Speaking to Nobody
2022-ongoing
"I was born in the Diaoti tribe of the Li ethnic group. I have three mothers and six siblings. There are no husbands, wives, or fathers, only mothers and uncles in the family. Neither women nor men need to get married. When the two fall in love, they live together at night and return to their mother's big family separately to work in the daytime. If they break up, the two take a piece of black cloth, each holding one side, then pull and tear it apart forcefully. Two of my mothers have much of those black fabric, and two pictures of me. Honestly, I have never seen myself, there appear to be two "I"s in the pictures — a female one and a male one."
"In 1989, I left the Diaoti tribe and moved to the border with my six siblings to start our jade business. On the day we left, a layer of purple haze rose from the ground, and gradually the whole tribe was shrouded like a ball. The wind blew, and there is nothing left but Mother Limu Mountain. Outside the tribe is a desolate land with totally different time and space. Many memories — the faces of my mothers, my face, and even myself, began to blur after settling down. I felt as if I was from nowhere, with no history, no past, only the present."
"The men here stared at me with their mouths wide open, they said, "you, a beautiful lady, I hope you can marry me and be my wife." Who are you? Who am I? I was driving, and the distance suddenly began to distort, everything was vague in a trance, and the road became a circular hole. I was dragged into the hole. It seemed that countless faces identical to mine flashed in front of me and changed in different fashions. Then, the net of the outside barren land was stripped from my present, and I saw the dense net of control expanding and growing like spiders weaving webs. Aggression, conflict, possession, vulnerability, oblivion, obedience. The openings of the net grew larger and larger, and they brought me back here."
"On the altar, the fire was burning. There sat a woman-like person with black and regular lines tattooed on "her" face and body. "She" had long dark hair with gray and a thick beard. "Her" feet were glued together like a mermaid's tail. "She" sat in the middle of the crowd, looked at me, and took off the "long" hair. Under the short and curly hair, the face was familiar and strange. Behind "her" stood continuous mountains — Mother Limu Mountain, as I recognized. Its face and body featured the mermaid pattern of the Diaoti tribe. Mother Limu Mountain came to me, brought me my history and my past, let them enrich me, and made them part of me. When I walked in, when you approached me and when you listened to me — who am I telling this story to?"