ARKive post 5— Xiangyin Gu

I Cannot Breathe.

I was first invited into the family albums by a sense of allure. The word album in Chinese (影集) means the assembly of shadows. I immerse myself within them.

Literally, I was surrounded by boxes of things owned previously by my maternal grandfather. There are ten thousand images that create within them an oceanic feeling that devours me.

Rather than any elite, my grandfather was just a normal university student during the cultural revolution. People would hold the little red book, as everybody else. One is lured to take these gestures as a token that stands for his political stance.

As a red guard, a medical student, or a son of peasants, who is my grandfather?

Yet perhaps, a liberal, an avant-garde, a father to come, who is he?

The political thread within them appears explicit. Yet what underlies is a level of secrets that escape language.

Ones that will remain asemic.

History, through the lens of familial archives, remains elusive and slippery.