Don't self-treat
This performance developed from my family's decades-long rootedness in Northeast China, as well as from family histories involving traditional Chinese medicine and employment in military-industrial factories. As the performer, I enter a narrative constructed from the experiences of my parents' and grandparents' generations. This narrative unfolds alongside news reports about the revitalization of Northeast China that play continuously in the background, forming a double narrative between individual and collective experience, and between the macro-scale of historical policy and the micro-scale of personal life: a frail and sickly teenager is given new life by an old Chinese-medicine doctor late at night; an elderly military doctor, unable to heal himself despite exhausting every possible method, turns instead toward prayer; faced with strange ancient characters on an uncanny prescription, a young successor doctor is left at a loss. Meanwhile, the changes and reforms of policy regulations become an obscure yet familiar background noise.
For me, the relationship between Northeast China, a region charged with legendary histories, and its desolate contemporary reality constitutes a condition in which "the healer cannot heal himself". This region, once regarded as the eldest son of the Republic and having devoted itself to the industrial construction of the nation, is now marginalized under the pressures of globalization and maritime economic development.
不自医
表演基于我与我家庭扎根于东北数十年来的经历以及家庭成员的中医背景和军工厂职业经验延展而成，我作为表演者进入一段依照我父辈祖辈经历所构成的叙事当中，与背景中一直播放的与东北振兴相关的新闻形成个体与群体之间，宏观时代与微观个人之间的双重叙事：体弱多病的少年在深夜被老中医赋予新生，年迈的军医用尽浑身解数不能自医，只能转而求神，面对诡异药方上的奇怪古文，年轻的接班医生手足无措......而政策条例的变换，改革，又成为了晦涩又常见的底噪。
东北这个充满传奇历史的地域与当下荒凉的现实之间，在我看来是一种“医者不能自医”的现状，这个曾经作为共和国长子，为全国的工业建设倾尽所有的地区，如今只能在全球化和海航经济的趋势之下被边缘化。
