Swimming at the Center of the World:

This essay is an exploration in pictures and words of my experiences working and living in China.

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I’ve been thinking about what I learned from China, from my Chinese friends, and from the nomadic two years I spent bouncing back and forth between Beijing, Shanghai, and New York. This essay explores that experience in pictures and words; it's an emotional history of my work in China, and a record of how it felt to be there. 2:07 p.m., a Monday in December. I'm going again someplace else, another meeting, another lunch, another conversation. In China we start fast, go faster, then stop, restart, feel like going faster. This is my second trip to Beijing in two months and I’ve passed these walls a dozen times. They beckon, come in, don’t come in, look closely, pay no attention. The tourist way in, over there, pays the ticket. But there is work to be done, which doesn't get done, but looks like work. 11:23 p.m., Wednesday: I am surprised and learning and flying back to New York too fast, too soon, and wondering if any of this signing of contracts can get below a surface I realize suddenly that I cannot see. 11:47 p.m., October 2005, my first day. Anything is possible, relentlessly possible. This is China. I'm dizzy, exhausted, already addicted. In a dream in the middle of Beijing I am looking for the entrance. A way in. 5:15p.m., March, a Thursday: Scribbling in the back seat of a taxi, another hour Beijing traffic jam, my notebook filling with characters copied from billboards and office signs, Song-zi, my tutor, translator, friend, exclaims, "Now you're four years old!"

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The Scanning China Project © Sean Justice 2008. Contact. Last updated: August 18, 2008.