the something else and the why monster
When I was small, egg was considered a precious possession. They were stored under my grandma's bed.
One day, my aunt saw an egg river flowing out from my grandma's room. At the source of the river, under the bed, they found me, squeezing in my hands the last few remaining eggs.
Since then, the eggs in our house started to 'float' . They were stored in a basket hanging from the kitchen's roof. I was too young then to remember this story, but when my Aunt told me the story 25 years later, I could not help wondering if this is one of the reasonswhy I like to use eggs in my performance.

My favorite baby-sitting sections were spent in the dancing studio. I was suppose to learn ballet and Chinese dance, but I would be playing with everything possible in the room except dancing. I remember being completely exhausted each time.
It is difficult to be a serious student when your mother is the teacher.
But perhaps I have already found interaction with objects in my own invented ways more interesting than repeating others action.
Afterwards I started working for Non-government Organization (NGO) on community development projects in rural China. Oddly enough, it was this experience of working for NGO projects that brought me back to art.
The experience was very intense for a 'why monster' having to confront poverty, injustice, commitment on a daily basis.
I was exhausted, shocked, depressed, and cynical at the end.
Most of all I felt suffocated by the single model of development that was being put forward, even within the NGO realm, economic development is the king.
I was surprised at how indifferent people were to the environment and culture.
I started learning and doing community theatre and street theatre. But soon I was confronted with the same old problem, I found it difficult to make 'the' perfect laugh and 'act' like a king. One day my friend asked me to go see the works of his artist friends in a theatre.
He assured me it was not theatre they were doing but something else.
This 'something else' was one of the most powerful things I have ever experienced.
The artists made works questioning the constitution, freedom, human desire, and art.
At the end of their works I had the same feeling like when I was at the end of my sociology class- puzzled, touched, enlightened and curious.
I enrolled in a workshop organized by these artists. Two months later, I made my first work of performance art.
Using eggs.

I almost always got the worst grade at school in art. I could never draw the perfect apple and fold a paper flower that look almost real.
“Well, who wants to be an artist anyway?”, at least my mother was relieved when I announced this during dinner one day, after my repeated failures at the art classes. My favorite subject at high school was sociology. The teacher was always asking questions that I did not know how to answer.
In other classes we finished with the feeling of having got many answers, but at the end of a sociology class, I usually ended up having more questions. In order to find the answers or more questions, I continued studying sociology in the university.
My friends called me the 'why monster' because I was being too much critical about everything.

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me

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