FROM COLONIAL MODERNITY TO POSTSOCIALISM: CHENG XINHAO’S ENCOUNTERS ON THE KUNMING–HAIPHONG RAILWAY

Abstract

In the modern history of Yunnan, a landlocked province in the southwest of China, the Kunming — Haiphong Railway profoundly shaped its geographic, political, and socioeconomic landscapes. Yunnan based artist Cheng Xinhao’s recent art and research projects To the Ocean investigates modernity and (post)coloniality of Yunnan through intellectual reflections on the history of the Kunming — Haiphong Railway, bodily experience with the current railroad, and spiritual conversations with himself about childhood memories and geographical imaginations. By analyzing Cheng’s visual works and writings in the project To the Ocean, this essay focuses on Cheng’s three encounters on the Kunming — Haiphong Railway — the Wujiazhai Railway Bridge, Bisezhai Station, and China-Vietnam Railway Bridge — to elaborate the iterative power of colonial modernity, socialist revolution, and postsocialism in shaping the landscapes of the Tonkin — Yunnan cross-border area.

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This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. This railway has different names, such as the ‘Indochina — Yunnan Railway,’ a translation from its French name, Les chemins de fer de l’Indochine et du Yunnan, and ‘Dian — Viet Railway,’ a translation from its Chinese name Dianyue Tielu. My use of Kunming — Haiphong Railway does not aim to argue a true version of history but respond to the starting point and intended destination in Cheng Xinhao’s project To the Ocean.

2. Cheng Xinhao, “Day 0: 2019.11.27—11.30 Kunming⁽⁰⁾,” in 24 Letters from the Railway (Ningbo, Jiazazhi Press, 2020).

3. ‘To the Ocean,’ chengxinhao.me, accessed June 30, 2023, https://www.chengxinhao.me/to-the-ocean.

4. Cheng Xinhao, ‘The Fifteenth Day, disenchantment in the day; Swiss landscape; the tiredness that eventually arrived,’ in 24 Letters from the Railway (Ningbo, Jiazazhi Press, 2020).

5. For the cost of building the Wujiazhai Railway Bridge, see Pholsena, “Technology and Empire,” 304.

6. Cheng Xinhao incorporates the concept of Zomia in his research, especially in the project Strange Terrains, which studies the migration of Mang People, an unrecognized and misrecognize ethnic group, who inhabit in the Tonkin — Yunnan cross-border area.

7. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 14.

8. Ibid., 7.

9. Ibid., xii.

10. Vatthana Pholsena, “Technology and Empire,” 539.

11. Tani E. Barlow, ‘Introduction: on “colonial modernity”,’ in Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia, ed. Tani E. Barlow (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 1–20.

12. Escobar, “Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise,” 185.

13. Rousseau, “An imperial railway failure,” 1–17.

14. Altan, “Politics of Life and Labor,” 77–99; Hu and Matsubara, “Development of French Inspired Urban Architecture with the Construction of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway,” 1–36; and Xingzhi, Extended Parallel Lines: Dian-Vietnam Railway and Borderland Community.

15. Lee and Cho, “Introduction,” 603.

16. Ibid.

17. Pholsena, “Technology and Empire,” 539.

18. Xinhao, “The Fifteenth Day.”

19. Cheng Xinhao, ‘The Ninth Day, a puzzle of life; perception and measurement; the night walk and staying overnight at some else’, in 24 Letters from the Railway (Ningbo, Jiazazhi Press, 2020).

20. Cheng Xinhao, ‘The Tenth Day, halfway of the journey; the night frozen to sleep; taking separate routes,’ in 24 Letters from the Railway (Ningbo, Jiazazhi Press, 2020).

21. Cheng Xinhao, ‘The Twelfth Day, entering the plain; about a small station,’ in 24 Letters from the Railway (Ningbo, Jiazazhi Press, 2020).

22. Han, “Feng Xiaogang’s Youth and the Nostalgic Imagination,” 93–111.

23. Xingzhi, Extended Parallel Lines, 177–78.

24. Dong Shaohui, ‘On the Development of National Capitalism in Modern China (Lun jindai zhongguo minzu zibenzhuyi de fazhan),’ Journal of Heilongjiang Provincial Institute of Socialism, no. 4 (2003): 41–44.

25. Xingzhi, Extended Parallel Lines, 75.

26. Rousseau, “An imperial railway failure,” 11.

27. Editing Committee of the Chronicles of Mengzi County, Chronicles of Mengzi County (Mengzi xianzhi), 23, 88.

28. Naughton, “The Third Front,” 353.

29. Zhimin, ed., Yunnan’s External Routes and Ports (Yunnan duiwai tongdao ji kouan), 6.

30. Naughton, “The Third Front,” 351.

31. Zhang, Postsocialism and Cultural Politics.

32. Cheng Xinhao, ‘The End,’ in 24 Letters from the Railway (Ningbo, Jiazazhi Press, 2020).

33. Lampton, Ho, and Kuik, Rivers of Iron.

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Yuxiang Dong

Yuxiang Dong is an art, educational, and social worker. His current practices and research are driven by the contradiction between ethnography in the Anthropocene and speculation of object-oriented ontology. His articles have been published in Leonardo, Media-N, Photographis, and other journals. He has taught at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Cincinnati, Virginia Commonwealth University, and other institutions.