Abstract
According to Tilley, space is a situational context constructed by and for human action, and places are ‘centres of […] human significance and emotional attachment’ (Tilley 1994: 15). Here, space is more likely to refer to the concept of ‘physical space’ as defined by Lefebvre, while place is more like the other two modalities of space, abstract space and social space, according to Lefebvre’s definition.
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Notes
- 1.
The postal address in our courtyard didn’t indicate the house number, because we didn’t have a house number. All the letters coming to our courtyard will be put on Mr. Yang’s outside window, and then he will deliver the letters to the target house, as we all know each other very well. There were one or two times when some letters from the UK which were written in English arrived and were put outside Mr. Yang’s window. Later when I came back, Mr. Yang took these letters to me and asked if these letters were for me, because he guessed no one would have any overseas contact other than me.
- 2.
The top mark is 150 and usually the mark she got was around 70. That is why her father was very happy with the result.
- 3.
The word reunion in Chinese is 团圆 which sounds like Tuan Yuan. The character Yuan is the same pronunciation as round.
- 4.
This term equally conveys the meaning of distance, unfamiliarity and strangeness, which is not a good sign for developing a good neighbourhood relationship.
- 5.
Instead of saying ‘thank you’ or ‘it is really kind of you’ and keeping the gift, Chinese people like to refuse the gift as a way of saying ‘that’s too generous of you’. It is not proper to accept everything people offer to you easily. You should perform this fighting of giving and taking struggle for a while. Eventually it is odd to take the gift back. So even though everyone knows the final result, the two parties will still need to perform this ‘fighting’.
- 6.
Jing is abbreviation of Beijing.
- 7.
As I explained before, it is a polite way to refer to someone by borrowing the kinship term, like uncle, sister, etc., under a Chinese cultural context. This is because the kinship term is a way to show intimacy like Shushu (meaning uncle) is used to call a male who is in the parents’ generation and is younger than one’s father, while Daye is used to call a male who is in the parents’ generation and is older than one’s father in Beijing. However, this way of address varies from area to area. What I have described above is the way people use in Beijing and the most part of Northern China.
References
Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Gray, J. (2003). Open spaces and dwelling places: Being at home on hill farms in the Scottish Borders’ places. In S. Low & D. Lawrence-Zuniga (Eds.), The anthropology of space and place. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tilley, C. (1994). A phenomenology of landscape: Places, paths and monuments. Oxford: Berg.
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© 2015 Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Yang, Q. (2015). ‘Soft and Hard, Bendy and Fixed, Vase and Funnel’: The Experience and Conceptualization of Living Space in the City. In: Space Modernization and Social Interaction. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44349-1_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44349-1_7
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