Equal before time: on the sensory suspension of accumulated time in Sichuan, China

Food and alcohol indulgence, along with tea‐drinking, gambling, and gossip, are integral to a characteristically Sichuanese ethos of ‘life enjoyment’ ( xiangshou shenghuo ). Beyond mere pleasure, sensory, ludic, and comic experiences temporarily strip participants of both their formal and subjective qualities. At the heart of this ethos thus lies a mode of relationality I understand as ‘pure sociability’ (Simmel). In pure sociability, mutual recognition and presentism intertwine: the senses are brought in sync not just for their somatic impact but as time‐space compressors that can make subjects feel fully relatable and thus realized. In redefining personhood to a baseline of sensorial experience, self and other reshape their relationship to time and to affluence, and subtly evade state‐backed imperatives of accumulated distinction. I suggest that the prominence of pure sociability in Sichuan has much to do with forging society anew over the recent three centuries in an emptied land of agricultural abundance where solidified claims to regional belonging or cultural exclusivity were largely absent. Conceptually, I aim to uncouple the problem of superfluous time from the logics of both linearity and homogenized identity, and instead foreground the human propensity for play as a possible foundation to both selfhood and temporal existence.