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Paper short abstract

Through the resonance between the author and informants, this paper links an abandoned furniture mall, ethics, and anthropology as a discipline to discuss how we can dwell comfortably in the world, positioning patchwork ethnography as a craft to confront the existential problems in a patchy world.

Paper long abstract

Ruifeng International Home Improvement Expo City stands as a complex monolith, cluttered with the material debris and lived practices of everything from China's 2010s property boom to the post-pandemic debt crisis—mirroring both the concept of ethics analyzed here and the very discipline of anthropology. Throughout this paper, I weave together the tensions between ordinary ethics and relational ethics to ask a fundamental question: how can we dwell more comfortably in this world? In my subsequent reflections, with the resonance between me, as an anthropology researcher, and my informants, I was startled to discover that the existential condition of anthropology as a discipline—much like the home expo city and ethics—is fraught with crises, possibilities, and an enduring desire for the future. By bringing these narratives into conversation, I hope to offer a posture for a more comfortable dwelling in the world: inside this home expo city, amidst the ethical ruptures of the everyday, and within the practice of anthropology. Concurrently, I position patchwork ethnography at the very heart of how this paper came to be, tracing how it operates as both a methodology and a path of life for grappling with the grand existential problem in a patchy world.