Dream of Ding Village, Yan Lianke

In the novel Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lainke, people in the village understand what AIDS is but they continue to call it the “Fever”; they do this because of the suppression of knowledge they have encountered from an early age—censorship. China as a country was an extremely censored setting and still is in 2021. China is known for not allowing its citizens to be able to access information. In particular when the social media app, Facebook was blocked following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots because Xinjiang independence activists were using Facebook as part of their communications network. This is conveyed in my art through the usage of magazine cutouts with red paint covering them, along with the mouths being covered the same way. Within my censorship piece, there are eyes and mouths with red lines crossing them out. I chose to make it look this way symbolizing how each person is censored in their own ways in China. Throughout these pieces, there are red handprints symbolizing the front cover of the book Dream Of Ding Village. These red hands also symbolize the struggle people had within these times; like hands ripping towards freedom. This is important because censoring knowledge is taking power away from people; knowledge is power. Understanding is one of the most important things about living. And like in China, many people do not understand what is happening. Looking at this from an outside perspective seems inadmissible, but from the inside looking out, it is everyday life. Another component of Dream Of Ding Village is innocence, the village was not ready to face the epidemic of AIDS and beforehand, were innocent. The AIDS epidemic caused many people within the story to lose their innocence, for instance, LingLing and Uncle cheating on their previous spouses to be with each other. I show innocence in my drawing by showing a childish setting full of color and scribbles on the wall being torn away with big red hands that symbolize AIDs.  innocence, it is a fragile thing to have. At any second it can be ripped away from anyone; and I think it’s important for us, as people who live with or by children every day to understand the importance of innocence and that it should not be taken for granted. The last component I took away from Dream Of Ding Village was abandonment. Many people within the community abandoned each other whether it came to stealing money, stealing personal belongings, or even stealing coffins. Once people understood that they were sick and couldn’t change that fact they began to abandon one another. An example of this in my drawing is bright colorful settings fading to grey. Situations that once were happy and exciting are now dull and grey. Abandonment is another thing that almost everyone had felt before in their lives and I think it’s important to note how that can happen to anyone, at any time. This project displays meaning in multiple ways. Each color represents something important happening within China in each piece. There is a piece for each component I think is important within this book: censorship, innocence, and betrayal. 

Throughout this whole class I was thinking about how every country has bad events in history and good events in history, I've always wondered how similar those events can be. My painting represents the similarities between China and America from aids and covid to Aiananmen Square Massacre and Black Lives Matter protests to government impact in both countries. I’m trying to show how even though we are from different countries we all go through similar experiences, some more recent or severe than others. At the bottom of the painting there is a graph for economic growth the gold line is China's economic growth and the silver line is the U.S economic growth. China started off their growth with economic reforms however there were many setbacks from then on that they went through from new leaders to their governments actions, just like how we had setbacks when trump was president, he go ride of many protection policies which lead us to not being prepared for covid and having people refuse to protect themselves. 

Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke includes many “dreams” that narrate the events taking place from an outside perspective. One of these “dreams” details how the character, Father, uses his role in the village to gain power. This specific dream not only shows how Father used the government to become more powerful but how the government uses its citizens to gain control and connection. Our dance incorporates phrases from the “dream”. These phrases represent the way rural villagers felt towards the government during China’s AIDS crisis. It reveals the complex relationship the Chinese public has with their government. The chosen phrases highlight how the relationship has been beneficial to citizens and the ways it has failed them. China has a complicated history with its citizens. Its large population makes it hard for everyone to agree. Today we see people in Hong Kong protest for democratic rights, and at the same time, many citizens are content with their government’s policies. Through dance, Father’s relationship with the government is revealed. The movement shows how at times his government has benefitted him, and the ways his role as a blood head has weighed on him. Not only are these feelings represented through movement but also the song choice. The dance was choreographed to the song Something Sinister by Andrew Bird. Using the musicality of the song the majority of the movements were established. The dance is choreographed using the contemporary technique. Contemporary dance allows for freedom in the creation process. Contemporary combines modern and ballet creating an expressive result. When creating the dance, levels became an important component as they represent how Father feels. Lower levels show the conflict Father has with himself and his actions. Higher-level movements represent the father’s ambition toward bettering himself and his family.

The topic of my creation is the huge impact that communism has inflicted on China from the beginning spanning out through 80 years until now. The purpose of this creation is to express the emotions from each of the important events that made a change in China's history. The theme of my creation is the Communist Party has had power over China using violence and extreme repression. This way of ruling created the May Fourth Movement, the Great Leap Forward, the 5 Year Plan, and Tiananmen Square massacre. My creation reveals when humans gain power they become corrupt. In this scenario the Communist group that gained this power became corrupt and used brutal force to keep their citizens from retaliating. The Tiananmen Square massacre is a great example of this. This involved thousands of students protesting for a better democracy. The government then sent a dozen tanks into the middle of the square and shot into the crowds. Thousands were killed and that is why this is a great example of how power has corrupted them. The audience is going to learn that communist China was and still is a power corrupt society that will impress any person who opposes them. My creation exposes meaning through musical painting. It’s created to paint a picture using the emotions from the events in China's history. The left hand represents the communist party and government while the right hand represents the citizens and their struggle with oppression. My creation represents social studies and historical academics because it is laying out a timeline of the historical events including the citizens.

The topic of my creation focuses on the events of Plasma Economy and its effects on the Chinese Economy that is represented in Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke. Greed plays a big factor in the development of the Plasma Economy within the novel, as plasma consumption becomes a trade for money and needs for survival. However, because of this it leads to negative impacts, the most recognizable being the AIDS epidemic to Chinese citizens through the use of dirty syringes with already collected blood. To show these effects, I have created a dance with the use of a red Chinese folding fan, symbolizing blood. Most of my movements use a lot of swinging of the arms and general body to represent the blood flow. At some moments I will use the fan to interact with parts of my body through sharp movements as a way to represent both blood trade from retracting blood, and blood infection that leads to aids as it starts to affect the natural blood flow and body in general.

The Dream of Ding Village is a story about oppression. We created a miniature black coffin just like there were black coffins that the villagers used to bury their dead. We then engraved the coffin lid with three symbols. The first symbol is a human figure holding money representing greed. The second symbol is the blood drops dripping from him. He holds the money after giving his blood. He may also be the blood collector. The third symbol is Chinese for “greed”. Inside the coffin there are 11 blood drop symbols.  The symbols on the blood drops mean greed, love, death, village, sadness, blood, sickness, coffin, help, and needle. The symbols are on top of red painted blood drops which represent how all of these issues for the villagers all lead back to the blood trade itself. The money, marriage problems, sickness, all of the symbols lead back to the blood trade. The blood drops when put inside the coffin represent that the local government tried to bury social issues and disasters from embarrassment. The social issues and disasters are engraved on the blood drops. We used a laser cutter to cut the pieces of the coffin and blood droplets as well as engrave the symbols. The bloodheads were so greedy that they were taking more blood then the bags were designed for. This caused the villagers to become fatigued and weak. Then many years later that greedy act came back to bite everyone in the village in the form of HIV. We want our project to convey how greed with the blood trade in Ding Village affected so many aspects of people's lives. Greed spreads so much outside of Ding Village around the normal world with the way humanity functions socially. It's baked into how we feel about things daily. Share or no share, nice or not nice, it's within those feelings. 

This is China. It is big, Red, and it has internal borders. Because I haven’t read Dream of Ding Village, my project doesn’t focus on specific tragedies or moral inequities. Instead, it focuses on how China’s government functions. What does it mean to be divided with borders in a communist regime? There are 34 provincial-level administrative divisions, each with a Chinese Communist Party Provincial Committee which is headed by a Secretary. The Committee Secretaries effectively run the provinces, rather than the governor. China’s single political party runs the entire country on every level - it is absolutely a one-party state. Imagine if either the Democratic or the Republican Party were the only party, and instead of just merely being a group which politicians identify with it were actually the state itself. There are Municipalities, Autonomous Regions, and Special Administrative Regions as well. The CCP aims to have as much authority over these places as possible, similar to the provinces. To reflect all of this, I created a map of the regions of China. It is a red glass pane that was grinded to create the easily recognizable national borders, with the provincial borders etched in. The red represents the CCP, all of the bloody tragedies and moral inequities, and communism in general. The red fades as the map moves west, representing both the independence of Tibet and the influence of the Western World. The blue background also represents the Western World, but it also makes the point that communism is surrounded by democracy - there are only five communist countries left in the world, the other four of which are small and have relatively little impact on the world. The classic dichotomy of red vs blue hints at the many differences in the two types of government and the tensions that result of being forced to work together and depend on each other in the modern day. 

America and China in multiple time periods had massive problems with privacy infringement. My creation is supposed to be an interpretation of the ceaseless gazing stare of those in power. Always watching, always tracking, always keeping record. In Ding Village not only does the government keep track of the state of the village only to help when it's too late, but the villagers watch and judge each other constantly in the book. in America we are always under watch by the NSA who is always keeping tabs, they even got away with it until Snowden leaked documents, and in China there are cameras everywhere always being used by cops to find ¨high risk criminals¨ but the criminals aren't the only ones being watched, this kind of general beholding leads to the rightful fear of those around you.

Hello. I am The Artist. My project is a book of 10 haikus, written by someone living through the assigned time periods. My creation reveals the experience of watching what you deem beloved, be corrupted, and being unable to do anything about it. I suppose you could say that the theme of this project would be “decline”, Because everything is declining. The country, the man's mental health, the government, the cities, the war. The person writing this is a 20 year old man, full of ideas, he writes haikus throughout the years, and as they go by, you can see a change in the haikus. The man becomes older, more cynical. The haikus decline. Berating the things around him. Wishing that he could go back to the times before. That’s what this whole booklet is about. Showing a different perspective to this whole time. Almost like a timeline. The booklet resembles a booklet a common citizen would use to write down notes. Each haiku is written in simplified Chinese, and an English translation, as well as pictures on the right pages, for a more accurate description of the words. The orange construction paper coloring resembles the setting sun, and the images found in the book reference the setting of each haiku. The haikus themselves are presented in more of a diary format, due to the nature of the setting, and each are in a 575 format, the common format for a haiku.

For my project I wrote two dreams based on the dreams in the book Dream of Ding Village. My first relates to around page 150 in the novel. The Dream takes place right before Ding Yuejin and Jia Genzhu approach Grandpa, threatening to expose Uncle cheating to his wife Tingting if Grandpa doesn’t help them take over the school. They end up taking over the village, and eventually Jia Genzhu tells Tingting about Uncle’s adultery when grandpa tries to put his foot down too late. This is represented in the Dream when Grandpa see’s Tingting rushing with Jia Genzhu back to the school. I think Grandpa shouldn’t have tried to protect Uncle. After taking over the village Jia Genzhu and Ding Yuejin authorized all trees in the village to be cut down for wood and any wood in the school to be given to the villagers to make coffins. My dream is a warning to Grandpa, although it isn’t supposed to make much sense to him at the time because he still ends up helping Ding Yuejin and Jia Genzhu. My second dream refers to around page 275, after Uncle’s funeral. Father asked Grandpa to say he had no part in the blood selling, to blame it on Uncle. Father was responsible for getting Uncle and Lingling married, and had given them a gorgeous funeral, expensive coffins with decorations fit for nobels. This is where most of the dream takes place. I thought what Father asked was very interesting, because their are many sides to every story, including his, and while he has a lot of blame for what happened to Ding Village especially, the local government and local blood lords like Father were doing what they were supposed to do, grow the blood selling economy in China. Father never asked Uncle directly for him to take the blame off him, so I used this dream as a way to think about how he might have reacted had he. After writing my dreams I chose background music based on Chinese music. I used the music to help invoke the idea of dreamishness.

AIDS and Covid 19. This scrapbook shows what life would be like if the narrator of Dream of Ding Village never died during the AIDS pandemic and lived through Covid 19, all the things that happened in his life during these times. ​His scrapbook contains information about what he saw and went through during AIDS and Covid 19.This includes him seeing people getting sick, people moving to the school to distance themselves to help slow the spread of AIDS, and even people dying. For Covid he saw people distancing themselves from others and wearing masks on their faces. The audience is supposed to learn or understand what life would have been like for the narrator of Dream of Ding Village if he never died at age seven. Seven year old boy’s don’t have to worry a whole lot. Parents have to worry about their children's safety but shouldn’t have to constantly worry about them getting sick if they are not wearing the proper attire. They should understand that the narrator would have gone through two traumatic events in his life. The trauma would have been a big impact because one affected only his hometown and the other affected everyone in the whole world. It's significant because he was affected in both a pandemic and epidemic. His scrapbook exposes meaning by using actual images from both pandemics and it is from his perspective on life. He created this scrapbook when he was seven as a place to write everything he was seeing to try and figure out what was happening in the place he was living. He has facts on both AIDS and Covid 19. He has similarities and differences on both pandemics. He continued his scrapbook as an adult only when Covid started because he remembered he had been through something similar to this in the past and wanted to see how similar these things were going to turn out to be.  

Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke was about a small village in China during the AIDS epidemic where it became an economic trend to trade blood. Due to the un-sterilization of the needles the blood that was donated ended up infecting the volunteer with AIDS, a deadly disease at the time which was often overlooked by the blood head, because of the cost of using fresh needles and saving money meant more to him. My intentions for this project were to draw two symbols that represent Dream of Ding Village and the blood trading economy in China. I drew a blood drop representing the blood aspect of the trading and the needle which they used over and over again and never sterilized. Blood donation should be something that can be safe and sterile. A person should not have to worry about the needle they are getting poked with to give or take blood not being sterile or safe. Safety precautions should have been the number one priority in China but it was heavily overlooked because people wanted to save money.

The topic of this creation is about the perspective of Grandpa from Dream of Ding Village and how it had changed throughout the book. He used to look at the village like a small paradise in the poverdish province. At the end of the book, Grandpa looks back at his village and realized the destruction and the reason of it’s fall.The usage of watercolor paint helps bring more depth to the artwork that depicts the two perspectives Grandpa had of his village. The theme of the art piece is to show that the reality of a place does not always depict the true reality of it. The village may be destroyed and worn down, but to nature, it is a new place to grow and thrive in. The lighter themed painting depicts that thought with the tree full of leaves and flowers growing everywhere, while the darker toned piece is showing the sadness and isolation that Grandpa felt when he saw the fallen apart village.The land is taking back what once was theirs again and reforming it back to its original form. The audience understands that some things may seem dull or bad, but from another’s perspective can be very bright or happy. Things can be both of them like hospitals, they may seem sad or quiet, but they also mean that people are getting better or being healed. The bight colors help give the feeling of happiness or other good feeling while the darker colors of the other piece help bring out the bland and dreary feelings. The silhouettes of the tree, Grandpa, and the tombstone is to help show that all they need to do is look at it with a different perspective. The repeating of the two suns help show that days past with things changing for either good or bad. The art pieces show and reference the essay that was written about the book.