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Abstract
Homecoming has been a complex concept affecting Chinese people of every generation since ancient times. As China underwent accelerating urbanization from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s, the landscape of urban and rural China witnessed unprecedented change. Out of sensitivity to the evolution of social landscape and the participants of the great migration from the countryside/towns to big cities, Chinese photographers of the late 1970s and the early 1980s took photographs with high self-consciousness and knowledge of the characteristics of the time. Against the backdrop of globalization, they continued with various endeavors on the “photography of social landscapes,” which emerged in world photography in the 1960s, recording the people and stories in their hometowns and offering a series of personalized works with distinctive local features. This article will focus on three representative photographers from this generation—Muge, Park Il-kwon, and Zhang Xiao—and their new stories of homecoming to discuss how photographers, during a period of significant changes in rural China, recreated the identity of individuals and their communities by capturing the social landscape and took it as a remedy for their identity anxiety as “internal migrants.”
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 All Chinese names in this article follows the Chinese naming convention that put surnames at the beginning, followed by first names. This article is completed with the help of Professor Song Xiaoxia, Professor Wu Qiong, Chen Zhe, Shi Qing, Wei Ran, Dr Wu Ji, Dr Yang Yunchang, Yu Ying, and Zhai Jing, as well as the three main characters discussed in this article, Muge, Park Il-kwon, and Zhang Xiao. Here, I would like to express my deep gratitude. I also want to thank Dr Tang Hongfeng and the editors of Photography and Culture for their editorial work, as well as the two anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comment and suggestions for the article.
2 On December 25, 1993, the State Council issued “The Decision on Implementing the Tax-sharing Fiscal Management System”, which stipulated that the implementation of fiscal management system reform in the tax-sharing system in all provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government and cities under separate planning, and it was expected to officially be implemented on January 1, 1994. In March 2018, the National People’s Congress passed the reform plan proposed by the State Council to merge state and local taxation departments at the provincial and lower level, which means that the tax-sharing system reform has become history. The reform of the tax-sharing system significantly changed the fiscal proportion for the central and local governments. The local government used to take a greater proportion, but after the reform, it became a 50–50 distribution. As a result, local governments needed to raise funds from lands to make up for the lack of fiscal revenue. “In the new fiscal and tax system formed by the tax-sharing system reform, the controllable income of the local revenue comes from two sources: the first is the revenue of the added value for selling lands, and the second is the income tax gained by attracting business investment and expansion of cities, including the income tax and business tax on real estate and construction industries collected by the local governments.” (Wen Citation2021, 136)
3 The idea that 2012 was the turning point of China’s economic growth derives from the analysis of the Chinese economic professor Xu Yuan. According to him, economic data showed that in 2013, the GDP growth of China’s first-tier cities surpassed that of the second and third-tier cities; and the economic and population growth of consumption cities (with the total retail sales of consumer goods higher than the investments in fixed assets) surpassed that of investment cities (with the total retail sales of consumer goods lower than the investments in fixed assets). In this light, Xu Yuan believes that the main driving force of China’s economic growth changed fundamentally in 2013, and the growth turned from the industrialization-oriented mode into the urbanization-oriented mode, which relied on the development of large and medium-sized cities. For the complete analysis, see Xu (Citation2019, 6—24).
4 Post-sense Sensibility is a 10-year-long local experiment on art practice initiated with Alien Bodies and Delusion, an exhibition curated by Qiu Zhijie and Wu Meichun in 1999.
5 I employ the term “documentary-style” from Karin Becker Ohrn, who states: “There are many definitive characteristics of the documentary style in every aspect of creating and using photographs. Though not strict requirements, they can be referred to when comparing photographers of the documentary tradition—in terms of journalism, art, education, sociology, history, etc. Primarily, documentary-style works are believed to have a goal beyond the production of a fine print. The photographers want the audience to focus on the subject of their works, with, in many cases, the intention to pave the way for social reforms.” (Ohrn 1980, 36 cited in Wells Citation2015, 79)
6 The expression “the significant changes in rural China” derives from Great Changes in a Mountain Village, a novel written by the Chinese writer Zhou Libo. The novel tells the story of how the agricultural cooperative in Qingxi Village, Hunan Province, developed from a junior cooperative to a senior cooperative in 1955. As China carried out a series of political and economic reforms in the 1990s, “the significant changes in rural China” became a keyword of the time again.
7 The Ningxia photographer Wang Zheng started to engage in photography in the early 1980s and developed a deep friendship with photographers like Hou Dengke and Yu Deshui, who were about 10 years older than him. Since they developed together and influenced each other in artistic creation, we can regard them as “contemporaries” in a general sense.
8 Such as People Along the Yellow River (1968–1998) by Zhu Xianmin, Xi’an Memory (1990s) by Hu Wugong, The Wheat Hands (1982–2000) by Hou Dengke, The Flowing Yellow River (1990s–2000s) by Yu Deshui, Master: Henan, China, 1993–2000 by Jiang Jian and the Xihaigu Series (1995–2002) by Wang Zheng.
9 For the “homecoming photography” of this period, see “Return Home: Photographic Report of a Journey” by CitationFigliulo (2022), whose Chinese translation is included in Floating Island, a journal dedicated to Chinese photography and visual culture, published by the independent publisher JZZP based in Ningbo. However, although it shares some common objects with this article, Figliulo’s paper seems to simply enumerate the homecoming-themed photographic works of the mentioned period without analyzing the resurgence of “homecoming photography” in China or distinguishing the homecoming photographers of different generations. In order to stay focused on the major subject, this article will not discuss Figliulo’s paper further.
10 It is generally believed that the third wave of overseas study in China was marked by the reform and opening-up in 1978. In fact, it was not until the 1990s that self-funded overseas study matured and standardized. Then, it became common for Chinese students to go abroad for study. In the 2000s, China’s “millennials” became the main force in receiving higher education, and studying abroad for art became an intergenerational phenomenon for the first time. In 2010, Fei Dawei, a representative of the first generation of contemporary art curators in China with an international perspective, served as the chief curator of the sixth “Lianzhou Foto Festival” themed on “Does this world exist?” Fei, together with the curator team, invited a large number of young photographers with overseas art study experience, a considerable part of whom held their first exhibitions in China. It was an important collective debut of photographers of the “Millennium Generation” when China joined the WTO to go global in 2001.
11 Sze Tsung Leong, born in Mexico City, is a Chinese American photographer. He has created a series of works focusing on China’s urban planning in the 2000s, such as History Images (2002–2005).
12 Nadav Kanter was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, but has been based in London, England since 1985. His Yangtze-The Long River (2006–2007) has a great impact on many Chinese photographers.
13 In addition to providing relatively new formal language, the “formalism art emphasizing purity, calmness, and seriousness” in these photographers’ works, which continues from the 1960s, are quite consistent with the two situations, both the status quo and the appeal, of China’s “de-historicized history” and “de-politicized politics” since the 1990s. Therefore, it can provide a new expression space for Chinese photographers who care about social reality. So, we cannot regard an “imitator” as a simple “reference”. Also, for the idea of “de-politicized politics,” see Wang (Citation2008, 1–57). “De-historicized history” is my observation of China’s social changes based on “de-politicized politics,” which refers to a series of practices to construct a new existence that is relatively independent of the past by denying or destroying the existence that connects history. From the perspective of urban landscape, in the 2000s, China built a large number of functionalist landscapes that had little to do with the history of the land under the logic of “de-historicized history.” These landscapes are also the targets captured by photographers who are committed to shooting social landscapes in the same period.
14 Li Bai (AD 701-762) was one of the greatest poets of the Tang dynasty and in the history of China. Shudaonan was created to address the difficulty of entering the Shu area (i.e., today’s Sichuan province) due to its mountainous and complex topography.
15 Chongqing was originally a city in Sichuan Province. Shortly after Hessler arrived, Fuling came under the jurisdiction of Chongqing, which was separated from Sichuan Province in the following year and became the youngest and only inland municipality in western China.
16 Still Life (2006) is a movie directed by Jia Zhangke that tells the story of people searching for their spouses near the Three Gorges reservoir. It won the Golden Lion Award for Best Film at the 2006 Venice Film Festival.
17 From Li Bai’s poem, “Departing Early from Baidi City”. In the second line of the poem, the term li is used by ancient Chinese people to measure the distance. One li is about 450 meters long.
18 Before the Flood is a documentary film directed by Li Yifan and Yan Yu. It follows the demolition and relocation of the old Fengjie County before it was submerged underwater as a result of the rising water level in preparation for water storage of the Three Gorges Reservoir for the first time in 2002.
19 Chongqing’s Fengjie County was one of the several counties that were completely submerged underwater as a result of the construction of the Three Gorges Reservoir. The government had to move the residents to the new county or elsewhere and demolish the old county within a short time.
20 Park is of Korean ethnicity with Chinese nationality. But neither ethnic identity nor consciousness has played a significant role in the lives of him and his family. They are residents of Qitaihe City in northeast China. Being ethnic minorities have not much affected their everyday lives.
21 The first edition of Killip’s In Flagrante was published by Secker & Warburg in 1988, and the photographs were taken between 1973 and 1985. In 2015, Steidl published another edition of the book under the title In Flagrante Two. Some of the images and texts have been changed in the new edition. See the conversation between Killip and Martin Parr in “Chris Killip's Celebrated Photobook In Flagrante Makes Its Return” on Time Lightbox (Laurent and Matutschovsky Citation2016).
22 Steel City was published by Mack in 2021, but the photographs were taken in the summer of 1977. The regions the artist covered include New York, Pennsylvania, and eastern Ohio.
23 According to Marianne Hirsch, “Postmemory is distinguished from memory by generational distance, and from history by deep personal connection. Postmemory is a powerful and very particular form of memory precisely because its connection to its object or source is mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation.” (Hirsch Citation2012, 22)
24 Unlike the history of Qitaihe, which did not start the mining business until after the establishment of the P.R.C., the history of Hegang as a mining town could be traced back to 1918, when Hegang Mining Co. Ltd. was founded. It was also one of the coal production centers during the R.O.C. period and in the puppet state of Manchuria.
25 After China’s State Department issued the official document “Opinions on the promotion of the sustainable development of resource-based cities” in 2007, the National Development and Reform Commission created the first list of resource-exhausted cities in 2008. Qitaihe was on the second list released in 2009, and Hegang was on the thrid list released in 2012.
26 After graduating from Yantai University in 2005, Zhang Xiao moved to Chongqing and started working for the local newspaper Chongqing Morning News. He later moved to Chengdu and became a professional artist. It’s worth mentioning that neither Chongqing nor Chengdu (both are located in southwestern China) is a center for apple production.
27 In 1861, the Qing government allowed the Port of Yantai to be open for trade. Since then, 17 countries (including the UK, France, and the US) have set up embassies in Yantai.
28 Haiyang is a county-level city within the jurisdiction of Yantai.
29 Zhang Xiao remembers: “When I was young, most of the apple trees in the village were left to grow on their own. They weren’t attended to as carefully as they are now. I always felt that apples were cheap and abundant, and the villagers mostly ate them or gave them away to family and friends. There wasn’t a lot of selling and buying going on back then.” (Zhang Citation2021, not paged)
30 “Peel” focuses on the cuts, rotten parts and other imperfections on the skin of apples from a micro perspective; “Unparalleled” is a visual archive of conjoined apples—the public is largely unaware of their existence, which makes them “unparalleled”; “Evidence” contains the posthumous photographs of birds trapped by the bird netting in apple orchards.
31 For a long time, the small peasant economy was the main form of agricultural economy in China, and its importance is still emphasized today. In China, the difference between intensified agricultural production and the small peasant economy has never been determined by technology alone; the liberation of the rural productive forces (which affects hundreds of millions of people) by the former and the social consequences of this liberation are equally important. The non-agricultural occupation of land is a result of the decline of the small peasant economy. More and more rural labors are leasing their land while they move to the city for work, which has given ideas to factory owners (though this kind of conversion of agricultural land is illegal in China) and led to serious environmental issues.
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Notes on contributors
Hao Hu
Hao Hu is a curator and art critic, currently working as a researcher at the Taikang Space in Beijing. He is also a PhD student in contemporary art theory at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China.