This project Contains two products: a video and a book publication. The video shows the personal experiences, and the book publication is a conclusion and cultural communication between two countries.
In the summer of 2020, all people on earth have experienced a covid virus pandemic. At that time both China and The U.S. asked people to stay at home. And as an international student, I stayed at my dorm for about a month all by myself. I feed myself every day and really miss my family, so I made a decision to go back to China. At the start of this project, I also start my trip to go back to China at this special time. I realized that China and The U.S. people have a totally different way of getting food in the quarantine time, that the Chinese government has a system to support food to people, but in The U.S. we rely on our own. Therefore I did the research on the culture and history to see what makes them different and write them all into my publication.
This project is also a record about my unique experience. I recorded my meals every day in America before I went back to China, and I continued to record my food in China after I arrived home. I was having online classes for the rest of the semester, and it feels magical that I stay in China but have the online classes from America. Usually, I only go back to my home in the summer vacations, but this time, the pandemic gives me the chance to stay with my family. As I traveled between countries, I feel like I’m also changing my experience in the different countries. It gives me the feeling that I’m in a loop, the loop that I experienced many times, but now it has a stopping point to all my experiences. I grew up in China, then I went to America, and then I came back to China again, and I will go back to America to study after the pandemic is over. As I stay at home, it is like two dimensions finally hit each other, and mixed.
I designed this publication as a circle-like publication, you are capable of reading it from front or back. These hand gestures represent myself and the growing seed represents my experience in both countries. The images on the hands are the histories of two countries, and you can see the history is going forward as the content goes to the middle. It represents my acceptance of knowledge.The contents meet in the middle of the publication, it represents the weird present time, that I’m having my university classes at my home. I made this publication to share the cultural difference between the two countries, and also to let people know about my unusual experiences. It is also a publication for all the international students that changes and grows in the different cultures.
The video is mostly about my own memories and self experiences in the past years. The background music of the video is a song for fetuses to grow up. There are two series of hand animations during the playing process, the first one is about China, and its speed is breakneck, representing my first 18 years living in China, learning quickly, and growing up fast. On the second series of hand animation, after I came to study in the United States, the animation becomes slower, representing that my learning abilities became weaker in English-speaking countries. I use persimmon as the primary track object of this video because I usually don’t see persimmon in America; therefore, seeing persimmon is a way to for me to miss my home.
This publication is a communication between two countries that were banded by my life. As the Covid pandemic started, people became more and more suspicious of those who live on the other side of this world. I hope this publication will show people another way of seeing this world. We are different, but we also have something in common. Even though we come from different cultural backgrounds and different species, some similarities exist. Therefore, attacking anybody by their race is wrong. Without these suspicions and doubts, we are just the same normal people live in our normal lives. Nobody means to make bad things happen, I hope people could stop blame things on innocent people. As some Asian-hate cases frequently show up, again and again, It drives me to make this publication to show people that we are not much different.
