Chapter II

Field & Cultural Memory

Culture often reveals itself through small details: a word, a garment, a family story, or a gesture repeated across generations. This Field & Cultural Memory section gathers the observations, encounters, and archival traces through which I explore how people remember where they come from.

01
Field documentation in Liangshan

Field Documentation — Through My Lens

Liangshan Yi Culture & Sustainable Tourism

Culture, Tourism & the Agency to Represent

During my fieldwork in Liangshan, I explored how tourism can create new opportunities for cultural visibility while also simplifying the traditions it seeks to celebrate. Through interviews, site visits, and cultural documentation, I examined Yi embroidery, Bimo traditions, language, education, and local tourism. The experience changed how I understood preservation: not as keeping culture unchanged, but as ensuring that communities retain the agency to interpret, adapt, and represent their own heritage.

0 Months of research
0 Days of fieldwork in Liangshan
0 Interviews with residents, artisans & educators
0 Years of data analyzed for an 11-page research paper

Published in Curieux Journal in 2024

Awarded Most Creative Action Plan Award

Read the Research
02
History Worn exhibition

Oral History — Uniforms Remembered

History Worn: The Investigation

What a Uniform Reveals

What can a school uniform reveal beyond its color and cut? History Worn began with this question. Drawing from archives, historical photographs, oral accounts, and visual analysis, I traced 110 years of uniforms at my school. Each design reflected more than changing styles: it carried ideas about discipline, belonging, educational values, and student identity. By examining an object worn every day, I discovered that cultural memory can be found not only in distant traditions, but also in the ordinary materials closest to us.

0 Years of uniform history traced
0 Research methods: archives, oral accounts, photography, and visual analysis
0 Views on the published WeChat feature
0 Exhibition developed for a school community of 5,000+