NIU GOLD MOUNTAIN 2024: Beijing 北京
This article series is a collaboration between Rat World and All My Friends - a collective based in Tāmaki Makaurau that supports creative projects from queer and POC communities.
Responding to the experiences of contemporary migrant narratives in Aotearoa, Niu Gold Mountain is a multimedia exhibition that explores the present day aspirations of this generation's Asian and Pasifika artists.
Click here to watch the Beijing 北京 video
Beijing 北京: Memory, Nostalgia and Self-Expression Beyond Stereotype
*Please note: I use ‘Beijing 北京’ in single quotations to refer to the original song by Ersha Island and Beijing 北京 in italics to refer to the Niu Gold Mountain video.
Exploring the Asian and Pasifika migrant narratives of Aotearoa, Niu Gold Mountain brings together artists to respond to their experiences as contemporary diasporic creatives. The exhibition is founded and operated by All My Friends, a queer and POC creative collective based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Through a collaboration between Ersha Island 二沙岛, choreographer Xin Ji and director/cinematographer Jiaqi Tang, Niu Gold Mountain reimagines the music video for Ersha Island’s new track, ‘Beijing 北京’. Dreamy choreography and cinematography present a new lens through which to observe the diasporic elements of this song, emphasizing the ghostly trace of memory and identity.
Dani and Tee Hao-Aickin, otherwise known as indie-folk sibling duo Ersha Island, have spoken openly about their love-hate relationship growing up in Beijing – a time they look back on with equal parts pain and fondness. It is in Beijing where the duo began their classical music journey, but it is also where they experienced a “brutally strict teaching environment”. Their 2024 EP release, Back to Our Roots, reflects on the duo’s experiences in China and Aotearoa as mixed-heritage individuals, flowing between generational histories and present-day nostalgia. ‘Beijing 北京’, the fourth track, articulates the unique emotions that this city evokes for Dani and Tee; a city that is simultaneously “a seemingly hopeless space and a seemingly glorious space”. The song illuminates a familiar tension for many migrant individuals, acknowledging the complicated emotions often associated with home. But the song also captures the siblings’ unique experience caught between two countries, two identities, two languages.
Filmed in isolated, almost surreal spaces, Beijing 北京 feels as though it exists in another world. Watching this video is like stepping into the strange unreality of our memories. It feels both familiar and unfamiliar, illogical and logical. Despite this, I am overwhelmed by a sense of deep understanding and yearning, as though running towards something in a dream only to wake up minutes before discovery. And I am not alone in this feeling. The team all comment on a sense of collective nostalgia and familiarity when listening to ‘Beijing 北京’ for the first time. Interestingly, Dani and Tee confess their confusion around this, both convinced that their song is far too specific to inspire universal emotion. But it does. Tee mentions that Xin was so affected by the Mandarin lyrics that he “felt his chest tighten” when he first heard the song. Similarly, Jiaqi described feeling “touched” by the melody in ‘Beijing 北京’, referring to the song’s ability to transport him back to the “atmosphere of Beijing”.
Balancing the personal stories of Ersha Island and the transcendent quality of this song is clearly important. Therefore, Jiaqi focusses on a more conceptual narrative in the video, using layers of contrasting space, colour and style to convey the specific emotions of Dani and Tee’s childhood in Beijing, whilst still speaking to a wider diasporic audience. From scenes in a sea of plastic, to a red-curtained stage set, there is a vast sense of interpretation in this work. For Jiaqi, it is important to “assist [the audience] in creating their own understanding of the video”.
Xin’s choreographic choices follow a similar vein, with the intention that “anyone can be an audience for this work”. There is a rough, almost intuitive quality in the dance and when I discover that much of it was improvised, it makes a lot of sense. Weichu and Xin move in tandem as though compelled by some unknown force, pushing toward and away from each other with fascinating magnetism. I almost forget this is a rehearsed piece of dance and am instead struck by the sense of endless mimesis in their movements – an eternal reflection of the self in identity and alterity. Dani comments that the movements deliberately portray “a battle of our own identities - of embracing our whakapapa but also feeling burdened by it” and I can see this tension at the root of Xin’s choreography. There is a constant push and pull within each action, performing the painful process of remembering the past and reconciling with the present. Love and anguish are so tenderly presented in their movements, and I am haunted by the final moments. Bodies pull at fabric, connecting and disconnecting at different junctures, moving past each other indefinitely until finally, both fall to the ground. There is a palpable exhaustion in this final scene, capturing the weight of such conflicting emotions and memories.
Existing in the diaspora often means having an unsteady relationship with space. We have lived away for so long, that reality blurs with nostalgia and once-familiar streets become difficult to navigate. Cities leave us behind, and our hometown cartographies are reconstructed from fading memories. Beijing 北京 is filmed in a distantly undefinable space, illuminating the tension of living in between multiple places. Jiaqi comments that the team “didn’t necessarily want to give a sense of precise location for this project”. I find that this creates an invisible connection between Tāmaki Makaurau and Beijing, acknowledging that this work exists in both and neither space all at once. Tee references the way this song functions as a memory of Beijing, accessed in retrospect while standing in Aotearoa: “I think we were actually able to write Beijing because we were not in Beijing. It made it easier to separate ourselves from that experience”. Situating this work in an obviously marked location, or trying to represent the geography of Beijing in Aotearoa would distract from the core of the song. ‘Beijing 北京’ is not about a city; it is about space in relation to diasporic identity, and it is about the conflict of emotion when that space has caused so much pain.
We are guided through the video with a dream-like flow, moving from empty rooms to abandoned corridors without any explanation. Though Jiaqi initially describes the spaces as a journey through Ersha Island’s childhood, memories and nostalgia, I discover that some of the locations are reminiscent of Jiaqi’s own uprbinging:
“while doing the location scouting for the abandoned space, I happened to see the corridor that is located in the same building. I was intrigued by its nostalgic feeling when I first saw it. In my childhood memories, I have seen many buildings with blue and white walls”.
This moment of connection hits me. Jiaqi and Ersha Island have not worked together previously, and yet they both recognize the familiar relationship between space, memory and diasporic identities. There is such a deep-rooted act of collaboration and understanding in this work – a reminder that POC communities need space not only to investigate identity and heritage, but also to collaborate and converse and create freely.
The need to exist and create freely, beyond the bounds of observable identity, is an underlying provocation in Beijing 北京. Situating this video in a non-contextualized space not only creates a very specific dream-like quality, but it also raises questions about the expectation of cultural aesthetics in such works. The team explain that they initially discussed shooting at a local space more explicitly associated with East Asian identity – such as Dominion Road. However, they ultimately felt that they “should not feel obligated to conform to Western perceptions of Asian identity” as Xin says. The fundamental ontology of this work as being created by East Asian bodies is enough, and there should not need to be obvious cultural markers to define this work as ‘Asian’. Xin challenges these perspectives: “Shouldn't my distinctive features like my yellow skin and beautiful danfeng eyes (丹凤眼), along with the rich cultural heritage I carry, be sufficient to convey my Asianness as a living, breathing individual?”. Living, breathing individual. This phrase reverberates in my skull. In conversations with other Asian arts practitioners, we often lament the gross necessity to capitalize on identity, to shave ourselves down to digestible bites of cultural commentary. This work confronts these structures and rather presents a video that exists within its own right.
But to exist in a culturally marked body is still to be perceived with particular expectations. Suddenly, the music stops, and the percussion of a Beijing opera reveals itself. The shift from contemporary to traditional is jarring, but necessary: “it presents a sense of ritual in the narrative,” explains Jiaqi “where characters can’t help but become the object of receiving gaze”. In the video, Xin and Weichu enter a stage to audience applause, shrouded in deep red and performing the familiar gestures of traditional Chinese dance. It is here the viewer is asked: why do Asian works need to feature specific aesthetic markers or fulfil stereotyped narratives? To exist as Asian, is to create works that are Asian. “We don’t need to pigeonhole ourselves into anything” says Tee “we are the Asian art”.
New Gold Mountain is a significant project because it explores the migrant diaspora as an evolving phenomenon, instead of a static experience. This exhibition asks how the new generation of Asian and Pasifika artists revisit concepts of diaspora in the present day - Instead of looking back, Niu Gold Mountain encourages migrant creatives to look forward. Beijing 北京 builds upon other contemporary diasporic works that challenge what it means to be Asian in Aotearoa. Crucially, this video is part of a new era of Asian diasporic artmaking that moves past observation and expectation, instead focussing on self-expression beyond stereotyped representation and cultural markers. With platforms such as All My Friends encouraging creative freedom and collaboration, there is space to flourish as “living, breathing individual[s]”.
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This piece is presented as part of a partnership with All My Friends, with the cost of writer fees supported by them through the Creative New Zealand x Foundation North Asian Artists Fund