遠處

DISTANT

Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, United Kingdom

Latitude: 51.5089252 51° 30' 32.131'' N
Longitude: -0.1961978 -0° 11' 46.312'' E

罗甸县 / Luodian, 黔南 Qiannan, 贵州省, 中国

Latitude: 25.45 25° 27' 0.000'' N
Longitude: 106.51667 106° 31' 0.012'' E

Somewhere in between 5,523.12 miles and 17 years
Is that distant place fading in my mind...

DISTANT
Cataloguing the fond memories of a distant place

Everything looks blurry now
That distant place still somehow floats around my scattered mind
The crescent silver knives tucked away in bamboo baskets
The smell of moist wooden walls
Of moss that covers up the food of the hills
Of rice bubbling in big pots lit on firewoods
And the pungent ham hanging from low ceilings
The sound of twigs crackling in the under table fire pit
Of feisty chickens rushing home at dusk
Of the muffled chatting of elderlies from afar
And of the distant shouts that fade away with the river flow
Now I'm sitting all the way across the world
Longing for that moment of quiet and harmony
Attempting to hold on to that corner of the huose
Whatever's left of my memory of that distant place

The summer of 2004, I took a trip to the rural village in south-western China where my father grew up in. I stayed in the family's traditional wooden house, which has been demolished a few years ago from now. My aunt, who still resides in the village, has moved to a newly built townhouse across the river. This project attempts to retrace a sentiment of personal nostalgia, a distant memory as a child. I decided to revisit it as the wondrous 6-year-old who's been there, perceiving it as a wonder that's slipping through the cluster of the world of information that I'm living in. It stood there, quietly and permanently. It is a process of retrieving, reimagining, reconnecting and healing. It is my story, but you are invited to share it with me.

The Red Candles

They have such a distinct smell
It imprints on my blurring memory of the wooden house
The smell of oil and paper wrapped in my tongue
I went outside with a red candle
The single source of light amidst pitch black
With distant chirping and croaking non-stop
I looked up
There were a million shining spots in the sky

Muye

The festive feasts
Families gathered together
Sitting around low wooden tables
Each has to bring their own wooden stool
All furnitures marked by names come together
So they won't lose their way home

The Harvest

I knew this as the fish festival
It is that one day that the rice farms get drained
All the fishes that reside in there come together
Piled up in bamboo baskets
Then I watch them struggle for their lives
In those big plastic bowls
It was awful
But delicious

Maggie Yang
Illustrator, Film maker, Animator based in London
245575@network.rca.ac.uk

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