In Shenzhen, umbrellas are one of the most common accessories, and every household has several, are lent to friends whenever the rain catches us unawares. Businesses have different strategies for holding wet umbrellas. A bucket at the door is the most common, while upscale hotels offer storage in racks designed specifically for umbrellas. In Hong Kong, wet umbrellas are sealed in long, thin plastic bags and then carried through malls. Of course, umbrellas only keep you dry during soft, vertical rains. When a typhoon blows, the rain seems suddenly freed from natural constraints, rushing parallel to the street or even surging up from the ground, soaking a pedestrian in less than a minute. During those storms, folks take shelter and wait. All too often, arriving wet leads to catching cold in over air-conditioned public spaces.

Umbrellas also protect skin from the sun’s poisons. During hot, summer months, women use umbrellas as parasols, to protect their skin from tanning. For most, dark skin signals manual labor, and the booming beauty industry thrives by selling whiter, softer, smoother skin. Indeed, friends have chided my carelessness in going out without an umbrella; there are also creams to help reduce unsightly freckles. However, reversing the rule reveals most clearly the class of skin color. Among the most modern youth, who have adopted the X-treme sports look if not the lifestyle, a tan radiates health, leisure, and disposable incomes.

Like all of the found objects, Shenzhen’s umbrellas point to the symbolic materiality of inhabitation. Whether through cooking, or going to work, or sharing a pot of tea, the semiotics of caring (or not) for one’s and others’ bodies constitutes daily life. Anthropology, at least as I am coming to understand it, seems defined by a curiosity about how those standards are realized, debated, and changed across time and place.

Unlike the teapot or bike tire, however, the umbrella clearly evokes the lived intersection of gender and class. It is not simply that there are manly and ladylike umbrellas, but also that among urban women wet, dry, white, tanned, and freckled bodies have all sorts of potential meanings—I forgot my umbrella; I’m a migrant worker; I’m a demure young secretary; I’m a sophisticated older woman, who knows how to care for herself; I’m an edgy-sexy college student. In fact, most people I’ve spoken with assume that all women are naturally concerned about how they look and healthy skin is the prerequisite to looking good. Only those who can’t afford skin products or are too busy working neglect their skin. Women in Shenzhen exfoliate, moisturize, and protect their skin because it announces who they are, establishing how interlocutors are to treat them.

Importantly, the relative unimportance of male skin in establishing social identity leaves rural men particularly vulnerable to the sun. Throughout Shenzhen, sanitation workers, who are mostly women, collect trash, wearing wide-brimmed hats, long-sleeved shirts, and gloves. However, construction workers, who are primarily men, labor wearing only pants and flip-flops. Their backs, chests, arms, and feet turn dark brown, “black” according to my friends. This exposed skin is considered ugly and coarse, dirty. All too quickly these evaluations become identified with the workers; they are low quality, as anyone can see. Of course, managers and engineers work onsite wearing shirts, pants, gloves, and boots.

These pictures (http://pics.livejournal.com/maryannodonnell/gallery/00007r7f) give a sense of the intensity of the sun in Shenzhen, reminding us that in addition to these external meanings, umbrellas also point to the fact that heat burns, destroying skin and dehydrating bodies. Quite obviously, leaving workers to labor under a semi-tropical sun, 12-hours a day to collect garbage or build air-conditioned buildings actualizes the neglect of some bodies so that other bodies might thrive. At this moment, the anthropological project changes from mere curiosity to an invitation to re-think how we do and do not care for our own and others’ bodies.