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What Does It Mean To Be Chinese?

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A China that is just a family of Han people would be a limited nation. But a China that is an ideology could encompass people all across the world. Jacob Dreyer is a writer and editor based in Shanghai. All images courtesy Thomas Sauvin / Beijing Silvermine. Beijing Silvermine is an archive of more than a million negatives salvaged over the last 14 years from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing. Sauvin, a French collector and artist, assembled the archive into a unique photographic portrait of the Chinese capital and the life of its inhabitants in the decades following the Cultural Revolution. “We must go to the root and criticize the Han chauvinist ideas which exist to a serious degree among many Party members and cadres.” — Mao Zedong SHANGHAI — For a time, Joseph and I would go to the park at dawn to take in the sights of a Chinese morning: the sun rising over Jing’an Temple, the elderly practicing Tai chi, stray cats gazing maliciously at us. Inevitably, a retired Shanghainese

All images courtesy Thomas Sauvin / Beijing Silvermine. Beijing Silvermine is an archive of more than a million negatives salvaged over the last 14 years from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing. Sauvin, a French collector and artist, assembled the archive into a unique photographic portrait of the Chinese capital and the life of its inhabitants in the decades following the Cultural Revolution. Credits Jacob Dreyer is an editor and contributing writer for Noema based in Shanghai. All images courtesy Thomas Sauvin / Beijing Silvermine. Beijing Silvermine is an archive of more than a millio

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