Farewell, Hutong!

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The collection of composite images is called Farewell, Hutong. Eight pictures, consisting of some fragments of cartoons, pencil pictures, oil paintings, real photographs. Each picture, symbolizing a singular moment of my past in Hutong and the courtyard forms a big scroll of the old times spent there. Thinking about the definition of “archive affect” raised by Baron in her book in which she says, “the presence is the desire for the archive affect, for an awareness of the passage of time and the partiality of its remains, for an embodied experience of confronting what has been lost, and the mortal human condition”, I am wondering about the reasons for the emergence so many nostalgic inventions nowadays. Farewell Hutong certainly is the product of the personal wallowing in the nostalgia. Making the appropriation of these pictures gives me the chance to revisit the past in which sweet memories come back in the most unexpected moments. I find that nostalgia has its pervasive power on me as well as on the others. It is in the form of subtle propaganda with targeted audiences and clear intentions. Like the nostalgic films spreading out their advertising slogans of “the golden age” American films, nostalgic picture collections send off its signals to its viewers of a shared experience. Farewell, Hutong may not arouse any sentiments in those who have never been living in the courtyard before or have never heard anything about it. This is why some nostalgic film has its own limited influencing boundary.

Also nostalgia is selective on its materials. The chosen images must be those which can stir the feelings inside and cause some resonance of the audience, otherwise it will not do. Like some Chinese films featuring old Beijing contextual culture, hutong and courtyards are the typically established elements which could embody the local characteristic of the city of Beijing. In my collection, there are rows of small houses on the two sides of the narrow and intricate alley, the small table surrounded by a couple of chairs with chess on it, the crooking tress with thick boughs which is indicative of the message of time, and some old tricycles and bicycles idly leaning against wall. These items point to the core of old Beijing hutong culture. They can cause the remembrance of a person spending years in such a place, especially those with a profoundly unforgettable memory.

The function of such a nostalgic collection poses another question, which seems even problematic sometimes. The audience can never revisit a past without making their sacrifices. For most of the cases, nostalgic films are not all about pure sentiments as they apparently seem. Audiences are invited to re-experience a past they share some common knowledge or emotional attachment. Some film critics reveal some unsatisfaction about the excess of “time travel films” in China. In these films, a person died in an accident (usually traffic accident) in the modern times and miraculously travels back to the ancient time either by the soul or by the body. The time periods the character travels back are often the most splendid historical periods in China without any doubt. Viewers of such kind of films will be led to the greatest historical moments, for example, the pomp of an imperial coronation, and participate with the character in changing the past history, especially the national history. The popularization of these films derives from the sense of honor linked with the national identity and status. The splendid historical past ties the civilians of a nation together and serves to strengthen the national pride. It also reflects some disappointment of the present and some lamentation on the loss of an irretrievable glory of the past. Also it offers the viewers some voyeuristic pleasure to look at a nobody transforming the grand history once belonging only to the great powers. (81)

Dwelling on her meditation on the possibility of the transformation of material archives by the digital ones, Baron quotes Derrida’s  thoughts on this problem: “new technologies of memory may alter our conception of the physic apparatus and, by way of these new technologies, transform human memory itself.” (135) The “time travel film” has indeed changes the human memory of a past. It changes the history of a nation by inserting a nobody into the ancient time and gives him or her the power to transform as one likes. It reminds me of the collage of my collection which, I have to admit, really interests me a lot. Taking a look back on the appropriation experience, I identify a similar pleasure in me as that in the audience of a “time travel film”. We think highly of the power in changing the old pictures taken in the past. By making a scrapbook of various materials, we are taking advantage of these items as the command and we do love it! We are now empowered as we are to direct all these materials as we desire. We use the cartoons of other stories to tell our own stories in the participation of a distant past. As the chariot of time never slows down its pace, human beings are working hard to catch up with it desperately. However, we can now reverse the order of time and even change the past in our revisit. We cherish most cordially the feeling of being the master of time and doing whatever we want in constructing our own history.