與物之生：北京「蟲魚花鳥市場」的民族誌研究

Becoming-with in a More-than-Human World:An Ethnographic Research on the“Insect-Fish-Flower-Bird”Markets in Beijing

本文探討2012年起，我針對北京「蟲魚花鳥市場」所進行的民族誌研究，描繪市場裡的收藏者與行家們，如何透過「與物之生（becoming with）」的美學實踐，來面對城市周遭世界（umwelt）的急速變遷；透過緊抓住物所承載的歷史質感（qualia），讓身處當代北京的人們，即便人事全非，仍得以召喚隨著市場化而消逝的城市歷史感知。此間的「與物」，除了文玩物，還包含了動物和植物，這些與人們一起經歷當代中國市場經濟改革的「非人物種（non-human species）」，也成為了環境與時空意義的詮釋物（interpretant），「與物之生」則意味著透過空間感、觸覺，和聽覺這些感知行動，收藏者重新打造了一個相異於當代北京的時空感，而浸潤於「老北京」－清帝國晚期衰微世道下的懷舊風情－此一浪漫化了的象徵感知。

This essay presents an ethnographic investigation into the “insectfish-flower-bird” markets in Beijing, based on fieldwork research conducted since 2012. Analyzing connoisseurs whose aesthetic practices engage with local collectors’ markets emergent in the process of urban renewal since the 1990s, I address how they negotiate a sense of locality by crafting a new selfhood alongside non-human beings in a time of rapid globalization. In the ethnography we encounter experiences in which the cultivation of selfhood and new sociality in a rapidly changing environment evolves in a process of people becoming along with beloved multispecies beings. Referencing multispecies ethnography and theorists such as Donna Haraway and Thom van Dooren, this article shows that the connoisseurs in Beijing manage to create an umwelt, an environment-world, which serves as a time capsule that brings back sensorial elements connecting them with the romanticism of nature once widely available in the everyday life of the hutong, where cohabitation with insects, fishes, flowers and birds—and thus the knowledge derived from such experience—were defining indexes for old Beijing identity.The rapid disappearance of the hutong residential form in the urban renewal process thus further points to how cohabitation with domestic nonhuman beings is fading into people’s fond memories about what city life once was.
The ethnography focuses on the Shilihe market, located at the southeast corner of Beijing’s third-ring expressway, which has been touted since its establishment in 1996 as the largest “insect-fish-flower-bird” bazaar among many small ones in the city. By presenting a thick description of the connoisseurs involved in three sections in the Shilihe market – the teahouse, the literati walnut area, and the humming insect area – this essay shows the transformation of lives and livelihoods of many artisan-turned-connoisseurs in the age of market reform. Furthermore, this essay argues that the Shilihe case points to the great Chinese urban transformation in the age of market reform as a multispecies story. In this story, the seemingly peculiar aesthetic practices concerning non-human beings, which materialize qualia of the old Beijing milieu, recreate the umwelt once available in hutong and teahouse socializing as romanticization of the city’s imperial past.
The collectors’ markets not only tell us about the nostalgia for old Beijing against a backdrop of globalization—thus illuminating the multiverse existent within a city—they also tell a story of profound precarity. The experiences of government-enforced relocation and eviction bring about a phenomenon in which a collective longing for the city’s past emerges, sustaining a sense of urgent need to revive and rescue local cultures. This permeating sentimentality urges many to search for an anchor of locality by cultivating intimacy with non-human beings. Many thus turn to the collectors’ markets. Given this dynamic of urban renewal defined by a mixture of precarity and nostalgia, the market reform allows a new kind of cultural heritage connoisseur to appear, capitalizing on the rise of collective longing for old Beijing by setting up shops in the “insect-fish-flower-bird” markets. This essay illustrates that the conversion of cultural capital by way of the new cultural industry of urban heritage presents anything but a smooth transition, shedding light on the uncertainty underlining the livelihoods of the connoisseurs by referencing the crisis theory of capital accumulation.