Voyaged in the summer of 2024. Written in the winter of 2025.
It’s not done yet, and it will not be done.
***
A Sticky Note
What does it mean for an anthropologist to write in the present tense?
How could thick description describe thin encounters?
Who gets to write ethnography, and who writes sociography? On what grounds?
These are the questions that gnawed at me and unsettled me everyday throughout my writing process. I abandoned many drafts, loathing them for being too slow to keep up with the volatility of governmentality, too superficial to tell the thickness of lived lives, too personally rendered to be read as social facts.
This little anthology is my attempt to remake what I once unmade, and to write anthropology as if from within the improvisation. Just like all the dear strangers I met in Mexico City, on Avenida Independecia and Calle Izazaga, who taught me what life, route, and world can be.
***
Murmurs (Excerpts)
On the way to Du Te Bocadillos in the historical center of Mexico City, one has to pass through downtown’s lamp street, where countless glimmers produced from Chinese factories shine day and night in Spanish colonial style buildings. At the end of this street is the intersection leading to an inexpensive, bustling Chinese dinery, run by Chinese migrants newly arrived after COVID.
I worked here as a Cashier, or, according to the people, a Xiaomei (little sister). I didn’t think I would revisit this place when I quit five days ago, feeling too burned out from the 13-hour shifts and perplexed by the double identity as both a laborer and an ethnographer. However, the people who took my job afterward soon quit too, so I agreed to come back and help until they find the next person.
Every morning, I struggle to get out of bed and end up taking a taxi to my 8 am shift. To avoid my colleagues seeing me arrive by Didi, I always tell the driver to stop just before this intersection.
The neon red numbers count down on the traffic light, as the crowd and I fall into a temporary empty time together, my mind flies to the bench sitting stagnant right between the restaurant and the flow of the metropolis. In that flux brushing against the bench, children selling De La Rosa Mazapan weave through, a cilindrero in a yellow-brown uniform pushes a life-sized music box whisks by, young couples in baggy jeans with silver jewelry and neon hair jingle across, and the godínez inhale one last puff of smoke before returning to the office.
Right in the middle of this flux, four or five Chinese men and I sit in all sorts of postures, sharing a pack of gold Marlboro. I never got a chance to ask their names, but most of them came every afternoon, and I had faith in their continuous revisiting. I just knew that he would walk into the restaurant and order the same bowl of beef glass noodles just the way he wanted: extra, extra chili pepper but no cilantro.
We has seemingly “always” sat on that bench, facing this signless restaurant with only a giant red lantern, hanging in the wind, always a little out of place, gazing at the flux flowing in front of us, and perceiving the street gazing back at us—a subtle exchange, politely imagining, or speculating one another. In between those gazes, we cautiously exchanged information, piecing together each other's stories like a jigsaw puzzle. Words like “crossing” and “U.S.” were excluded from conversations, replaced by “going up” and “to the big pretty.” Even though the bodies and social rhythms seemed stagnant, fragments of these words transported this place closer to a time that was not now, and a space without direction—where streets, bodies, money, and hopes shimmered in perfection 24/7.
I snap back into the present. It’s 8:20 am, and I’m late again, as usual. I bet Emilio is already on his E-bike, delivering the breakfast order to the nearby Chinese mall—1 x Xiaolongbao (steamed bun); 1 x churro Chino (fried dough); 1 x sweetened soy milk. Francisco is probably moving that cage of three live chickens, a mountain of napkins, and two buckets of oil from the owner’s E-bike to the kitchen. Barbie is likely wiping the steamer and packaging the salsas, with a pencil behind her ear. And Maya is probably in a corner, scrolling through K-pop TikTok. I wonder if they have come up with new Chinese-Spanish mixture words to communicate with Aunties Chen and Wang? And Jesús, I still remember how he kept finding free moments amidst our never-ending restaurant chores to sneak over to the checkout counter and ask me to go out on a michelada date with him, joking about marrying him and taking him to China.
Just a few weeks ago, he left Venezuela with his father and made his way to Mexico City, and is now waiting for his “CBP One” appointment to cross the U.S.- Mexico border and immigrate to Florida. While Jesús, if his plans failed, dreamed of a life in China, a lot of our Chinese im/migrants customers had also just crossed the Darién Gap to arrive in Mexico City and wait for the opportunity to head “up” to the U.S. Here we were, Jesús and I found ourselves stumbled in this moment together—awkwardly, yet with a hint of melancholy, flirting over passport jokes. I slapped his shoulder with a laugh, and slipped him a takeout order for him to deliver working lunch to Chinese merchants in the “Fayuca” (contraband goods) malls nearby.
The light turned green. The rhythm of the city dragged me across the crosswalk. I walked closer and closer to the bench; the steam of Xiaolongbao wafted out of the glass door, and the moment I peeked in, everything was just as I had imagined—unchanged, as if stuck in a stagnancy isolated from the city's speed. Yet, as time unfolded during narrow moments of leisure, I gradually realized that Barbie didn’t come today; they told me she had just headed to Texas with her husband. And Jesús? No one had heard a word since the last time he dashed out the door for his father’s medical emergency. As more afternoons passed, I noticed those four or five men with whom I always shared Gold Marlboro never returned.
Instead, a few new men and an auntie who always asked for boiled water started to constitute a new world on the bench. The restaurant, too, still wasn’t just a place for eating—people came in to exchange Chinese Yuan for Mexican Pesos, ask for help buying flight tickets within Mexico, register for Spanish school, or pay the electricity bill.
That was the moment for me, realizing that people who seem to “belong” to and “localize” a specific time/place, in fact, live under an intense global force of movement.
New paradigms emerged infinitely, while old ones vanished permanently.
***
My first day at the restaurant was a Sunday—also known as payday.
Around 7:30 p.m., after the first wave of dinner customers had trickled out, Auntie opened the transaction book and unlocked the cash drawer. A restrained buzz of anticipation rippled through the room. Everyone couldn’t help but glance at her as she deftly punched numbers into the calculator, finally punctuating the page with a sharp, definitive dot.
“Ay!! Ay!!” Auntie waved her hand briskly, summoning the workers to gather. She wiped her flour-dusted hand on her worn purple Hello Kitty apron before digging into her pocket for the exact amount of cash.
Francisco, Jesús, Maya, Barbie, Auntie Wang, and a Venezuelan worker whose name I hadn’t yet learned clustered around the counter. Auntie handed each of them 2,000 pesos (about $104) for six days of work—ten hours a day. I stood quietly, a knot tightening in my stomach. I was being paid 1,300 pesos per day (around $67), a dramatically higher rate.
I had asked the owner to pay me privately and at the same rate as everyone else, since my summer research was funded by my school. But she had dismissed me:
“Stay out of it. That’s the rate for the Chinese. We pay you the proper amount so you don’t talk shit about us behind our backs.”
At that moment, I realized that all my internal dilemma about ethics means nothing in the face of the capitalist market—I was expected to be a mere labor body, defined by my hourly wage and nothing more.
As Auntie licked her fingers and counted out cash for the Venezuelan worker, she turned to me and said in Mandarin, loud enough for everyone to hear:
“小妹，你帮我跟这个人说，让他和他哥以后不要再来了。老玩手机不干活，我们不缺人。”(“Little sister, help me tell this guy and his brother not to come back. He’s always on his phone. We’re not short on workers.”)
Heat rushed to my face. My colleagues glanced at me, eyebrows lifting slightly, as if sensing something had shifted in the air. I asked for clarification: did this mean he was being fired?
“诶你就跟他说这是暂时的，如果我们哪天缺人了再叫他回来。”
(“Ehhh—just tell him it’s temporary. If we’re ever short, we’ll call him back.”)
I bit my lip as my co-workers started, waiting for me to translate. Barbie mouthed ¿Qué pasó? while others whispered to one another in Spanish.
Auntie Chen, who had been watching, clicked her tongue impatiently and said, “他们又不是你家人你有什么不能说的，我们要知道怎么说还要你帮忙吗，你赶紧说就行。” (“They’re not your family. Why can’t you just say it? If we knew how, we wouldn’t need your help. Just tell them already.”)
My linguistic ability made me both a bridge and a gatekeeper, placing me right in the middle of the power dynamics in this under-the-table, informal, and unprotected labor relationship. This scene unfolded in a place woven from distinct linguistic, cultural, and racial threads, where “kin” wasn’t always recognized, but “non-kin” was sharply defined.
I sighed and, instead of translating, handed Auntie my phone with Google Translate open. Then, sneaking a glance at my coworkers’ worried faces, I whispered:
“Ella le dijo que no volviera a trabajar… temporalmente.” (“She said not to come back to work… temporarily.”)
Emi, one of the Mexican workers, shook his head and pursed his lips:
“Temporalmente significa…” He mimed slitting his throat and stuck out his tongue.
Francisco and Maya cast a last pitiful glance at the man before slowly turning away, hands hesitating on the counter. Jesús and Barbara, both Venezuelan, held their breath, eyes wide. The man turned to face Auntie, bowing slightly, trying to plead his case. Then he looked to me:
“No entiendo por qué no puedo usar mi teléfono. ¿Debo decirle también a mi hermano que no vuelva más?” (“I don’t understand why I can’t use my phone. Should I tell my brother not to come either?”)
I nodded, signaling I understood and would try my best to relay his words, but Auntie was already done listening. She handed him his wages and waved him away.
He took the cash and, without a word, pulled down the brim of his baseball cap. He exchanged one last glance with the others—fleeting, speechless—and walked out of the restaurant with his shoulders hunched. At the door, he paused, glancing left and right, as if unsure where to go, then disappeared into the flux of the city.
Inside, the remaining workers dispersed quickly, throwing themselves back into the rhythm of work with renewed intensity, as if teetering on the edge. The restaurant was suddenly silent—no customers, no voices, as if nothing had ever happened. The Chinese knot by the glass door swayed gently in the wind. Outside, clouds dropped lower, and the traffic thickened.
The only sounds that remained were small and sharp:
The whisper of steel as Maya cleaned the steamer.
The soft scuff of Barbie’s broom on the tile.
The wet patter of Francisco’s rag on the table.
The rhythmic clink of Jesús drying dishes.
In my mind, a thread pulled tight—then snapped with a sharp pop, followed by the domino-tear of fabric unraveling.
That thread, I realized, ran through language. These conversations slipped between “concealment, revelation, revelation of concealment, and concealment of revelation” (Jones, 2014). They modulated power, shaped inclusion and exclusion, similarity and difference.
The babel tower between languages almost unintentionally renders a “public secret”, where power gets to be executed in the tight arena. In other words, the power geometry within this fleeting locality, composed of distinct languages, ethnicities, and classes, was itself the public secret. Geographer Doreen Massey (1991) writes, “Different social groups have distinct relationships to this anyway differentiated mobility: some people are more in charge of it than others; some initiate flows and movement, others don’t; some are on the receiving end of it; some are effectively imprisoned by it” (p. 26).
In this fabric, some threads stay, some knot, some snap, and others accelerate outward—depending on where one comes from, how one lives, and where one is trying to go.
This moment reminded me that value production and labor relations are not simply accumulative. They are relational. Yet, what is the force that drives these flows and forges these relations? From Chu (2010)’s perspective, if we zoom out to a broader social field of circulations and transactions, we can recognize and assess the differential value of various people and things entangled in webs of increasing transnational exchange.
As authoritarian regimes intensify in China and Venezuela and their economies collapse, emigration swells. Meanwhile, Mexico and the U.S. enter new presidencies, both wrestling with the crisis of democracy. Perhaps every thread in this scene carries not only material labor but also the shadow of global hierarchy, the imagination of the Other, and the ghost of empire.
***
Blue LED galaxies pour out of astronauts' plastic helmets, landing on the stained, scratched walls of every floor in the “Izazaga 89 (Yiwu Mall)”. This projection of the extraterrestrial feels overwhelmingly engorged, especially when it comes from a fragile, hand-sized plastic object that might break within days.
In the summer of 2024, these plastic astronauts were the hottest commodity in this 16-story wholesale complex of contraband Chinese goods in the heart of Mexico City. Drenched in blinding white fluorescent light, their blue eyes blink amidst storefront after storefront packed with row upon row of goods: “Barbic” dolls, “Nika” sneakers, flaky eyeshadow, Lego with a slightly off shade of yellow, and Stanley Thermos replicas shaped to fit car cup holders designed for California highway life.
Every store follows the same configuration: a Chinese woman sitting at the cashier counter, a few Mexican and Central or South American migrant workers stocking shelves, while porters and street vendors weave through the crowd, sprinkled with local-looking aunties and young students. Step outside the mall, and you’ll likely see these same items sprawling out onto the streets. The bright price tags and plastic-y textures clash dramatically with the intricate baroque details of the Constitutional Plaza and the sleekness of modernist skyscrapers.
Whether they realize it or not, nearly everyone in the city has probably touched something that came from this mall. Several major Mexican state media outlets have described the whirlwind reach of Chinese retail business as an “invasion”.
Over the past five years, Chinese social media has described Mexico as the "site of a new gold rush," attracting a significant wave of Chinese migration from all different walks. Soon, Izazaga Street transformed from a government office corridor with barely a trace of Chinese influence into a new Chinatown. Lin, the Chinese operator of the Izazaga 89 Mall, hailed this transformation as a shining example of “China speed”. As I wandered through the mall, most Chinese merchants initially assumed I was a young entrepreneur scoping out the market, getting ready to jump into the hype.
In this 600 or so shop in Izazaga mall, Qingqing’s shop is definitely a funky one. Her selection isn’t heavy on logos, as she said, she only sells things that she likes. I bought a mini iron smaller than my hand, a wooden ear pick with a tiny handmade pottery ornament, a fortune cookie in a hand-folded paper bag. As I roamed, Qingqing effortlessly chatted and joked in Spanish with a regular—a young women street vendor who had traveled from Guadalajara—while her husband wrapped up 15 boxes of quirky beer mugs featuring local soccer teams for the vendor.
As I waited to pay, rehearsing how to approach her (yes, participating in transactions is part of my methodology), Qingqing has already glanced at me multiple times in between her conversation. I handed out my 100 pesos with a casual greeting in Mandarin, Qingqing’s eyes lit up. She couldn’t help but ask what a young Chinese-speaking, Chinese-looking girl like me was doing here alone, while apologizing to me about her “non-standard” mandarin from time to time. I could see her closer this time. She wore a modest chalk-pink polo shirt and a neat ponytail. Seems to be in her 40s, a bit younger than my parents.
Before I left, Qingqing slipped half a jar of juice candy from China into my pocket. She patted my back gently and said, “Don’t go out after the sun goes down. Take care, gūniang (niña/baby girl).”
The moment I put Qingqing’s juice candy in my mouth, I was instantly sickened by its artificial creaminess, yet at the same time overwhelmed by nostalgia—it was unmistakable “fake flavor” I had grown up with as a child in my ancestral hometown in northern rural China.
To distract myself from the urge to spit out her gift, I fixated on the LED galaxy projection from an astronaut-shaped night light that plays a music box version of My Heart Will Go On by Céline Dion. As the galaxy spun, the glare of the neon stars intermittently blinded me. For a fleeting moment, I thought I saw infinity. It might be very weird to you, but my vision was soon blurred by some tears.
Five months after my encounter with Qingqing, an army of 200 soldiers closed down the mall, confiscating approximately 262,300 pieces of pirated goods from Izazaga 89, leaving the merchants, workers, and goods of 1,500 businesses in limbo, including Qingqing, Mei and her son’s. The Mexican government referred to this as Operativo Limpieza—the operation of clean-up.
The migrants’ routes are just like the plastic astronaut’s—traveling across the Pacific Ocean, burning bright with energy, then soon fragmenting under the weight of uncertainty. However, Qingqing’s fleeting care for me, a stranger in that soon-to-vanish mall, felt infinite, like the Milky Way glowing from a $2 nightlight.
People, places, and goods shared a journey with these astronauts are teetering yet enduring on the knife-edge of legality, legitimacy, and permanency. What I am most interested in is how this fragile economy of fayuca weaves a specific condition of being in relation. The one that exists in the tremor between collapse and renewal in this micro node of the hyper-uncertain global lower-end capitalism. And precisely in the thick of this economic and political precariousness, people carve out an ephemeral, yet intimate, way of being together.
***
“Today, I don’t have any sense of achievement, but I feel a full sense of affirmation. I’m not affirming my book, but affirming my affirmation in the past: to be a good scholar…Pulling through two more long nights, it will be my daughter’s 2-year-old birthday. This manuscript is the first gift I’m ever giving to my daughter! I hope her life is filled with beauty, love, sense of achievement, and affirmation!”
This very drafty work is also a little gift for you. You’re my best friend and my forever mentor. I miss you lots.
Full draft available upon request