I often see questions in people` s eyes when they learn that I had a mid-life career change.
They ask me why, so late in life, I should suddenly start creating art-moreover, start creating installation art, with which I really had no experience. At such times , I may appear to have no answer, but really the answer has been there in my heart for a long time; it` s just hard to use words to explain it.
I have found in art a kind of freedom, freedom for my soul.
When I was a teenager I stopped going to school, and my home life was disrupted. This was during the Cultural Revolution, and I endured many hardships. I lost both my parents early on; by the age of fifteen I was laboring in the countryside. At seventeen I was working in a factory. Later I studied Chinese medicine, worked in a foreign company, and tried to start my own business…
In my life I have felt what it is to drift, including in and out of different marriages…
Throughout everything, what stood out the most was a kind of powerlessness in so many situations…
That is, until that unforgettable summer…
That year I was working in a German company, relying on my language skills to make a living. The company treated me quite well, and in return, I really put my heart into my work. I enjoyed the salary of a white collar position which at the time was uncommon among my countrymen.
I was in Europe studying language when the news started coming from Beijing nonstop. Finally, in April I wanted to return home, but was told that it was not possible. By June all the foreigners who were working for my employer in Beijing had already left — the company was at a complete standstill. By the time I was allowed to return home, it was already mid-August.
That was an endless summer. I had a home I couldn` t return to and I can` t say how much time I spent listening to the news, hour by hour, for anything concerning China.
If it` s true that a person` s soul can leave their body, I believe I experienced it then.
Because I had no way to continue with my studies, it seemed best for me to go traveling. However, throughout that whole summer, no matter where I went, everything in front of me just seemed to drift before my eyes, like so many vague, floating clouds — blurry and indistinct. In my mind, I saw clearly so many past events coming up from my memory one by one, like the turning pages of a book , all of my experiences, and they were once again broken open, raised up before my eyes and would not fade away…
I am thankful for those standstill summer days which gave me so much time to think. I seemed to understand so much all at once and decided that I never wanted to pass that kind of day again where I was surrounded and engulfed by such a vast felling of helplessness. Our lives have already been manipulated for too long; we have become too accustomed to the comfort that we draw from custom.
And so it was during those standstill summer days that I made up my mind. Although I was limited in what choices I could make, I knew I wanted to change my life, no matter what the future would bring.
Not long after this, I left my so-called “white collar ”job.
If my art has a starting point, I would say is was in those summer days.
Now if someone asks me what “art” is, I want to say that art is not Chinese ink and wash, nor is it oil painting, installation, or performance. Art is a way of thinking, an approach to thinking. In the end, art may be the only way humankind can truly liberate itself.
For me, art has become even more. It is a way of living that gives me the greatest degree of freedom in my life.  

Qing Qing 
Winter, 2000
Nanluoguxiang, Beijing

作者：ChenQingQing