption or served as tea.

Prof. ZHANG Dunfu presents 

Professor Bozhou MEN shared the stories of working-class women and their appropriation of Shanghai department store rooftop gardens from 1917-1948 to serve as spaces of social and sexual exploitation, human trafficking, but also the women’s own business ventures. These nü zhaodai or “waitresses” offered the department stores free advertising and became an important source of revenue for the businesses below. These spaces also became spaces of living for the waitresses as ways of surviving the Shanghai metropolis. Professor MEN showed that the waitresses atop these department stores negotiated their own identities and changed the appearance and roles of the spaces around them to suit their own needs.

Figure 5: Regular talks in the breaks. Left to right: Marius Korsnes, Jing WU, Chen LIU and Huidi MA.

PhD student Tarjei Brekke shared a brief overview of his fieldwork findings, focusing on the intertwinings of the Atlantic salmon and the urban space in the JiangZheHu region of China. He proposes that the consumption of salmon in China is co-produced through the interactions of ten groups of actors: crushed ice/the cool chain, “Japanese” cuisine, salmon producers, marketing organisations (ex. Norwegian Seafood Council), airports, streaming platforms like Douyin/TikTok, market platforms like Taobao and Jingdong Fresh, delivery services like Shunfeng, physical membership-style retail stores like Olé and Sam’s, and the national customs control. Brekke suggests that these actors necessarily tie the salmon to the central and the urban which can sustain all of these actors.

Tarjei Brekke presents

Professor Mei DING concluded our presentations with a report on her research on artificial insemination and fertility medicine. Drawing on among others Anna Tsing and her writings on the experience of scale, DING shared insight into the increasing scientification and marketisation of fertility medicine to women in China.

After the presentations, we engaged in a discussion on how to follow up the presentations with articles. It quickly became clear that, due to the number of Chinese participants, any long-form articles or special issue in a journal like Agriculture and Human Values. It was therefore suggested by Professor DuBois that we instead produce a special issue for Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus. We were tasked with writing titles and sending them to Thomas DuBois for review.

All workshop participants at the end of the workshop

Participants:

• Marius Korsnes, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  • Introductory remarks 
• Tarjei Brekke, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  • The urban fish: Co-producing “weekday luxuries” for the middle class
• Mei DING 丁玫, Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology, Fudan University
  • Presentation of research on assisted fertilization in China.
• Chen LIU 刘晨, Sun Yat-sen University
  • Mapping digitally mediated urban foodscapes: 美食 as ‘good’ food or ‘good-looking’ food?
• Jing WU 吴晶, Gothenburg University
  • Care provisions for older people in urban settings: A cross-cultural comparison between China and the Nordic countries 
• Huidi MA 马慧娣, Leisure Studies Center, Chinese National Academy of Arts
  • Urban gardening: An alternative agrifood system sufficiency
• Dunfu ZHANG 张敦福 , Shanghai University
  • 中国可持续消费几个议题Sustainable Consumption in China A few working topics 
• Hanzhen OUYANG 欧阳晗振, School of Management, Fudan University
  • No presentation
• Jing JING 荆婧, Fudan Institute of Belt and Road & Global Governance, Fudan University
  • The Chinese and British Way: the Role of Speed in the Recipe of Happiness — with cases in the delivery system
• Bozhou MEN 门泊舟, Department of Translation and Interpreting, Fudan University
  • Symbiosis: Department store roof gardens and their appropriation by lower-class urban women, 1917-1948
• Thomas David DuBois, Beijing Normal University
  • Rebranding urban diets: from opulence to sustainability
• Chenjia XU 许晨佳, South China Normal University
  • Why is so much food left over? Autoethnographies of Everyday Food Waste in China