Wandering China

From Evan Osnos, a New Yorker staff writer living in Beijing: an interview with British photographer Adrian Fisk as he maps out a collage of Chinese values with his iSpeakChina project. What an endeavour traversing China’s peripheries with visual sociology – it has certainly sown some seeds in my head. I agree to a large extent that it will keep getting harder – this act of defining Chinese values as the divides of China’s peripheries just seem getting wider and wider; or, better represented.

For more on iSpeakChina, go here.

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Letter from China: A collage of Chinese values
Posted by Evan Osnos
Source – New Yorker, published March 21, 2012

Avril Lu. Photo: Adrian Fisk

I’ve been spending time with young Chinese people recently, talking about their beliefs and priorities (more on that soon), which has reminded me just how difficult a task it is to define Chinese values these days. So I was struck when I came upon these photos by the British photographer Adrian Fisk. The project, iSpeakChina, evolved, as he puts it, from a twelve-thousand-five-hundred kilometer journey through China, meeting people aged sixteen to thirty and giving them a paper on which they could write anything they chose. Fisk told me it has inspired his next project, iSpeakGlobal, which is supported by the United Nations Population Fund. I asked him some questions:

Which picture from the China project stays with you most? How did you meet?

It is hard to pin down the one image that made the deepest impression on me—as many of them did. But if I had to pick one, I would say the photograph of Avril Lui (above) taken in Guangxi Province. Avril had recently graduated from university in Hunan Province, and I met her when my translator and I went to a place teaching English as a summer course. Her statement was: “We are the lost generation. I’m confused about the world.” This photograph seems to have struck a chord with many of the young Chinese who have viewed it. I think the pace of change has been so rapid in China in these last two decades that many of the young are in a spin which has left them somewhat confused. Their parents’ generation had a clear idea of what their identity was and the better life they were struggling for. Now that that better world has arrived it can be argued that life for the Chinese youth might have more opportunity but has in turn become more complicated with difficult career decisions, an increasingly materialistic society, and a complex relationship with the West. All this contributes to a sense of confusion. Avril is also referring to the fact that her parents generation rarely talks about or acknowledges the Cultural Revolution that had so much impact on Chinese society at the time—or for that matter any history, particularly, of more recent times. There is a sense amongst some young Chinese that they have arrived; but, where from, and has it been worth it? I also like this photograph because of the classic building in the background and the traditionally dressed man in blue on the bicycle. These visual keys are a nod to the world from which China has so recently arrived from. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Chinese Model, Culture, Democracy, Domestic Growth, Government & Policy, Human Rights, Mapping Feelings, Media, New Yorker, People, Social, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities