I had just got done seeing the fortune teller in a far away village located outside of the city center. My teacher was driving her moped, with me sitting calmly behind her. We had passed by many street vendors selling all different types of fruits, from longan to peaches. Many of these street vendors come from nearby villages, where they grow their own fruits and then come to populated center centers to sell these products. We had planned to stop at these tiny fruit shops along the side of the street but ran out of time because we both had errands to run. We were just about five minutes from our school when her moped suddenly ran out of energy. My teacher gripped her right hand on the throttle, trying to get her moped to move faster. However, no matter how hard she pushed the throttle, we were not moving anywhere.

The smell of watermelon and the vendors loud announcement using his microphone reached our ears. I pass by this vendor’s watermelon stand pretty often. I especially on super hot days I get very tempted to buy some.

Accepting our fate of the dead moped, we decided to stop to buy half of a watermelon and split it in half for us to share.

I loudly exclaimed to the seller that we wanted to buy a half. The vendor’s eyes were a dark reddish color, with his arms slouching on a chair in front of him and legs placed behind him, looking like he could use a long nap. He didn’t hear me first, possibly because of the loud microphone repeated messages located right next to his face. I repeated our request once more and then he got straight to work, not hesitating to grab the half watermelon from the pile on the tuktuk.

We successfully bought our halves and pushed the moped back to school,

My host sister calls herself “西瓜教授” or “watermelon professor”. She knows how to cut the watermelon just the right thickness, how to tell when it’s ready to eat, and when the price is too high. I have been with her to her favorite watermelon place, down the street from our apartment complex. Every time she goes to this specific shop, the boss lights up and excitedly gives her the best watermelon she has in stock. Today, I chose my own with this new street vendor, but often the owner of the shop chooses for you.

I learned a lot from this watermelon buying process. You see, the watermelon I bought was actually not that great tasting. I immediately thought we should have tried a new place or just gone to the place my host sister is a frequent customer at.

Then, it clicked. Consumer behavior is deeply rooted in trust, something extremely hard to sell and create. I feel that too many traditional top down economic models and consumer behavior models assume that trust is innate, and rooted in the self desire to go out and buy something. But how often does a moped that runs out of energy make you stop and try something new? The trust my teacher had in this random street vendor where she has never eaten from before was also intriguing to me. I thought, my host sister WOULD NEVER come to a random spot like this, regardless of her moped dying or not. She trusts that the other watermelon place can give her what she wants, a good tasty watermelon.

So today’s interaction posed an interesting question about why consumers avoid certain products and move towards ones they know can provide them with something, a result of trust. For example, my host sister KNOWS that her watermelon place is always high quality and yummy, so she frequents their shop. It may seem so simple to say, “of course if you like a place you will go back”. But it’s important to dig deeper to understand the result, not just the buying process. The result is a KNOWN yummy watermelon, satisfying her cravings. Why would she want to venture out into the unknown and just eat a random watermelon from a stand she has never been? While her internal feelings are one part, her influence on me is another. She has trained me to be a watermelon expert just like her, but only with the knowledge she freely gifted me. So what about those without a watermelon professor host sister in their lives? How does that infuelnce their consumer behavior and expectations in the result of their purchase? How do they know if the coffee from a new cafe would be yummy?

I am noticing information sharing is rooted in relationships and deep social network trust. But it also is rooted in one’s identity they wish to perform. For example, my host sister allows the boss at her favorite place to perform the expert. She has deep trust in the boss to pick the right watermelon for her. Yet, my host sister also has sooo much deep knowledge about how to handle the watermelon after it's been bought. Why does trust and cultural information not count as valuable in these economic models. Trust and information are very tangible and very real “things” that absolutely should be measured (especially through ethnographic methods) for in designing policies involving humans.

But today, I bought the watermelon and I chose it with my hands. Instead of trusting the boss to chose for me. What does this mean for trusting in businesses or companies, especially with the privatization of healthcare on the rise? How can we make room for the all different types of identities and deep cultural knowledge that doesn’t fit within an excel spreadsheet? The NEED for consuming healthcare products outside of a formal hospital becomes clearer and clearer to me everyday.

Everyday I am more and more curious about how to account for both ends of the spectrum of types of consumers and their habits. I will from now on just trust my watermelon specialist. Top down snooty economists need to learn from my watermelon sleepy vendor friend!!!

[Photo by: Leon Frye (ME :) ]

I remember waking up to the sound of the crowded courtyard in 明珠花园 (the name of the apartment complex where I lived) every morning. Children were often screaming loudly, running around free at seven a.m, waiting for their 婆婆 (grandma) to take them to school. Concurrently, many single working adults would be going off to work, operating on a different tempo and rhythm than these children. Despite these differences, all of these individuals shared the space and coexisted. I understood this apartment complex to operate as an intergenerational rhythm, full of individual lived experiences that shaped how the space was interacted with.

This apartment complex’s courtyard was sectioned off into rectangles, each with its own set of workout equipment. I would wash my clothes on my balcony and look out to see older Chinese aunties stretching, walking around their rectangular sections, and chatting with their friends. The middle-aged individuals often would leave the apartment complex to play sports elsewhere or to go for a long walk around the surrounding neighborhood. The younger kids would play outside till they fell asleep, and the sky was dark, often needing their parents to drag them in. In the summer, the children were especially loud and active at night, which diminished as the school year rolled around. I began to question what this information means for placemaking (Schneekloth & Shibley, 1995). What did this courtyard mean to the residents? Would that be reflected in the actions and behaviors of these residents? What made this courtyard attractive to these people from different backgrounds? How did their individual day-to-day lived experiences affect the attractiveness of that space?

This courtyard also functioned as an informal social network. This is where you run into your neighbor, whom you haven’t seen in a few weeks, or meet a stranger who you think is cool. The socialization outcomes were infinite in this courtyard. The physical presence, also known as proxemics, created this forced collision space for these individuals to get to know one another (Hall, 1966). I recall many times being asked questions by the loud little kids in the courtyard, or being asked, “Where did you get that food from? It smells amazing.” These micro interactions build a social network we may not value on the surface. However, understanding this built social network explains how spaces that may not have been designed for social use, become social network hubs. The original architect could have just enjoyed the idea of a courtyard and thought it was aesthetically pleasing. Sociality here was adaptive, a spontaneous byproduct of human interaction with the architectural layout.

[Photo by: Leon Frye (Me)]

The concept of belonging was also buzzing in my brain, and I wondered, who “belongs” in this apartment complex and courtyard? As an international student staying at a homestay, I had no control over which family I would be placed with. This random insertion into their already established social network served as a gift because my “in” was being a temporary visitor. I wasn’t finding this apartment complex from word of mouth or a website, but I “fell” into the apartment complex. I observed daily who stayed in this courtyard, who left, and who lingered just for a bit. How would I be able to get in and be “initiated” into this system? I began by using the workout machines during peak hours. This is when most kids would surround the 外国人（foreigner) and ask me tons of questions of my “belonging”. Where was I from? How did I learn Chinese? What am I doing in China? All these questions started to contribute to the main idea: in order to exist in this courtyard, I needed to be something or someone. To refuse their questions was to reject a social invitation and to answer was to begin the work of becoming a neighbor. The need for identity formation that these children and I were practicing was a form of performative belonging (Butler, 1990; Bell, 1999). I needed to become understandable or relatable to these children in order for them to trust me as a valuable asset to their social courtyard network.

The next layer of social belonging within this courtyard was linguistic use. Observing the dynamics of language socialization, I realized that linguistic competency was the primary “gate” to these localized Chinese ecosystems (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986). I would hear stories and warnings to not go to Beijing or Shanghai if I wanted to learn “real” Chinese. Beijing and Shanghai have high levels of international English speaking populations. For a Chinese language learner, going to an international hub was deemed “lower in return value” rather than a small, non English-speaking population space like Guilin. In these courtyards, being able to speak Mandarin was a major asset in connecting with the Chinese courtyard crowds. The next step was learning 桂林话（Guilin Dialect), which was mainly spoken by the older, born pre-Cultural Revolution adults/elders. It was seen as a sign of respect to use their chosen and more familiar dialect to connect with them. The elders would often ask me, “Do you speak Guilinhua? Do you speak any other dialects (besides Mandarin Chinese)?” However, the younger children often were not taught their villages dialect or, Guilinhua, so their competency was in Mandarin. The elders' biases often softened once a foreigner demonstrated linguistic competency. The mere effort of learning became a proxy for respect and good intent. It was a signal that it is safe to invite this individual into their courtyard dynamic.

I began to piece together all these complex concepts into a general idea of social belonging in public spaces and the social networks it built. Through language use, designated social collision spaces, and a sense of communal belonging, I became a member of this community. I remember the day I really felt intertwined with 明珠花园(the apartment complex). I was in the elevator with a young girl and her mother, whom I would talk to in the courtyard often. They addressed me by my Chinese name, 雅阁，and we exchanged basic small talk. No more “Where are you from?” questions, I finally belonged. But all the pieces had to fall into place, while keeping my place as the 外国人 (foreigner) I was.

[Photo by: Leon Frye (ME)]

Methodology Note:

• Primary Methodology: Participant Observation via the “Workout Machine Initiation” strategy.

• Key Variable - Linguistic Competency: Analyzing the hierarchy of Mandarin (Social Utility) vs. Guilinhua (Cultural Respect) as gates to community trust.

• Key Variable - Performative Belonging: Documenting the transition from “Identity Formation” (answering questions) to “Normalization” (the elevator interaction).

• Reflexivity: Recognizing the researcher’s role as a “forced entrant” via the homestay system and the subsequent labor required to convert “temporary visitor” status into “valuable social asset.”

Hall, E. T. (1966). The Hidden Dimension. Anchor Books. Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House. Schieffelin, B. B., & Ochs, E. (1986). Language Socialization Across Cultures. Cambridge University Press.