Tangshan City（more）

Tangshan City, in everyone's memory, there will be some keywords, such as the earthquake, kitchen knife team, violence... In April 2023, I visited Tangshan by chance, and when I visited Nanhu Park, my friends in Tangshan told me that Nanhu was transformed from the subsidence area of Tangshan earthquake in 1976, and it was also one of the main burial sites after the earthquake. Looking at the dark South Lake water and hills at dusk, the light in the woods becomes more and more bleak and cold, and the atmosphere of the South Lake is filled everywhere. When I visited the Tangshan Earthquake Museum and the Earthquake Site Memorial Park, I felt the fragility and powerlessness of life, as well as the cracks and pain of the city. I started shooting Tangshan with a ROLLEIFLEX dual-lens reflex camera, and as I went to Tangshan more and more times, I found that the city in the shot became more complicated. I climbed the Dacheng Mountain, overlooking Tangshan, high-rise buildings; In front of the headless Bodhisattva statue, under the backlight, there is a feeling of burning sun. On Fengshan Mountain, the gods and Bodhisattvas of many small temples were locked up in their cave rooms. Not far away, huge gaps in countless mines, as if some faith had been lost in the hearts of men, and the coal train drove off into the distance, this was a torn city, sunset, approaching night. Since the 1976 earthquake that caught the world's attention, the city of Tangshan has experienced a series of major events: from the heartbreaking Tangshan earthquake, the widely controversial Tangshan kitchen knife team incident, to the recent violent beating incident that caused national outrage, the development of Tangshan has presented a complex social picture. On the one hand, it bears the profound pain left by the great earthquake; On the other hand, it also exposes the neglect of human nature and the value of life in society. The sad Tangshan people, the urban landscape and social phenomenon of magic realism have created a unique picture of The Times. From a broader perspective, Tangshan is not only a microcosm of a city in northern China, but also a reflection of social and cultural changes in China to some extent.