It has been more than a year since I left for the United States to study, and because of school I missed the chance to return home for the Spring Festival. Now I am back in my hometown, Yiwu, just in time for the Dragon Boat Festival—only to find that the place has changed dramatically in appearance. A few new trees stand in front of my house; the village noticeboard, once plastered with chaotic postings, has been completely cleared. Looking back, an iron railing painted a glaring orange winds along the riverbank. A red slogan, as long as a bridge, hangs halfway across a steel frame, and four or five enormous LED screens have been erected nearby.
My grandmother tells me that in a few days it will be the Dragon Boat Festival, and the village is organizing a dragon boat race. Teams from all over Jinhua and the surrounding areas will come to row.
Then she promptly kicks me—quite literally—onto a dragon boat, telling me to row along with a group of professional athletes, just to experience it. They, annoyed that I didn’t know how to row yet still took up space, banished me to the stern. The speed of the dragon boat far exceeded my expectations; one ride nearly cost me my camera.
Even if Qu Yuan had gotten his hands on it, he probably wouldn’t have known how to use it.
Although Yiwu has become a city of cultural diversity through trade, dragon boat racing has never been a local tradition here, neither ancient nor modern. The spectacle outside my front door, then, feels like a compromise with the social environment, or perhaps a government-led act of cultural appropriation. For that reason, I hold little interest in the dragon boat race itself. But I am deeply interested in everything around it—in the people, the objects, the incidental scenes. My hometown has clearly been infused with something new. Setting aside whether that change is good or bad, I decide to use photography to record this event, along with everything I see before and after it, in a linear, unfolding sequence.