August 24 2007, Mr Guo Huazhong my teacher in Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art has passed away.
Wish you a good journey to the other side of the world. Thank you for what you have done as an artist and educator even in the difficult time of life.
愿郭老师一路好走。感谢您作为艺术家，教育者，即使在生命最困难的时候仍是一位勇士。
This is a video I edited for XLR8R TV about How to make a mixtape.
Thanks for Kerry McLaughlin and Ryan Junell!
This is episode 23 of XLR8R TV. Click here to view video.
An article on news.bbc.co.uk on Saturday talks about China had set new rules to restrict parents and doctors to have child-abortion for pursing boys. Reading and thinking about causes and aftermath of one-child policy on everyday life are always interesting to me. I am the first generation of Chinese single child, born in 1981, which was one year after the policy been officially released.
Now China is facing a serious side effect of One-Child policy, which might just be as bad as the overpopulated problem caused by 50’s propaganda “The more People, the stronger we are.” * Male population vs female in China is seriously imbalance. There are so many more men that it is not enough wives for everyone. It is estimated that by 2020, there will be 30 million more men than women in China.
Historically Chinese people desire to have boys more than girls. There are mainly two reasons. One non-practical reason is because many Chinese believe in only boys can continue the root of the family and they will ensure the same family names pass on to generations. The practical reason is people believe boys can make more money than girls. Certainly it is only true when a house hold is relied on farming and heavy duty labors. But as many places became more and more urbanized and many people migrate from rural towns and villages to bigger cities to make money, the only practical reason is not that practical anymore.
But as always the non-practical reasons are dominant factors, just like religion that doesn’t need much scientific reasoning but many people hold strong belief in. Actually long before urbanization, Chinese should have understand that boys made more money than girls were not true. How many times that sad story had repeat in movies and novels. The story of in the feudal society a poor family was dying for hunger or diseases, the youngest daughter was forced to be sold to pay off debt or in exchange of money. In “The Chinese in America” by Iris Chang, she narrates some women got sold by their family to become prostitute in America. Many of them had tragic life and tried to escape from prostitution; some of them entered into mainstream society either became popular and rich prostitutes, open their own prostitute houses, or married with Caucasian. For those women who came to US as wives, life in America changed their fate of an “ornamental being” in China. Many of them worked as seamstress, laundry-women or gardeners and some making same or more money than their husbands.
In the end, this idea of Chinese girls are subordinate beings seems to be a fabricated idea by a group of farmers sitting by their land and thinking about how their wives would have made them hot meals at home and give them sex at night. To be more precise the idea come from Confucianism. China is not a religious country as America. But many people see Confucianism as a religion and it’s influence on Chinese ethic and value is rather deep.
Women’s role was defined in Confucianism’s social relationship that women should be obedient to their husbands and give births. More fundamentally, Confucius also coined the hierarchy of four classes where farmer is the second of the four classes. The hierarchy is the scholar, the farmer, the craftsman, and the lowest of all is the merchant. So traditionally farmers were to received more social respect than merchant. But as economic structure changed in modern China, practically farmers are no longer a social dominant class.
Certainly this is an old topic and the bias exists everywhere, not just China. But when it coincides with one-child policy, things become more interesting and dramatic. Why? Because Chinese people never give up to find their ways to get around rules. Many couples would have abortion if they found out the wife had a girl, so that they can have another pregnancy until they have boy. Some other tactics people did was to take fertilized pill so that they can have multiple pregnancy. So in some town there is high percentage of twins.
Subsequently, in the most outstanding gender imbalance area according to BBC article, “There were 163.5 boys for every 100 girls aged up to four in the eastern city of Lianyungang”. Wives shortage is common in many cities and towns. In Hainan, men are spending years to find wives. And these bachelors have to cook and do all the housework by themselves instead of having women waiting on them.
So what are the possible future for China in a gender imbalance society with more male than female?
1. Men will be more involved in domestic work.
2. More violence on street between bachelors.
3. Perception of Gender in China become more neutral. According an interview of Chinese kindergarden teachers, with large percentage of boys, girls were imitating boys’ behavior. “One girl beats off four boys who try to have a look at what she was drawing.”
4. Homosexuality will increase and it will be more socially accepted.
5. Interracial marriage should be encouraged.
6. Polyandry marriage. This used to be a traditional marriage practice in Tibet and some other places. And it exists among other mammals when male are more than female. The advantage of Polyandry marriage is that it diminish birthrate of a society rather than increase. A woman can only have one birth in certain period of time. This might be a better solution than one-child policy for China. But since old China used to praise a husband had many wives as possession, I am afraid it will take some time for China to accept the idea.
Monday is always sort of a strange day of the week, isn’t it? I was working in the apartment the whole day and didn’t step out till the afternoon before the sun went down. My eyes were still adjusting from the short-sighted computer vision to the more active street vision. Suddenly, I ran into my friend Miette.
I just met Miette not too long ago. She is a very beautiful and tall Chinese American girl. She looked even taller then because she was wearing highheels. Miette walked with two girls. One was Asian like Miette and the other one was blond. Miette and one of the girls were wearing jackets covering the dresses underneath. The other girl who didn’t have a jacket on was in tight baroque, s&m outfit. Miette pointed to me the slogan on her friend’s tight pants: Use glass dildo on my ass. I didn’t pay much attention. They were carrying a lot of boxes so I volunteered to help them carry the boxes to the place they were headed.
When we approached an intersection as I was still puzzling what kind of scene we made with the combination of clothes, highheels and boxes, a van making a turn hit the girl in sexiest outfit. The light was green for passengers . We were all shocked and paused. Luckily the girl didn’t get hurt and she was still standing with her phone in her hand. The van did not stop and its window did not even roll down. Instead, the van drove away as if nothing had happened. People passed by were staring at us as we were yelling at the van…
We finally made it to the store with those boxes and with everyone walking alive. The store was small but displaying all kinds of glass dildos. It was a glass dildo shop! They were preparing to have a grand opening that night. Miette took off her jacket and revealed her sexy work outfit. Miette told me the girl who got hit by the van was the owner of the shop. So I finally made sense of the slogan.
I have been putting up more projects up on this site if you haven’t notice the side menu. Looking through my hard drives I saw some of my older videos. Concorde is one of them. At the time my plan was to make a music video with only fruits I could get from my corner stores at the time. My friend Sebastien provided me the music. His grandfather was the composer of Concorde.
Sunday I went to Little Tree gallery planning to do some documentation on video project “Show Some Color #1. We found the wire for the speaker was cut in half and a noise complaint note was left at the door by SFPD. I wasn’t sure if the police climbed up and cut the wire or the neighbors did.
I don’t really feel discouraging. That’s what happen when the work is in the reality. After I went home I happened to checked out Walker’s website and listened to Thomas Hirschhorn’s talk in 2006. I shared the same thought with his idea of confronting the reality. He talked about one of his old project for which he constructed a modern art museum within a housing project and did exhibitions with collection from major museums for 8 weeks. Hirschhorn emphasized that the project was not a social project nor a community project . It was purely art. Therefore the notions of failure and success were not criteria for the project. Failure and success both exist, just like our everyday life.
Brent from Little Tree gallery called me this morning about the incident. The show will be continue for this week and there will be headphones installed in front of the window to solve the neighbors complaint.
“Color #1″ is up and playing in Little Tree gallery 24 hours from now till 8/19. Go by and take a look. I promise you will want to hear what are the girls talking about. After installing the work today I realize it’s best to view at night. The project was made in Little Tree gallery on August 6 and now display in the gallery window. You will need to watch and HEAR the video from the street (hopefully people live up stair of the gallery is not going to complain about the girl-talks 24 hours.)
I am really excited about the project especially it got three great girls involve in the video. They were first time met on the shooting date and challenged to talk to each other about the most intimate topics. Now I believe they already became friends. This is also the first collaboration of Little Tree gallery and me. Thank you all!
More information about the video is follow: (more…)
When I was working on project DivaTV, back in episode 4 of the show, Kelda had interviewed Chauncey Bailey in the studio of Our TV. Yesterday, Bailey was reported to be murdered on the street in Oakland when he was going to work at 7AM. Bailey was an advocator of black media and an out spoken figure. Even my connection of Bailey is merely on editing that video of interview, I am truely shock and sad. (More on the case from today’s news)
