Cheng Xinhao

Cheng Xinhao
To the Ocean
2019
Single-Channel Video (color, sound)
49’56”

Starting on 1 December 2019, Cheng Xinhao set off from Kunming to walk along the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway towards the ocean at the other end of the railway, walking 446 kilometres in 19 days to the border between China and Vietnam. Every kilometre he picked up a ballast stone to carry on his back and took a video. In doing so, he encounters the time, the objects and the earth connected to the railway.

About Cheng Xinhao：
Cheng Xinhao (b.1985 in Yunnan Province, China) currently lives and works in Kunming, China. He received his Ph.D in Chemistry from Peking University in 2013. Cheng’s works are usually based on long-term field studies, centering around his hometown in Yunnan Province. With videos, installations, photographs and words, he personally investigates the polyphonic relationships between logic, discussions, knowledge, and the part that nature, society, and history play within them. His long-term projects include Strange Terrains (2013-, about the ethnic group Mang in the borderlands of Vietnam and China), To the Ocean (2018-, about the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway), and Tales about the South of Clouds (2021-, about the oral literary tradition in Yunnan).