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Crossing Clean and Dirty Spaces

A Chinese gentleman on a train platform makes a phone call wearing white slippers. The slippers were provided for soft-sleeper passengers on the Xining - Lhasa Express for comfort, to avoid the need to put shoes on and off before climbing into a bunk, and to keep the bunks clean of regular shoes.

Cultures have different notions of clean and dirty spaces, take Japan for example. As a device that is both portable and engages our senses the act of using a mobile phone is well equipped to help us temporarily forget these boundaries.

Writing from Chengdu | December 18, 2006 | Permalink