central nation: The Hours

It’s been a while since I wrote an entry. My thoughts regarding this project has spiralled out like a endless web with no end. Having just spent 3 weeks in Beijing, I am now back in Hong Kong for a few weeks. In Beijing I spent time meeting new people and getting a sense of the place. While there, I touched base with an editor of a Chinese publisher who specializes in Chinese culture and history, a few hip hop musicians, a volunteer from the Sichuan earthquake, a volunteer for the Beijing Olympics, a self published amateur photographer/writer/traveller, amongst a few others.

I had originally conceived of the project with only having interviews with anyone with a Chinese background that was not directly from the mainland. I was trying to seek a middle ground of answers from overseas and Hong Kong Chinese. It was in the months of May and June when I met some students and professionals from the mainland that I began to think about entering that into to doc. I never got around to doing an interview with anyone I had met in the UK during those months but hope to in the future. This discourse of exploring and talking to people extended as I was in Beijing.

To myself, it was not an exercise to seek out subjects, but to be among the people I was trying to grow a deeper understanding of. During my first trip two years ago, I found Beijing a beguiling place that kept me interested. Though none of that interest has receded, I found I an absence of contact with the people that lived and worked there. Along with another desire of mine to live and work in Beijing, I sought to know more people there.

The editor said about herself, ‘the more I read, the more I realize how little I know’. Which is how I felt after conversing with her. She expressed her doubts about the western world understanding the Chinese. She said it would take a long time, if ever. I agree that people of the east are fundamentally different in how they operate but I cannot agree that understanding cannot come about. I have lived in London most of my life and I soon fully realized that I would have to live on the mainland and know the people in order to understand the country and people more. What seemed normal to me growing up in a Chinese background became less common to me in adulthood and now trying to rediscover this way of life. It was not only a traditional thinking I was seeking to absorb as a concept in my head, it was the new young Chinese who are a new breed of Chinese who know little about their ancient history and care less about tradition. It was this new breed who are interested in the world outside it’s borders yet love China without reservation; who are less interested in money than their Hong Kong cousins but more about other cultures and discourses. It was this new breed that would be it’s future.

Agang was a designer, (of what discipline I am unsure) before he quit his job, raised some money and travelled around (mostly) rural areas of China. On his way he posted a blog and photographs. Those photographs became a three volume book. A self published book as no publisher would publish it. It is an inspiring book to millions of Chinese who wish to travel all over China. It is deeply human and full of love for the people and geography. When you read it you feel as though you are travelling with him. I met Agang at the book signing in Xidan. He was humble and didn’t speak any English. He and his team were very helpful. We briefly spoke of publishing his book internationally and as he had no contacts, he suggested if I knew of any we would keep in touch. In a sense, Agang did what I have always wanted to do too. With this doc project, I am trying to do in film what he has done in photography, although with different intent in mind and with a stronger verbal narrative. If I could help bring this book to the international market, I feel I would have helped in some small way of bringing about a little more understanding about China. As even as I looked through the book, the diversity in ethnic cultures in China was vast and to represent it in even a small way was no small task. In this, I also found rural China, comprising the majority population, was a neglected reality and concept in the western psyche.

In the longer reality of this project which will span years, I am at a point where I need to rethink many things because at the moment, I am just information gathering, which might indeed, take years to complete and shoot. As for me, it is a personal project and life exploration and thus long term planning is difficult and unpredictable. I am not ticking boxes, looking for sound bites or working to a deadline. But I have realized that it has become a vast and seemingly never ending piece of dialogue that will need to be whittled down into digestible pieces of work.

Some stills from video I shot for Sexy Beijing, of youth, from the Modern Sky music festival, rehearsals with Beijing Live Hip Hop experience and their gig with Twisted Machine. Thanks to Anna Sophie Loewenberg (at SexyBeijing) and Jamel Mims for connecting me to this side of Beijing youth culture. �