The rule of the QR code:
The organizing principal of life in China
Dear Global Jigsaw,
I am now just over two months old in Beijing. The all-synapses firing, hyper awareness that is part of the condition of being new to somewhere, is gentling into habit. I am learning the codes of city living in China-2025. I mean this quite literally. While every new place necessitates becoming familiar with social and cultural codes, the central organizing principal of life in Beijing is the QR code.
The scanning of these is the language of travel, transaction and translation. The city seemingly hums within the super apps (Wechat, Alipay) that house these pixels, with greater vitality than without. The outside world is increasingly sanitized—the traffic more orderly than before, the streets cleaner, the service less salty. But inside the apps, its mayhem. This is where the energy of the marketplace, long the lifeblood of China, has decamped to. Bargains and discount coupons jostle on heaving, ontologically amorphous landing pages where you can rent a bicycle, furnish a house, get a medical diagnosis and order an oat milk latte, seemingly all at once.[1]
All of life’s needs have been telescoped into the mobile phone: a direction the rest of the world has been headed towards, but where China has seemingly already arrived. Moving to Beijing from Madrid can feel like having skipped the queue to get to the front of an insidious line that humanity—perhaps unbeknownst to itself—is standing in. It is the teleology of technology in motion.
Two of the most iconic features of the topography of the quotidian in most other countries are verging on the extinct in China.
A beggar solicits payment by QR code in the outskirts of Beijing. Photo credit: Pallavi Aiyar
****** The rest of this piece is paywalled. You can become a paid subscriber by clicking on the button below. I do apologize, but writing is my primary vocation, not a hobby. I have kept the Global Jigsaw free to read for the last 4 years and those archives remain accessible to everyone. But going forward, only a part of each post will be accessible to non-paying followers. If you are unable to afford a subscription and there is a piece that you want to read in its entirety, message me. I will send you complimentary access****