Born in Urumqi, the capital city of China’s NorthWest nomadic provinces Xin Jiang, I moved to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Germany later in my life.
It was in a methodology class in graduate school in Chinese University of Hong Kong, in which the professor introduced a little personality test game, Jung’s archetype test, did I learn that I am a seeker: the type of person who travels afar to find the doorway to ultimate truth or happiness. It is kind of funny since according to Chinese astrology, the Northern Star also fell on the Nomadic House when I was born.
So, I travelled and never stopped, not only on geographic territories, but also dug into various disciplines and never fully committed. Over the years, I was an academic book editor, a Taoist researcher, a movie script writer, a journalist of international desk, a cultural critic, a translator, a curator, a creative writer, a podcaster, and on and off , a graduate student.
A seeker, however, never finds full satisfaction from all these dots she hit in her journey, the alluring award waits for her somewhere beyond the vista, tempting her to start again. These years, I started to think all human, including me are not really the subjects of the world we inhabit in. Like a fossil, a paper, a tweet, or just a wispier, we are nothing but a medium that stories travel through. I am just an empty pocket walking on the road, collecting wind, seeds, laughters and dreams, tears and sorrows and inventing my own recipe to cook them into a tasty dish, and deliver it to the next stop.
Very often when I just departed for the next adventure, I encounter a few emotional setbacks; because that’s usually when the pocket, me, is emptied again: I just finished an exhibition, wrote a story, released a podcast, or designed a game. What’s left for me is perhaps a couple of joyful memories, but they are always so epiphanic in nature that almost taste like a dream that never happened in first place.
What now? Who is the person that left here?
Borges comes in handy in such lonely moment, as he wrote: “Your matter is time, ceaselessTime. You are each solitary moment.” Time, I am always fascinated in reading about time. Henri Bergson, the French philosopher minded us to carefully separate time from its spatial representation, believes that we cannot really measure “each solitary moment” the way we measure a building, but we do know we experienced time as durations. And life, the majestic monster, is shaped by the mixture of countless durations, the way a concerto is composed of numerous music notes performed in live.
Such philosophy eases me, a seeker. As much as stories and information transcend time and space though me, I am also living my life through them. It is ultimately a meaningless project to build oneself a website, a tomb, a wikipedia page, a archive, to try to seize these durations and crystalize them, just like the way life is meaningless. It is though a mundanely (and psychologically) pragmatic thing to do, for it reminds me who I was before I am gone…
Gee, I planned to write something to down as an intro to this site, to guide you through all these pages and represent myself in a professional way. Didn’t know in the end I wrote another confession for/to myself, but, maybe this is a more honest way to tell you the truth about me ..
You substitute the path for the journey, and because the journey is subtended by the path you think the two coincide. ——-Bergson
Teaching in School of Creative Media in City University of Hong Kong
Game & Play Studies (undergraduate course)
World-Building and Digital lNarrative Media (master course)
Talk
2022 May, Video game and Art Museum, a Curatorial Perspective, CAFA, Beijing
2022 April, A City Hyper-translated: Imagination and Compilation of Everyday Experience, OCAT, Shenzhen
2022 April, Video game addiction as a symptom or solution. Mplus Museum, Hong Kong
2021 August, Seoul/Linz, “Play - Network - Art”, Ars Electronica
2021 July, Berlin, How not to Fail at Connecting Game & Art”, Amaze art game and playable media festival. 2021 May, Milan, “Dev Talk: Forgetter”, Game Design master program in Università IULM
2021 March, Hong Kong, “Play as form, Video Game as Curatorial Space”, Hong Kong University, Hong Kong Baptist University
2021 March, Hong Kong/Berlin, “Cultural Masseur: Talking Heads #09 - Art X Arthouse Games and Playful Media”, Hong Kong Art Center
2021 March, Buenos Aires/Hong Kong, “Now We Play with Power”, Game Art International Network 2021 2020 November, Hong Kong/London/New York, “Art + Tech in Asia: Tech Disruptions & Opportunity in Museum Curation”Christie’s Education Conference 2020: The Chinese Art Market
2019 April, Kwangju, “Curating Games in the Asia Pacific Region”, panel talk in ISEA
2018 June, Oxford, "Alternative games and cultural memories in Hong Kong", British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies,
2018 Shenzhen, "Augmented animation and serious games", The Fourth Shenzhen International Independent Animation Biennale
2018 July, Turin, “(Re)play the beginning of the end: 1988 as prequel to Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong,” DIGRA 2018, Digital Games Research Association.
2018 June, Oxford, "Alternative games and cultural memories in Hong Kong", Hetero/Homogeneous China: Connections, Dynamics, and Transformations, British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies,
2017 September, Hong Kong, Hong Kong and Liberty, Cultural Studies Center, Chinese University of Hong Kong.
2017 June, Kassel, "From University to Shopping Mall, Socially Engaged Wandering", De-Essentializing Difference - Acknowledging Transculturality Art (History) Education and the Public Sphere in a Globalized World, Research Network for Transcultural Practices in the Arts and Humanities on the occasion of documenta 14.
2016 March, Hanoi, "Umbrella movement – Aestheticization of Protest", Skylines With Flying People, Nha San Collective.
2015 June, Hong Kong, "Not Able to Write: On Academic Publication", Wandering Scholar, Visual Cultural Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong.
2013 Jun, Istanbbul, "Comic Art and Cultures of Erotic Self-display", International Association of Media & Communication Research.
2009 November, Rotterdam, "Public Gaze, Private Wound: Discourse Analysis of Virginity Loss Video", European Communication Research and Education Association.
