Chinese whispers
Flaneur is a French term meaning ‘stroller’ or ‘loafer’ used by nineteenth-cen- tury French poet Charles Baudelaire to identify an observer of modern urban life.
Baudelaire identified the flaneur in his essay The Painter of Modern Life (1863) as ‘the dilettante observer’. The flaneur carried a set of rich asso- ciations: the man of leisure, the idler, the urban explor- er, the connoisseur of the street. - Tate 2017
While travelling in China
I spent a week in a little village in Nishan where the people spent their nights hunting cicadas. The village is between Shanghai and Beijing, the 3rd and 9th most populated cities in 2019. After being in the bustling city it was refreshing to spend time in a slower-paced location, enabling more intimate relationships with the people of this village. Despite the limited communication, there was no problem sharing laughs.
