Baijiu, Soap, Dried Blueberries
I have been finding the North held in my heart—not as a fixed geography, but as a spiritual direction, a feeling. It is difficult to tell the story of a northern city by language and images alone; I try to combine design and poetic practice to create a path of perception.
A simple longing for the north runs through the year.
Baijiu, Soap, Dried Blueberries is a short documentary that chronicles my journey as an outsider, travelling by train all the way from Beijing to the northernmost tip of China; at the border of the Northeast, I discovered that cultural and geographical boundaries don't always coincide, and tried to ‘organise’ the complex interplay of geography, culture, and personal sensations in my film.
I am not defining the “North” but rather to approach it, again and again, in hopes of inviting viewers to search for and imagine it on their own terms. Alongside the video, I present photographs and poems created during the journey.