If you were to visit the Qian Liu shrine along the West Lake of Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China, you might stand at the foot of the monumental statue of Qian Liu, “King of Wuyue”, who lived from 852 until 932. Inside the pavilion you might read about the prosperity he brought to Hangzhou and the surrounding region during his reign and view the list of his successors and descendants. You might see that his “issue” consisted of thirty-eight sons. Period.
Then you might wonder if there were daughters. I wondered.
I also discovered, upon visiting Hangzhou with my mother sixty years after she left China, that she, Qian Xianna, was of the thirty-seventh generation descended from Qian Liu. I saw that, if you went by official records, we daughters did not exist. Yet, in 1979, to be recorded as a newborn daughter under China’s One Child Policy might mean being sold by the side of the road for twelve dollars, or, worse, given to the river. So it was perhaps better not to be known.
Conceived in Switzerland, I was carried in utero as my mother journeyed by ship to Camden, New Jersey, where she could join her brother and sister-in-law, so that I would be a citizen of the United States. I was the third child to my parents, Qian (Chien) Xianna, of Hankou, and Hsu Shao Ti of Ningbo, who were married in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My birth was preceded by the arrival of two brothers, both born in Boston.
Those were the early years of my parents’ lives as new immigrant students with new American names – Charlotte and Ted. The trail of their migration, ambitions, losses, and successes was part of my inheritance. Camden was followed by Ohio, Wisconsin, Virginia, and New York, always moving, adjusting on repeat. All three children eventually returned to Boston, and, bringing her American story full circle, my mother spent the last twenty years of her life in Cambridge.
The point is, just because you were born female does not mean you do not exist.
Art-making is one way of understanding internal and external worlds. The medium – paper, wood, wax, words, found objects – is a conveyance through which I attempt to shape a statement. It is a substance and process for figuring out and describing a response to life lived.