Being Together at a Distance, Talking and Avoiding Talk: Making Sense of the Present in Victory Square, Tianjin

Abstract

This paper explores a “public gathering” which took place every evening from 1991 to 2017 in Victory Square (Shengli guangchang 胜利广场), a public square in Tianjin. The essay opens with an analysis of the type of publicness that stems from the way participants “do things together.” It then describes how a specific public realm appears through the way participants “talk together.” It finally suggests that even if they are overrun with doubt, indeterminacy and anxiety, or embedded in a specific distance-based sociality, the conversations on Victory Square are not a minor, secondary activity. On the contrary, they take place on a common stage where participants interact with one another, reveal themselves as unique individuals and discuss their everyday affairs and common practices. Grasped as an “intermediary public sphere,” this type of gathering engenders and reinforces not only shared meanings and evaluations but also practical knowledge whose validity goes beyond this situated gathering.

Practising collectivity: Performing public space in everyday China

“…In a study of public gatherings in Tianjin, Isabelle Thireau (2021) examined the nature of cultural groups, their relationship with the local environment and the formation of public opinion. She found that people meeting for daily exercises engage in discussion about ordinary subjects, for example the environment, the family and food.…”