(On-going)
Bridge of Sighs attempts to figure out how the remote and unseen past gets under the skin to affect the present.
Two weeks after the disappearance, villagers by the river brought news to Uncle Hai, saying that there was a swollen body floating along the riverbank. Before leaving home, Grandma told Uncle Hai to carefully examine the body's face to look for any remnants of blood tears. In Chinese rural folklore, hanging blood tears means that a drowned child knows his family is coming to take him home. This tragedy by the river happened in June 2000, just two months after my birth. That floating body by the riverbank was my Uncle Bo. Life has never treated him kindly. Along with epilepsy and congenital low intelligence, he always suffered discrimination and injustice from society.
Leaving questions that could no longer be answered, Uncle Bo's departure became a burned hole in the family's history. The lingering pain caused family members to focus on the youngest member at that time, namely me. On this very special period, simultaneously filled with sadness and joy, my family saw my birth and upbringing as an opportunity for redemption, a chance to atone for what they felt they hadn't done enough for Uncle Bo. With the idea of education and the internal atmosphere of the family began to shift quietly, I grew up bathing in a river of love and care.
The heavy rain has gradually become milder over time, leaving unerasable rain stains on the windows, pricking hearts. Tears, murmured words, and flotsam-like family archives were like flickering spots of light on the river, intertwined to form a bridge connecting life and death, imagination and fact, conveying the trauma that has been covered up. Along this Bridge of Sighs, I pick up and suture the debris of memories to picture Uncle Bo, the person who only lived in fragmented moments, the person I met only a few times when I was only two months old, but had a crucial influence on my upbringing.
