I’ve been here in Shanghai one day now. Last night, I went down to meet Goetz and Daisy (his RA on this trip) and we went to have dinner at Bali Laguna (!), a restaurant inside Jing’an Park. At the edge of the park near the tube station, we found a sort of amphitheatre with a huge arc of 3 LCD screens, all playing the same very set of what, at first sight, looked like some sort of ad or promo video. But a second glance revealed it to be a triumphal celebration on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, complete with slogans congratulating the “great Communist Party of China.” I took pics. Nobody was sitting in the amphitheatre thing watching, but I figure they all knew the message already.

I also agree with Janet that “publicness” is constantly invoked without anyone knowing what it is. Yesterday lunch time I met my friend and Fudan U colleague Lu Xinyu and we had a long talk about “public” and how, whether we’re talking about China or the West, neither of us likes it when it is equated to a liberal ideology that makes public mean absence of state, and does not deal with other forces operating. So, for me, it goes back to our discussions of multiple sorts of public, invoked by discourses and practices, but… how often do they materialize as a collectivity?