The Full Essay
Core Method: The Mobile Studio
The turn from Zongtong to Qing Dao is not a break but an inversion. Six dimensions flip: space, time, body, material, interaction, core. Where the retreat held the body inside an enclosed discipline, the mountain lets the body unfurl into open flow. Where the retreat structured every round by the 4:20 a.m. bell, the mountain works at dawn and rests at dusk under nature's own rhythm. Each dimension is the same practice, seen from the other side.
Ways of Making
【Camping as Studio】
Camping in the vastness, cooking a meal, soaking in hot springs. The campsite is the drawing table; mountain stones are the paperweights; heaven and earth are the frame.
【Walking as Creation】
The touch of foot to ground, the listening for the friction of sole against fallen leaves, the watching of light and shadow moving in front of and behind the body.
Not "showing" work, but dialogue. As with the villagers at Guirensi Temple; as with the monks at Zongtong Temple.
【Nature as Co-Author】
The 35 cm × 50 m scroll keeps unfolding in motion, ink drying in the open:
· Wind: blowing across the ink, accelerating its setting
· Sun: striking the paper surface, shifting its tone
· Rain: soaking the xuan paper, producing accidental bloom
Nature is no longer the background, but the co-author: co-decider of material, tool, and time.
Dao Follows Nature
"The core of Chan is to follow the rhythm that nature already keeps, and this is not different from what the Taoists name 'Dao follows nature'."
In Qing Dao, this "not different" is verified:
· Not through seated meditation, but through walking
· Not through discipline, but through extension
· Not through interrogation, but through presence
From the fissure of 觀-念 (contemplation-concept) to the fusion of 自然-自在 (nature-at-ease): the subject moves from split to unity. Not a return, but a crossing-over.
Cultural Lineage
The motorcycle mobile studio sits inside a long Chinese tradition of wandering: the literati ascending mountains, the poet seeking immortals, the geographer inquiring after the unusual in the great rivers, the Chan monk wandering in search of the Dharma. Each tradition carries its core; Qing Dao translates that core into the artist's contemporary practice.
Scroll and Dimensions
· Dimensions: 35 cm × 50 m (continuation of the Zongtong Temple scroll)
· Materials: raw xuan paper, ink, Thai charcoal, wind, sunlight, rainwater
· State: open-air drying, natural erosion, time sedimented
Artist's Statement
"After leaving Zongtong Temple, I climbed onto a motorcycle with all my equipment. The work began to travel, as if it were a mobile studio, wherever I went, the work went. Like the ancients who rode out to wander."
"From the strict discipline of precepts, to the natural ease of the mountain. This transition is essential: the body goes from curled to extended, from discipline to freedom."