Kinnison, L.Q. (2016). Power, integrity, and mask -- An attempt to disentangle the Chinese face concept. USA: Wofford College. Available at: www.sciencedirect.com (accessed 13 May 2021).

Annotation

Because my project involved sociology and some psychological content, my study support tutor encouraged me to search for some papers to extract the required content and summarize it. When I search for The Presentation of the Self in Everyday by Erving Goffman, I particularly looked for articles that cited Goffman's paper with the keyword MASK. And later I found this article by Li QIng Kinnison which introduces the meaning of mask specifically in Chinese society.

According to this article, Hu was the first person who proposed both moral and social aspects of Chinese face, which are denoted respectively by the two Chinese lexemes liǎn (脸) and miànzi (面子) for the English word face. One aspect of what Hu says, according to miànzi (面子), is the social aspect of the Chinese face, which represents one's reputation through life, success and showing off achievements. The other aspect, liǎn (脸), is the moral one, which represents a society's trust in the integrity of its moral character.

Chinese society generally requires people to act with miànzi, therefore many people tend to present themselves as better than the status quo. This has led to the creation of a variety of social masks. For example, in addition to following the employer's instructions to perform their job duties, employees must also observe the requests that go beyond the scope of official duties, such as accompanying the boss to social events or doing personal chores for the boss, which is simply based on considerations of prejudice against the employer. As a result, some employees will wear a workplace mask when they are asked to attend a drinking event even though they are not willing to do so, resulting in the multifaceted nature of a person.

This article had a profound impact on my mask design and helped me better understand the generation of social masks. The cow mask I designed was especially inspired by this article. The cow symbolizes a hard-working worker. I used the element of Mobius Ring to symbolize the boredom and repetition of the workplace, and the element of tears to reflect some employees who were squeezed and forced to participate in the company etiquette.

Research

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