SPECIAL ARCHIVE

Like many middle-class families in China, my father has worked in a state-owned enterprise for the past decades. From a mechanical engineer to a general manager, he has always been working hard in his career. Later on, as he got to a higher position, he had to move to different branches in other cities and lived on his own most of the time. Now, with the circumstances of COVID-19, it becomes even harder to see him in person. While in my hometown, I found my father’s old video camera with a videotape from 2002; after I sent it to be digitalized, I got a more careful look at the video. The first part of the video shows some footage of me as a child, having a good time in a park during children’s day, while the second part shows my parents traveling to a tourist site with their friends.
As a result, I had a strange feeling when I looked at the video and its subjects. As we move out of our hometown, our life seems completely different than in the video. When I hold the video camera in my hand, it feels like to have some spiritual attachments to the past. I plan to continue using it to document my life and create a contrast between two different times.