fieldwork — Bytes of China

mapping the city, first stop: sex workers

When doing fieldwork in a new city, one of the first things I do is try to bond with taxi drivers. They make the best informants and have such a rich sense of the city's informal and formal layers. They help me create what I call "consumption maps of the city. I buy a big street map and hang it up on my wall. Then I try to map the following onto it:

tricia wangJune 23, 2012china, city, ethnographic, ethnography, fieldwork, sex workers, urban, wuhan

Luxury is in the eye of the beholder

When I was in Beijing, I met with a well known VC. She retired from her work in the US and now lives in China managing a fund. During our conversation about investing in start ups, she said something that really stood out to me.