Ethnographic Postcards: Porch Small Talk

This text was written in Helsinki as part of the flash ethnography series. Struggling to pull together the last chapters of my book, “China’s Return to the Village”, this piece came to mind in my effort to dismantle a writer’s block that has developed over the years. This block carries a sort of gender bias, making it difficult to narrate the closest relationships with my female interlocutors during fieldwork, such as the one I had with Beiyun.