Monika Lin

On the Way to the Imperial Examination… : Crow No. 2, wire, rice paper, paste and beeswax, dimensions variable, 2012

In studying the literati, what is often overlooked is that their privileged life depended on the work of innumerable peasants who created income for officialdom through taxation, appropriated goods and unpaid labor. Using the motif of rice as a signifier for the peasant class, I emulated the practice of the literati by writing the character for rice 米 10,000 times, thereby hoping to illuminate the link between two very different types of labor: the backbreaking physical labor of the peasantry, the countless hours of mental labour (represented by the symbolic number 10,000, or 万) .
Having written 米 10,000 times during my residency at San Francisco’s Performance Art Institute, where I also installed and removed a “field” of rice in a span of 12 hours, I turned my attention to another connection between the literati and the peasantry: folktales. In the tales of Pu Songling 蒲松龄, the Qing Dynasty official who wrote the famous Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio 聊斋志异, Pu uses the plot device of the scholar in various states of accomplishment to lead into morally and psychologically resonant storylines. Often the scholars encounter shape-shifting demons along the way that waylay them or alter their destinies. The fox-spirit, tiger-man and crow are just a few of these supernatural beings whose encounters with wandering scholars not only entertain, but also invite us to reconsider the rich and complex relationship between Chinese folk culture, the peasantry, the Literati and their iconic works.