Red Fragments— is a long-term project that shows Chinese culture and Chinese living conditions in several symbolic Chinese cities through a personal visual journal. For the past two years, I have been travelling to cities like Shantou, Chongqing, Kashgar, Beijing, and Shanghai to photograph life in the streets of mainly the first, second and third generation of Chinese families. My goal is to capture the values, traditions and rituals of Chinese culture in these cities to mirror the reality that China is going through a transition.
I travelled through nine symbolic cities from the northeast to the extreme far west of China on my own. I focused on the contemporary social issues during my trip, such as the aging tourism issue- a rapidly increasing number of Chinese people who are eager to explore their country more than ever before. Construction sites issue- real estate is the main investment strategy of the Chinese, and at the same time it brings problems to the construction workers who cannot get paid after they work, usually a few months later. The price of homes grows tremendously, and the gap between rich and poor becomes even larger. Migration issues in China are a widely discussed topic currently. Every year, large numbers of people who live in poor rural areas move to cities to purse better lives.
My purpose is to reveal what I see, what I feel, and what I want the world to see of contemporary China.
