2018 STAGE CINA

My trip to China was not like exploring the other, unexplored face of the planet. No longer does a fresh breeze of wisdom and spirituality come from the East: China is awash with the products of globalisation, from Gucci to Apple, and fully inhabits the culture of ultra-liberal capitalism, which has led the Chinese to crowd into urban concrete mountain ranges. Observing people’s daily lives, what surprised me most was how Mao Tze Tung’s grey and blue uniforms have vanished from every city. Only a handful of impoverished beggars and a few peasants in the countryside still wear them. The Marxist-Leninist concept has been repudiated and forgotten. The youth of China seem to no longer believe in anything and only care about making money. The regime continually perpetuates itself and, to hide its dark, suffocating and bloody past, forbids its memory. The China I visited now lives immeasurably better than yesterday but forgets the events of Tiananmen Square.
Villagers get relocated from their communities according to speculative urban plans built on bribes and bureaucratic corruption. The new motto seems to be ‘getting rich is glorious’.
Future is the most critical of all subjects which cannot be photographed. However, I believe that at this rate, it will not tune with being progressive. To become and disappear is our destiny: Mao will never return to this scene, nor will the five thousand years of captivating Chinese history.