& GHOST STORIES

Abstract

Sometimes it’s simpler not to know—the interrogation of an origin story can send us down complex and widereaching rabbit holes. This text is an autoethnography, delving into my personal family history, detailing the belonging/non-belonging of a mixed-race Chinese-Danish individual, and the chronicling of my family’s tethering to the city Baotou, home to China’s largest rare earth mineral mine. Jumping between a first-person account of my grandfather’s funeral in Baotou and an academic register detailing the violent history and destructive effects of the mining upon its locality, the writing mimics the cognitive dissonance experienced by the diasporic subject who belongs to both sides of a planet divided between extraction and consumption. While exemplified via diasporic subjecthood, this cognitive dissonance is one that extends to us all in the face of our shared climate crisis.