10 Oct 2025
Food and music. Two things I’ve always felt bring people real joy. They transport us back in time, pulling up memories of places and people we thought we’d forgotten. Growing up, I would follow my grandmother to the markets to buy ingredients for rice dumplings. Eating them now takes me back to the dining table with her, wrapping rice in bamboo leaves and tying each parcel with string.
Maybe that’s why, whenever I travel to a new city, the first place I visit is the morning market. They open early and show how a city wakes and slowly reveals itself.
This year, I visited China a few times: Yunnan, Chongqing, Xi’an, and Chengdu. In every city, local markets mix produce and street food into one living space. Most open by 5 a.m. and close before noon. They hit all your senses at once. Fresh vegetables stacked high. Vendors shouting prices over the noise. The smell of meat, seafood, and wet floors in the air. Fruits you rarely see back home, cool to the touch. And then the best part: tasting it all. Stalls serving bowls of noodles and dumplings between the morning tussles for the freshest produce. You pause for a few bites, wipe the sweat off your face, and keep moving.
Markets are about people: what they buy, what they need, how they gather. Food connects people across language and culture, and markets show what matters in everyday life.
You see more here than you ever will in a Michelin-starred restaurant or an Instagram reel: people shopping, eating, arguing, playing chess, stretching, gossiping, catching up.
I’ve been taking more field trips to get out of the studio and into people’s environments. Some are planned around events and meetings. Others are simply to wander and watch people doing ordinary things. Even the smallest activities carry meaning if you notice them. Any interaction can be read and understood. That’s the work.
Found is a new series of field notes on what can be learned from the objects around us.
—
Felix Ng
Co-founder, Anonymous
@felix.anonymous