ZHONG Q​i

The final work of Theater of the Yangtze River™ was completed on November 13, 2023. At dawn the next day, I returned from a riverside inn fifteen kilometers away to the same spot. When I confirmed that the weather and current could no longer produce an image more stirring than the previous day's, the series, spanning five years and nine months, officially came to a close.

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The fixation on "Epilogue" had been buried in me for two years already; I was certain I needed it, as if to give myself some final account. So, after finishing all the other works, I set aside time to depart once more, and for the last time, for the river in my mind. This time, I set no date for return, giving everything to it until it was done. In the actual shooting, I did encounter the greatest challenge of the entire project. For a long stretch, I could not get a result I was satisfied with, and at one point I was deeply discouraged. I took "tricks" as my method and began a peculiar self-therapy. I put down my camera and sat cross-legged in meditation on a boulder by the river. Eyes closed, I let the sound of wind and rushing water wash over me endlessly, until I could no longer hear the wind or feel the river's flow. I tried to forget my own existence, to withdraw myself from it. "Self-forgetting" inadvertently became the most important discipline of this series, until I finally completed this work in a state of calm. Looking back, I recalled the making of this image many times, and at some point it struck me that, in a certain desire, I had inadvertently become one of the figures in the frame of Theater of the Yangtze River. This journey of shooting was like a long course in self-reflection. Only then did I realize that this was the account I owed myself for this final departure, a practice that carried the work back to myself.

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What I photographed in this series, or rather, what I describe, is not the geographical river. The Yangtze, as China's longest river, has since ancient times been a river of consequence. It winds 6,300 kilometers, drains 1.8 million square kilometers, rises in the less developed west, and flows east toward the country's wealthiest and most urbanized regions, nourishing nearly 460 million people across one-fifth of the nation's land. But in Theater of the Yangtze River, it is internalized as a different river in each person's mind, woven into a series of screens. "Epilogue" is refined into a mirror reflecting the inner world.

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Over the years of shooting, I kept to the role of observer, stepping back to watch those residents who stand before the Yangtze as a "giant screen," using its flowing current as an outlet for their inner lives. I never spoke with any of them; I did not ask about their circumstances, nor did I have any other exchange. I neither disturbed nor interrupted their thoughts, letting things unfold naturally, while keeping myself "invisible" before them. In fact, as I observed them, I also sensed their emotions: anxiety, loss, confusion, struggle, there is always some trouble that does not sit right with each person, or some problem that cannot be solved. I returned to the banks of the Yangtze many times and found and confirmed this universality of the inner world. From Chapter One to Chapter Two, it all remains vivid. Moving into Chapter Three, I am not proposing an answer; nor do I believe there is a standard solution or a universally applicable method. Each person's circumstances differ, but moving toward a serene inner world may be the way we, after struggle, wish to be with the world.

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And so, every era has its own predicament; everyone will encounter unknown new challenges. Wherever we are, whatever environment we are in, when problems remain unsolved, confusion and bewilderment are hard to avoid. Facing inner chaos, we will eventually set out on a search: inward or outward? Returning to the prologue, the story begins here.

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​Zhong Qi, 2024

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