Stone Struggles: Toward a Media Theory of Steles in North China

In the early twenty-first century, the Shanxi Province in North China saw a boom in stone steles. Communities pooled their resources to construct large tablets inscribed with texts and images commemorating local events. This coincided with the expansion of the internet, for which China was the world's largest online userbase by 2008. Against the proliferation of digital technologies, investment in the ancient medium of the stele may seem outdated. Yet, for the residents of Shanxi, stone tablets provided a steadfastness that digital technologies could not guarantee. This article asks what it would mean to take steles seriously, not just as relics of the past but as contemporary communication practices in today's digital world.