Researcher, Designer

Cities are places where strangers meet in formal and occupational roles, while neighbourhoods are places where we come socially closer to each other in personal and informal roles. We become friends, neighbours and so on in the neighbourhood, but keep a distance to strangers in cities. However, in recent years in China, there is no such intimate relationship in the urban neighborhood, because there is not enough time to build bonds. People who have moved to these neighbourhoods know almost nobody around them. Some of them may leave several years later, but they still need the sense of community. So there is a need to accelerate the community building process. That is where my exploration comes in: what are the possibilities of social interaction and stories-sharing in the urban neighbourhood in China?

In this project, I explored the narrative culture in Chinese traditional society, reinterpreted and reconceptualised the culture, rituals and functions of ancestral hall in terms of social interaction, story sharing and identity building, bringing them into urban life which is dominated by Western discourse.

In the past decade, around 250 million people have moved to cities with memories of traditional societies, experiencing disruptions of cultural memory and disconnections with their sources of identity. By my innovation practice, I attempted to understand and critique this phenomenon, also inspire speculations about what may be good and localised metropolitan living experiences.