Between 'face' and 'faceless' relationships in China's public places: Ludic encounters and activity-oriented friendships among middle and old aged urbanites in Beijing public parks

Based on thorough ethnographic descriptions, this article analyses retirees’ collective activities in Beijing public parks where co-presence and interactions between formerly unacquainted individuals have evolved into achieved relations of familiarity and friendship. Focusing on how people define, enact and manage the relationships with those they ‘have fun’ with, I show that the forms of mutual knowing developed through joint participation often blur the boundaries between the private, parochial and public realms on the one hand, and between community and anonymity on the other hand. While the urban experience in the Chinese context has been viewed as constituted through both ‘face’ (i.e. communitarian) and ‘faceless’ (i.e. anonymous) interactions, I argue that these are but two conceptual poles which cannot exhaust the complex nature of social relationships that arise from urban encounters. Activity-orientated friendships in Beijing parks involve wide-ranging forms of mutual knowing, which shape a pleas...