Dear Charles, Time is so fast,I stay in Qiuzhuang morn than a month.It’s a cold winter ,less sunshine,more haze,fog and snow.I sleep with a warm hat in the night as no heating installation in door.Some chilblains on my hands,It’s let me remembered my childhood,full of chilblains on my hands and feet,untile I left the village of my 17 year old.
A Library was opened on Spring Festival’s morning,I explode firecrackers,a lots of villager came to library with supris and wondering face.They asked me “No profit， why you do this? ””The peasants never reading,it’s wasting the books,the best thing is move it to the city. ”Most peasants think no relationship between them and culture,they were no reading habits and no interesting to new and strange things. Children are very happy as they can reading and have more sweets.
A Library’s open time is Saturday and Sunday,only more than 100 books on the shelf.No bylaw,just books in the space.I do not want to define the library,it’s a public space and I want to research it’s possibility in the village.The people can not understand these books,my work is put me as a bridge,make some relations between the cultures and the villages.
The village is so similar with other village in north China,we can not find it’s history and future on surface,we just see it’s change.No difference in the life,concepture and landscape with other villages,but it include all questions and status.
Na Yingyu,video artist based in Beijing,came to my village and start recode the project before Spring Festival.My assistant Zhong Ming have reached here now and start work on it.
No your answer some weeks,I hope you are well.
All my best.
Li Mu Feb 17,2013
Dear Li Mu,
Sorry I've been slow in connecting. The library looks great, I am happy it is working in the village. The attitudes of the villagers are fascinating. Are you recording them? Is it a good idea to video them before and after the project? You would see how the project changes their thinking.
The idea that the village is same as all others in North China is strange to me. Is there really no history? Or is it just not recorded? Maybe without a history it is hard for the villagers to be curious about the future. Maybe we need to write a history of the village - a half fictional one like all histories. Are there not some stories about what has changed over the years?
In general, I believe it is essential that the project is well documented. I think we should try to get enough material that we can make a film. Also, Dadou, do you know any journalist that could follow this. I am sure there would be a good article in the project if someone would go to the village and meet people about the situation in rural China, issues of modernisation and modernism etc. Also TV would be good if at all possible. But I have no press contacts there.
Museum can push it from here though I need to find the time to motivate people. These images an stories help a lot.
