October, 2017.
This is a photo essay from my road trip to the northern part of Xinjiang, a city in the West in my home country China. I visited a small mountain village called Hemu, which lies on the China-Kazakhastan border. It was the tourist off-season at the time and soon the heavy snow would seal the mountain passes.
I strolled around the village at dusk, I reached the artificial border made from iron fences. All of a sudden, the subjects around me looked both familiar and odd, even with the Chinese characters on them: frontier inspection stations, cable marks, broken beer bottle lying in the tube, goats and horses, stray dog followed me all the way to the lodge I was staying for the night — I perceived an order in the midst of those seemingly-scattered arrangements. The border strikes me with my identity consciousness. I realise that I am also one of them, and alongside with them, we convey a clear message to the outside world: HI, I COME FROM CHINA.
