郷

My grandfather left Hunan when he was 19. He conscripted to the national army to support his mother after his father was killed by the Japanese military. He would always tell me "Hunan is in your blood." This project is for him.

「郷」is a promise I made to my grandfather before he passed away in 2018.

My grandfather, 彭濟濤 (Chi Tao Peng), was born in 1922 in Linxiang, Hunan. When he was 17 his father was shot by a Japanese soldier. At 19 he enlisted in the National Revolutionary Army so that he could send food back to his mother. When he left Hunan he didn't know he would never see his mother again. The NRA's loss in the Chinese Civil War pushed them to escape to Taiwan, where my grandfather would start his new family and raise my father. He didn't contact his own mother for almost 20 years in fear of her safety. Neither of them knew if the other had survived. We found out through our relatives that every year, my great grandmother would hike 4 days with her bound feet to a temple on Da Yun Shan to pray for our well being. In 1969 my grandfather found a someone who could send letters through Hong Kong to China. This was the first time he contacted his mother. In 1976 my grandfather received a letter from his nephew saying his mother had passed. He left Linxiang in 1941 and would return for the first time 40 years later in 1988, 12 years after his mother's death.

When I was younger my parents would tell me I was Taiwanese. But my grandfather would always tell me that Hunan was in my blood. I remember every Lunar New Year, he would burn paper money for the ancestors and send money back to his relatives to help rebuild homes or build the Peng ancestral temple. My father told me that the last time they went to Hunan together, my grandparents had brought a stack of cash withdrawn from the bank to buy an apartment in Linxiang. They were in their late 80s by then and still wanted to return to their home.

Right before I left Japan for college in 2017, I visited Taipei. My grandfather was 95 at the time. I wanted him to promise me that we would go visit Hunan together after I graduated. He just laughed. He never promised me that he would go probably because he knew he did not have much time left. I had selfishly asked him because I thought that if he had something to look forward to, he would live a little longer. A few months later his dementia got worse, and he passed away.

This project is me fulfilling a promise to my grandfather. It is an ongoing documentary about my relationship with my family members in China and it is a way for me to keep my grandfather alive.

I was incredibly fortunate to take the first iteration of this trip with Fujifilm. They were the first to believe in me and let me meet my family in China for the first time. When they were hosting their group show for the GFX grant, I was censored in Shanghai. I remember my mentor warned me that this project could be seen as political. To me, this project is about history and family. It touches on displacement and ancestry, and these topics are not limited to my own story. I want to believe that my grandfather's experience is something that many people in this world can relate. I am trying to understand my grief after my grandfather's death through this project.

I am pitching this for this grant because I don't want this project to be done. To be completely honest, I don't have the financial means to travel back to China every two years. I want to shoot this project until I am physically unable to travel. I was lucky enough to meet them for 2 weeks for the first time when I was 24, and I don't want this relationship to end. Winning this grant would enable me to travel back to Hunan again to see them. I also want to go back because I know I can do a better job. I know the house and the village much better now. My uncle lives in a new home that was built on top of my great grandparent's old home. I intend to stay here for at most a month to photograph the village. The first time we went, my cousins took me to all of the tourist attractions. My favorite time of this trip was when I stayed at our village home for 3 days. This grant would allow me to stay at the village home for more than a month. I want to photograph the ancestral burial grounds, my great grandparents graveyard, the mountain my great grandmother would climb, and do portraits of my relatives again. I did this the first time, and now that I know them, I know I can do better.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration.
I promise that if you choose me, this will be an amazing project.