Discover the extraordinary in ordinary life

With a few taps on a review app, you can find great restaurants nearby. “Happy Fly” makes spontaneous weekend trips across the country feel totally normal. On video platforms, we scroll through 24-hour diaries of strangers…

Our lives are packed with fast, bite-sized content that seems to fill every moment—but leaves us feeling less and less fulfilled. In this talk, “human observer” Candy Yang invites us to look at everyday life through her anthropological lens. We follow her into Beijing’s hutongs to uncover the stories behind old sofas, and step into friends’ living room galleries to witness how relationships shift and evolve.When we pay attention to life itself, it could be as simple as listening to a passing conversation on the way home, looking up for a minute to watch the sky change colors, or reconnecting with people and places—friends, neighbors, parks, flowers, bricks.The tender, moving moments that truly touch us are often hidden in the most ordinary parts of daily life. Candy Yang is an anthropologist committed to becoming an artist of everyday life. With over a decade of experience in youth culture studies, she has provided insights and consulting for companies and innovation groups across China and beyond. She excels at interpreting and shaping the everyday through an anthropological lens and is also a vibrant cultural connector and community builder. Candy has initiated hundreds of youth events, co-creation workshops, and community art programs like “Sofa Anthropology in the Hutongs”, “Open Zoo”, and “Friends’ Living Room Art Gallery”. She’s been invited to speak and moderate at events hosted by the 21st Century Education Research Institute, Hong Kong’s MaD Conference, Design For Change China, and more.