AFFECTIVE LOGISTICS AND LOGISTICAL AFFECT: TRANSNATIONAL CIRCULATION OF CHINESE MEDICINE LIANHUAQINGWEN (LHQW)

Amidst a global pandemic that disrupted supply chains and heightened geopolitical tensions between China and the US, a particular flow of Chinese government-approved medicine—Lianhua Qingwen (LHQW)—persisted between Chinese parents and their migrant children in the US. Despite controversies and formidable challenges in sourcing, shipping, and distributing this medicine, transnational Chinese families undertook creative and labor-intensive logistical projects to ensure its timely delivery. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with young Chinese migrants in the US, as well as material and audiovisual artifacts of their pandemic experiences, the study shows how the transnational logistics of LHQW constituted a "system of systems" involving digital technologies, informal economies, and translocal sociality. Situated in a precarious pandemic milieu, LHQW logistics is both vulnerable to intense affect and contingent on phatic labor. By tracing the difficult trajectories of LHQW, this study highlights the material and affective dimensions of transnational circulation, illustrating how logistics became a lens for understanding kinship, healing, and resilience during times of crisis.