Dread Jade Tower 又恐瓊樓玉宇
1. Barcode knows
2. Hyperplasia
3. New Pig Recruits
4. How dare you
1. World Retail Logic: The Better-Life Machine
Retail is no longer where we shop. It is where reality learns to recognise itself.
The world is now built upon a retail logic.
After the pandemic, surveillance no longer arrived with the police. It arrived with delivery. The virus itself became an actor within this network. From the rise of the East during the pandemic to today’s global wars, it is difficult to say which came first, or whether the outcome has even arrived.
It is precisely the momentum generated by all of this that has produced a retail world—or perhaps the modern world has never been anything else.
Retail is a custom industry where products are sold to individuals across both physical and digital markets. Connections are formed through objects and capital, alongside machines, waste and labour. It has become the fundamental condition of contemporary life.
Life on this planet is organised through this process.
The barcode knows.
It may seem cliché to repeat this. Since the Industrial Revolution we have all lived within such a condition. The question is not why retail exists, but why this logic has remained unchanged for more than two hundred years—continuously expanding into something larger: the global market, online retail, TikTok reels. It is no longer simply a marketplace. It has become a platform upon which people live.
2. A Letter to the Aliens
I imagine that when the aliens finally arrive, they will be amazed by this logic.
Because their bodies have already become part of it.
By the time they arrive, they have already become toys, key chains, T-shirts, Halloween masks, plastic skeletons and breakfast cereal mascots.
Retail logic may prove to be a stronger weapon than star warships when facing an unknown visitor.
How dare you come to Earth without accepting the rules of the market?
3. Dread Jade Towers
I yearn to soar upon the wind and return to the heavens, Yet I fear the crystal palaces and jade pavilions, For the cold of such lofty heights is more than one can bear.
In the retail world, the image is always clear. A heavenly life appears on the Tube, in Soho, or at the university—as an advertisement for a better life.
The aliens will love it. It will become their Jade Towers.
The whole universe should be united. we have finally found a common language. It is not peace. It is a better life with the Jet2holiday.