Notes from the Field | Ruomin Huang, “By Appointment Only”: Domestic Political Depression and Curatorial Resistance in China
Public distress in modern China has become a battleground — not only over the legitimacy of such emotions but also over who has the right to define such meaning. In a political climate where the visibility of sadness itself is suspect, even a quiet corner for tears can become contested ground. A recent article in the South China Morning Post (a Hong Kong-based media outlet focused on Mainland China) highlighted the increasing trend of “crying spots” in Chinese cities, including courthouses and subway stations, as places to openly display emotions while maintaining a level of anonymity. The report has linked these spaces to growing youth stress, urban alienation, and economic uncertainty, situating them within a broader social context. Nevertheless, the Chinese domestic reaction from pro-government analysts on social media has been accusing the “foreign media” of exaggerating and “weaponizing” individual cases to slander China’s social reality. They have argued that turning isolated moments of sadness into a broader narrative is a deliberate distortion meant to spread “pessimism” both at home and abroad. In this framing, distress itself becomes suspicious as an imported virus of negativity.
Meanwhile, economic downturns intensify political despair by stripping away the distractions of material security and exposing the fragility of hope: when employment becomes scarce and the future is clouded with uncertainty, sanguine emotional expressions tend to diminish. “There is something unpleasant in the air,” a recent exhibition at Diplomatic Residence Compound No. 12, was one of the few public spaces to openly recognize the social effects of economic decline, where public media could only praise the work of the government on the surface. Located within Beijing’s historic Diplomatic Residence Compound, DRC No. 12 is a contemporary art space that carries the weight of China’s diplomatic history. Once serving as a place for foreign interactions, its transformation into a hub for experimental cultural production creates tension between memory and resistance.
In contrast to the domestic media and analyses that obscured or downplayed social realities, this exhibition confronted it with an unusual honesty. The show itself, using the “by appointment only” tactic to escape censorship, exposed the true voices of those working in the e-commerce sector in China. The installation scattered embroidered fabric strips bearing fragments of text across the floor, their modest scale and muted colors echoing the overlooked lives of ordinary people. To engage with the work, viewers had to stoop, crouch, or kneel — mirroring the physical posture of those forced to live close to the ground, pressed together, unnoticed. The act of rummaging through these discarded strips to uncover what lay beneath became a metaphor for the effort required to confront buried realities: beneath the surface of apparent harmony lies a tangle of hardship, frustration, and unacknowledged pain. It is a way of telling the true stories by asking the true questions that have penetrated the surface of the society.
Parallel to this curatorial practice, earlier this year, I myself also set up a “crying corner” in Shenzhen (for females only). It was a modest intervention — just a small designated space in a busy area, also “by appointment only”. There was no stage, no performance, no requirement to explain oneself. People could step in, remain unseen by passers-by, and leave without a word. Privacy was the core principle — even with this discretion, the demand was immediate and striking. Within a few days of setting it up, the corner was quietly in use. People came and went at different times of day, sometimes in quick succession. I never asked for names or stories, but the steady presence of visitors said enough: the need for safe, visible, and non-judgmental places to release emotions is not an indulgence — it is a necessity.
Like the installation “There is something unpleasant in the air,” the “crying corner” made something usually hidden visible (although my initial intention was merely intuitive rather than stressing a structural problem). But it also per se revealed how thoroughly people have internalized the belief that their emotions must be contained and concealed. Especially in East Asian societies, this is also a feature to be characterized — people are repressed from expressing their feelings, so that they cannot find an exit.
One thing needs to be addressed is that “political depression,” in my article, is never to be understood the same as in Berlant’s address of neoliberalist regimes’ “cruel optimism”. Instead, it is a state of being repressed, losing the public realm. Anyhow, political depression is not a vague malaise; it is the cumulative exhaustion produced by repression — repression of speech, of movement, of political participation, and of the very right to feel despair. In times of economic downturn, when material insecurity amplifies every anxiety, this exhaustion becomes harder to hide. Yet the dominant response from pro-government commentators is to reframe public distress as an aberration — or worse, as a foreign distortion — insisting that acknowledgment itself would be destabilizing. This is not analysis; it is weaponized denial.
“Curating...can be a dispersed form of resistance.”
In the meantime, spaces like DRC No.12 and my Shenzhen “crying corner” counter this denial by making the suppressed visible and giving it form. Of course, these settlements can never solve the structural causes of political depression. However, they insist that such feelings deserve space in public life. By providing a tangible site where grief, anger, and fatigue can exist without being pathologized or silenced, these interventions chip away at the sanctioned narrative. Curating, in this sense, can be a dispersed form of resistance — building micro-publics in which emotions are neither hidden nor policed, and where the act of seeing and being seen becomes a small but vital refusal of the terms imposed by power.
By stating above, I also don’t mean to be pessimistic; cultural resistance, such as the designated curating, has gone on in places in China on a widespread basis. They offer us some ephemeral relief and alternative imaginaries. To my knowledge, the politics of affect in China often unfold in the understated margins of cultural production, as they do in contemporary art practices. These distressed voices from curating spaces define themselves; and curatorial practices can be subtly radical.
Ruomin Huang is an independent art writer/curator/researcher based in Guangzhou/Hong Kong. Her research interests lie in contemporary Chinese art, diasporic communities, and identity construction issues.
To cite this essay, please use the bibliographic entry suggested below:
Ruomin Huang, “‘By Appointment Only’: Domestic Political Depression and Curatorial Resistance in China,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, August 31, 2025; https://doi.org/10.52698/PBRV4698.