Director's Intention: The Questions
1. When I was 5, I used to stare at things, until I don’t see it anymore. I stared at a door, and after some time, it disintegrated, and it did not have the idea or concept of a door, but form with many parts that put together the idea of door, but what is a door? It is a strange activity, you can stare at a tree, at a person, and suddenly you realize you don’t see that “thing” anymore.
2. When I have YuZhou, I have this idealistic plan, that I want to let him see something before he learn the word. I want him to see a tree, before anyone show him an illustration and tell him “it” is call a tree. When he was small, I just bring him out to see and listen at things as much as possible, it is really a race against society, and in the end I lose tremendously.
3. Even at our generation, we had “know” so many things before we see or experience the real thing. We know Paris before we been to Paris. We learn about of love, before we experience love. We had seen so many methods of killing from film, and hopefully we never need to use them. We are people with a lot of knowledges, but with no real experiences.
4. When I was 7 years old, I have this question about “Who am I?” I thought my body is a container, and “I” flowing in and out, sometime my friend flow into my body, sometime I flow into my friend’s body, while my friend’s “soul” flow into my body, my body will behave just like my friend. The idea of “I”, depends on whose body “I was in at that moment.
5. One day Zhuang-Zi dreamt of himself became a butterfly, it suited him well and he was happy as a butterfly. When he was awake he realize he was human, and he wonder if he was Zhuang-Zi dreamt of butterfly, or butterfly dreaming of becoming Zhung-Zi.
6. When Zhuang-zi was asked to serve the government , he asked, you see that tortoise on the temple, do you think the tortoise is happier being prayed on the high altar in a temple, or he rather want to play in the low mud, wagging his tail?
7. One day Zhuang-Zi and Hui-Zi, looking at fishes swimming in river. Zhuang-Zi said, look at those fish, how free and happy they are. Hui-Zi said, you are not fish, therefore it is not possible that you can know the fish is happy. Zhuang-Zi said, “You are not me, therefore it is not possible if you know I knew that the fish is happy.”
8. What is “I”? My body? My mind?
9. Who am I? I am very aware that I am always wrong at describing myself. It is usually different from how others perceive me. And I have extremely personalities that I like to change characters. I am not “consistent”.
10. After I got pregnant, only I am aware of my body. Or aware of how I loss the control of my body. Motherhood is loss of control of my body, because not only the child, But The society suddenly has power or control over you, from the moment you got pregnant and become mother.
11. Every birth of a child is an invasion of a barbarian to our civilization.
12. Who is the barbarian? My child? Or me? All of us?
13. I hated when anyone tell me, “Your child is your greatest creation.” I see my child a separate being, and I am just a tunnel for it to get into the world, or a 3D printer.
14. And then I realize most of us does not create anything. We are merely a medium where something manifest itself through our action.
15. As Michel Foucault said, “It is not the body the prison of our mind, but our mind is the prison of our body. "
16. If you were asked, “Not your name, not your job, not your relationship, tell me who you are?”
17. If you were asked, “Why did Bodhi-Dharma come to the East?”
18. If you were asked, “Without good, without bad, what is your original self?”
19. If you were asked, “Who is dragging this corpse?”