Artificial light, Beijing

Abstract

Prologue: A Sort of Darkness There’s a man who sits selling spicy tofu and vegetables on skewers in a not-yet redeveloped area, no more than thirty30 metres wide, between Beijing University and the Ffourth Rring road. Beyond the twelve12 or fourteen14 lines of traffic to his south is the hyper-modernity of Zhongguancun, but he finds his place in this liminal strip: anti-aspiration between aspirational heights. He is no longer young, but not- yet middle aged. He stays in that one spot for twelve12 hours a day, midday to midnight, every day. When he is not actively serving a customer, he just sits there, almost motionless and completely expressionless; he doesn’t look happy or sad, and my chest tightens each time I walk past.