Introduction

Introduction

As the narrative video became an essential part of my interactive installation, I wanted to explore how it influenced audience engagement and interpretation. To do so, I invited several participants who had experienced both the video and the installation to take part in a small feedback session.

Method

Four participants from different cultural backgrounds were invited for short one-on-one conversations after viewing the installation and the video.
Each discussion focused on three main questions:

1. What emotions did the video evoke for you?
2. Did it help you understand the symbolism of hair and the self-combing women?
3. Did the bodily performance relate to your own sense of social expectation or freedom?

Their responses were documented and later analysed thematically.

Key Findings

Most participants described the video as intuitive and emotionally charged. They felt that the dancer’s movement embodied a kind of “silent resistance,” conveying tension and struggle more directly than words.
Interestingly, when the Asian female performer appeared on screen, almost everyone reacted with visible surprise and excitement—some gasped softly, some said “she’s so powerful,” and others mentioned, “seeing her move felt like seeing myself.”
Several viewers also expressed strong appreciation for the Black female dancer, describing her movements as “raw and powerful,” presenting a very different kind of energy.
Many participants commented on the visual quality and costume design, saying that “the imagery is beautiful,” “the clothes are stunning,” and “the lighting made the emotions stronger.”
These responses suggest that the audience connected not only with the conceptual themes but also with the aesthetic and sensory dimensions of the work—the video evoked resonance on both emotional and visual levels.

Reflection

Through this feedback process, I realised that the video is not merely a narrative supplement to the installation, but an independent sensory and affective medium. It transforms the audience from observers into emotional participants, extending the research from tactile interaction to visual and emotional resonance.
In future iterations, I plan to integrate audience feedback more deeply into the choreography and visual composition, allowing the dialogue between body and viewer to continue evolving.

Although the primary stakeholders of this research are Chinese women, the interventions conducted in the UK have attracted participants from diverse cultural backgrounds. Their feedback revealed that the installation not only reflects the conditions of Chinese women within the institution of marriage, but also resonates with the shared pressures faced by women across societies.

During the exhibition, I invited participants from China, Singapore, Korea, the UK, and Canada to step into the installation. Without prior explanation, they encountered the red threads and hair through touch, movement, and stillness — each forming a silent conversation between their cultural memories and embodied emotions.

Audience Feedback:

These responses revealed how emotion transcends cultural background. Participants from East Asian contexts perceived the red thread as a symbol of confinement and destiny, while Western participants resonated with the softness and vulnerability of the hair. This demonstrates how bodily experience and material symbolism can serve as a universal emotional language.

Initially, I thought the work belonged solely to the Chinese context — a reflection of women bound by familial and social expectations. Yet when a British viewer described feeling “ritual and solemnity,” I realised that marriage, gender, and the body are shared concerns across societies. Each woman meets her own “red thread” — as fate, duty, or tenderness.

Academically, this feedback supports my assumption of embodied empathy: people can connect emotionally through sensory engagement, even without shared language or cultural background. Here, art functions as a form of cultural translation, transforming physical materials into emotional bridges.

Ultimately, I realised that art is not only a way to expose structural oppression but also a means to cultivate understanding. When women from different worlds stand before the same red thread, touch it, pause, and feel — they are, in that moment, connected through empathy.

In this collaborative project, my friend and I co-created two video works — an art film and a documentary.
The documentary unfolds through five guiding questions, exploring how women from different cultural and generational backgrounds understand marriage, gender roles, and freedom.

These five questions correspond to five symbolic stages in the life journey of the self-combing women (zishunü, women in early 20th-century China who vowed to remain unmarried and independent):

1. Have you ever been pressured by your family or society to get married? What was that like?
2. What does marriage mean to you, personally?
3. Were you ever expected to embody a certain idea of femininity — in how you should walk, sit, or stand, or in the roles you were expected to take on as a woman?
4. When was the first time you felt like your body didn’t fully belong to you?
5. How do you define freedom or agency in your life?

Each question is linked to a corresponding scene and ritual of the self-combing women:

• The Combing Ritual: an older self-combing woman combs the hair of a younger woman who is about to take the vow — symbolizing her choice to remain unmarried and independent for life.
• The Wedding Ceremony: in history, self-combing women held a symbolic “wedding” ritual to declare their lifelong celibacy; before this, they would wrap themselves in white cloth to signify purity.
• The Chains Scene: the self-combing woman interacts physically with iron chains. The chains symbolize both the constraints of social institutions and gender norms, and the internal struggles and resistance of the self.
• The Black Veil in a British Church: a contemporary self-combing woman wears a black veil inside a foreign church, symbolizing an identity that transcends time, culture, and geography — and the solitude it entails.
• Cutting the Red Thread: representing the final moment of liberation — breaking free from societal expectations and reclaiming autonomy.

In the documentary, these five questions are answered by participants from diverse cultural, generational, and personal backgrounds — some from Eastern societies, others living in the West; some single, some married, others choosing solitude.
We invited each participant to respond freely to one of the questions on camera while interacting with the installation:
some touched the red thread, some grasped the chains, some wore the black veil —
these embodied gestures bring abstract reflection back into sensory experience, allowing personal memories and the symbolic meanings of the installation to resonate with each other.

This structure of “response – interaction – reflection” turns the film from mere documentation into a live process of thinking.
Through tactile engagement, each participant re-experiences the boundaries and weight of being “female.”

Through this collaborative video project, we aimed to create a shared space where women across cultures, generations, and identities could speak, remember, and redefine the meaning of autonomy.
Every answer, every silence, and every gesture became part of a collective tapestry of memory.
These moving images are not only about marriage or gender —
they are about how women, within layers of constraint, continue to seek control over self, body, and destiny.

This is not only a filmic collaboration,
but also a dialogue among women —
in front of the camera, we look back together, and together, we begin to rewrite.

With economic development, rising levels of female education, and increased employment opportunities, contemporary society has begun encouraging women to enter the workforce rather than remain solely in caregiving roles. However, China is currently in a period of value transition: women are encouraged to pursue careers, yet the cultural expectations surrounding gendered division of labour have not evolved accordingly.

For the older generation, marriage represented a pathway to “withdrawing from the labour market in exchange for security”—women provided domestic and childcare labour in return for men’s financial support and social protection (Yan, 2003). In contrast, the situation for today’s women is fundamentally different. They are expected not only to build a professional identity in the workplace, but also to take on the primary share of domestic responsibilities at home, including housework, elder care, childcare, and emotional labour.

American sociologist Arlie Hochschild, in her seminal work The Second Shift, introduced the concept of the “second shift” to describe the widespread phenomenon in which women, after completing a full day of paid work, return home to perform unpaid domestic labour (Hochschild and Machung, 1989). This concept is highly applicable to the experiences of contemporary Chinese women: after work, they continue with a “second shift” of household duties, while men’s participation in childcare and housework remains limited.

Research further shows that despite women’s increased educational attainment and economic independence, the unequal gendered division of labour within the institution of marriage has not fundamentally changed. Leta Hong Fincher (2014) notes that Chinese women often take on a disproportionately large share of housework and caregiving responsibilities after marriage, meaning that marriage no longer functions as a “safe haven” for women but, instead, becomes a structure that intensifies their burdens. As a result, women’s expectations and willingness to enter marriage have significantly declined.

Consequently, more women today recognise that marriage no longer offers the clear benefits and security it once did for previous generations. Rather, it often entails constrained career development, reduced personal time, and increased emotional and caregiving labour. It is not that women reject intimate relationships; they are rejecting a system that adds responsibility without offering reciprocal support.

References

Fincher, L.H. (2014) Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. London: Zed Books.

Hochschild, A.R. and Machung, A. (1989) The Second Shift. New York: Viking.

Yan, Y. (2003) Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949–1999. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

When discussing the pressure to get married, people often attribute it to societal norms, cultural traditions, or policy-driven expectations. However, throughout my field research, another source emerged repeatedly—one that is more intimate, emotionally charged, and deeply rooted: the expectations that come from within the family.

Across a series of in-depth interviews, I found that the strongest pressure to marry often comes from female elders—mothers and grandmothers—rather than from fathers or male relatives. This finding was both unexpected and thought-provoking: Why do women from the previous generation become the primary agents of marital pressure?

To understand this phenomenon, I conducted a focused interview to explore why female family members so often act as the key drivers of urging marriage.

One interviewee shared that the greatest pressure she felt to get married did not come from her father, but from her mother and grandmother. Her mother firmly believed that “marriage is something every woman must go through.”When the interviewee expressed that she was not ready for marriage, her mother replied:

“Once you get married, life becomes stable. A woman only feels secure when she has her own family.”

The interviewee emphasised that her mother was not intentionally forcing her into marriage; rather, this belief stemmed from her mother’s own lived experience—that marriage had brought her happiness and security. She said:

“My mum is part of the generation whose life genuinely improved after marriage. She and my dad became financially stable, their relationship was harmonious, and life got better. So she truly believes marriage is a good thing for women.”

For her mother’s generation, marriage indeed served as a form of upward social mobility. Many women gained access to resources, social status, and a sense of security through marriage. In this context, marriage was not a limitation, but a means of “escaping hardship” and “achieving a better life.”

As the interviewee concluded:

“She wants me to take the same path because it is the only route to happiness she has ever known.”

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Why Did the Previous Generation Believe Marriage Was the Path to Happiness?

To understand the marriage values held by women of previous generations, we must return to the socio-historical environment in which their beliefs were formed. Through conversations with women from my participants’ parents’ generation, it became clear that “marriage brings happiness” was not an imagined ideal, but a lived reality rooted in the social structure, economic conditions, and gender norms of the time.

In the 1980s–1990s, traditional gendered division of labour remained dominant in Chinese households: men were expected to be the primary breadwinners, while women carried out domestic and caregiving roles (Yan, 2003). Within this structure, women’s social value and personal security were largely tied to marriage and family roles, rather than to independent career development. Marriage was not merely a romantic relationship—it functioned as a form of practical life security.

Furthermore, the post–reform economic boom significantly improved living standards. Many women experienced tangible life improvements after marriage—better housing, increased family income, enhanced social welfare, and greater financial stability (Zhang, 2010). For them, marriage truly resulted in visible, measurable gains. Under these conditions, viewing marriage as a reliable route to stability and happiness was both reasonable and beneficial.

As a result, women of that generation genuinely believed—on the basis of their own lived experiences—that marriage equalled stability, happiness, and “having someone to rely on.” Yet this sense of happiness was shaped by historical and structural conditions, not by marriage itself.

However, it is important to recognise that this model of “marital happiness” was built on a highly gendered family structure: women exchanged domestic labour and caregiving for men’s financial provision (Fong, 2004). This exchange shaped their worldview and informed how they advised their daughters.

In other words, their insistence that “marriage is good for women” did not arise from control or conservatism, but rather because—in their time—marriage was the most reliable and socially sanctioned pathway for a woman to secure a good life.

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References

Fong, V. (2004) Only Hope: Coming of Age under China’s One-Child Policy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Yan, Y. (2003) Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949–1999. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Zhang, L. (2010) In Search of Paradise: Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZC846rXXqujxXLhzkqEK3gYAqpjVAh18/view?usp=share_link

Recently, I had a conversation with a Black woman about “hair” — yet we quickly realised that what we were discussing was never just hair, but the intersection of body, identity, race, beauty standards, and intergenerational trauma.

The interviewee mentioned that within many Black communities, “straight hair is still seen as beautiful” — a perception not rooted in Black culture itself, but heavily shaped by colonial, Eurocentric beauty ideals. Historically and today, racialised aesthetics have labelled Black women’s natural Afro-textured hair as “messy,” “unprofessional,” or “hard to manage”, pushing many women to straighten or suppress their natural curls in order to fit into white-dominated workplace and social standards.

Although the “natural hair movement” in recent years has encouraged more Black women to embrace Afros, braids, locs, and protective styles, the interviewee noted that the desire for smoothness and sleekness still lingers within the community, reflecting the ongoing influence of these internalised beauty norms.

During our conversation, she further shared that in some contexts, wider hips among Black women are considered “not attractive” or “not feminine enough.” This belief may sound absurd, yet it is deeply rooted in history — specifically, the internalisation of a white, slender, delicate ideal of femininity.

Colonial discourses have long demonised and objectified Black women’s bodies — sexualising them on the one hand, while de-feminising them on the other, attaching labels such as “strong,” “masculine,” or “too big.” In the white gaze, wider hips and a stronger physique have been perceived as deviating from femininity, a perception that has gradually become internalised as self-surveillance and self-doubt within Black communities.

Ahmed (2004) argues that the body becomes “oriented” toward certain social ideals through cultural conditioning, continually adjusting itself to meet norms and expectations. Within this system of discipline, hair and the body become two key arenas where women learn to “correct” themselves.

This conversation made me realise that although the embodied experiences of Black and East Asian women stem from distinct historical trajectories, both are shaped by powerful mechanisms of social regulation.

In Chinese culture, Confucian ethics — such as the belief that “our body, hair, and skin are given by our parents and must not be harmed” — constructed a moral framework around women’s appearance, requiring them to present a body that is “orderly, modest, and obedient” to signal filial piety and virtue. Later, Japanese, Korean, and Western beauty standards layered onto this foundation, producing a modern ideal of the “fair, youthful, slim, and delicate” woman. Chinese women, too, are socialised to manage their posture, control their body shape, and style their hair according to socially accepted aesthetics.

The paths of regulation differ:

• Black women: assimilation pressures rooted in colonial histories and white aesthetic dominance
• Chinese women: Confucian bodily ethics reinforced by contemporary media-driven beauty standards

Yet the outcome is strikingly similar — women learn to view their own bodies as something that must be corrected.

Hair and the body are not simply matters of “personal choice”; they are projections of power structures. When women begin to embrace their natural hair textures and recognise their inherent bodily features, it is more than an aesthetic shift — it is a political act, a form of decolonisation, and a reclaiming of narrative power.

Reference：

Banks, I. (2000) Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, and Black Women’s Consciousness. New York: New York University Press.

Ahmed, S. (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

DeLongoria, M. (2018) ‘Misogynoir: Black Hair, Identity Politics, and Multiple Black Realities’, Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies, 12(8), pp. 39–49.

Hair has never been just hair.
In Chinese cultural tradition, it is considered part of the body — a symbol of morality and social order. The ancient saying goes, “The body, hair, and skin are given by our parents; we must not harm them — this is where filial piety begins.” This belief established a fundamental idea: the body belongs to the family, not to the individual. Hair, therefore, was never merely a matter of appearance; it carried the meanings of lineage, continuity, and identity. For women, this view of the body implied a gentle but profound constraint — their hair was expected to be neat, obedient, and unaltered.
It was not until the early twentieth century that this order began to crack. The May Fourth Movement in 1919 became a turning point for intellectual awakening. Female students took scissors to their long hair — an act that symbolized both a break from feudal morality and the birth of a “new woman.” Cutting their hair was not simply a matter of style, but a political gesture: they used their bodies to express independence and resistance.
Meanwhile, in the Pearl River Delta of southern China, another group of women chose a quieter but equally radical path. They combed their own hair in a self-initiated ritual — the self-combing ceremony — to declare lifelong celibacy. These self-combing women rejected marriage as an institution and took their hair as an oath, using daily ritual to reclaim sovereignty over their bodies.
In the 1930s, the image of women in cities changed again. The fashion of permed hair swept from Shanghai across the country; “iron tongs” and “water curls” became the new symbols of modernity. Western styling and cosmetics entered daily life, and women began to converse with modern society through their appearance. Hairstyles were no longer merely signs of obedience or rebellion — they became a form of self-expression. Women were no longer just objects to be seen; they began to perform themselves.
This sense of freedom, however, was soon interrupted by war. In the 1940s, when “the Chinese nation was in its most perilous time,” countless women cut off their long hair — for survival, for military service, or for escape. Short hair in this period symbolized action and resolve; it represented a body forced to bear responsibility in times of crisis.
After the founding of the People’s Republic in the 1950s, society entered a new phase of idealism. Double braids became the standard hairstyle for unmarried women — neat, simple, and healthy. It reflected the values of equality and labor, forming a new collective aesthetic. In the 1960s and 1970s, this style became even more uniform: short hair and short braids dominated. Gender differences were blurred, and women’s bodies were almost completely absorbed into the collective narrative.
With the reforms of the 1980s, individuality began to reawaken. Permed hair, voluminous curls, and even afros appeared on the streets. Women once again used their hair to shape themselves — it was an expression of freedom and optimism, a belief that the future belonged to them. In the 1990s, television and cinema became the new classrooms of beauty. Faye Wong’s short hair, Gong Li’s soft waves, and Brigitte Lin’s long straight hair shaped an entire generation’s imagination of “beauty” and “self.” Hairstyles extended beyond fashion — they became expressions of identity and attitude.
In the twenty-first century, the internet changed everything. Hairstyles were no longer defined by celebrities but created and circulated by ordinary young women online. Dyeing, layering, and self-styling became new visual languages of individuality. The body was now constantly redesigned within digital space. Hair became both a medium of self-expression and a marker of identity in an age of fluidity.
From “The body, hair, and skin are given by our parents” to “self-combing,” and finally to “styling as one pleases,” hair has recorded the social and bodily history of Chinese women across a century. It has passed through obedience, rebellion, imitation, and reinvention — bearing witness to how women, in an ever-changing society, have used the softest of things to define themselves.
Sometimes I think hair matters precisely because it exists on the boundary between the body and the world. It belongs to us, yet grows beyond us. It can be cut, shaped, and controlled — but it never stops growing.
Perhaps that is why hair remains one of the most enduring symbols of female experience.

Although my research initially focused on the relationship between Chinese women and the institution of marriage, and my stakeholders were Chinese, the intervention conducted in the UK attracted women from different cultural backgrounds to participate. Their feedback made me realize that this device not only reflects the situation of Chinese women in the marriage system, but also reveals the common pressures that women face in different societies.
The two core materials used in the installation – red thread and hair – originally symbolized marriage, restraint and physical connection in the context of Chinese culture. Red symbolizes marriage in China, and hair is also a very important element in the history of Chinese women. However, with the participation of women from the UK, South Korea, Singapore, Canada and other places, these symbols have been constantly “retranslated”.
For the participants from China and Singapore, the red thread and hair brought a sense of oppression and unease, symbolizing the fate of women entangled by social expectations.
Korean participants interpreted the red thread as a metaphor for fate – whether they like it or not, individuals are always connected by some invisible thread.
Women from Canada and the UK, although not familiar with these cultural symbols, felt an emotional resonance the moment they touched their hair. They talked about that soft, genuine and almost intimate touch, which reminded people of the universality of the “body” as a shared experience.
These cross-cultural perspectives broaden the significance of the research: the fact that audiences from different cultures can establish emotional connections with material symbols through sensory experiences indicates that my approach is effective in emotional communication. The same symbol (red line, hair) is reinterpreted in different cultural contexts, which makes me think about the flow and redefinition of cultural symbols in a global context.
Ultimately, I realized that art, through the combination of physical experience and symbolic materials, can not only present the oppression of social structures but also serve as a cross-cultural medium to promote understanding and empathy.

In my latest installation test, I found that the interactivity of the work met expectations – the audience was full of curiosity about the materials and was willing to step forward to touch, try and participate. However, I also realized that most of the time, I needed to be beside them to introduce the inspiration source and background story of the installation. This reaction came more from my oral explanations rather than the emotions conveyed by the work itself. However, merely interacting with the installation itself makes it difficult for the audience to immerse themselves in the story and emotions. The installation itself lacks a strong emotional appeal and is hard to achieve narrative quality.
To enable the audience to delve deeper into the context of the work, I decided to incorporate video narrative, using images to reinforce the history and emotions behind the “self-combing woman”. I collaborated with a friend who studies dance, attempting to recreate the spiritual ritual of the “self-combing girl” through body language and performance.
The story of the video will include five scenes:
Combing ceremony – A woman who has become a self-combing woman combs the hair of another woman who is about to become a self-combing woman, symbolizing her choice to remain independent and unmarried for life.
Wedding ceremony – In ancient times, self-combed women would have a symbolic “wedding” to have a cemetery after death. Before getting married, they would wrap themselves in white cloth to maintain their chastity.
The iron chain scene – The self-combing woman has a physical interaction with the iron chain. The iron chain not only symbolizes the constraints of social systems and gender norms, but also represents her struggle and struggle in consciousness.
The black veil in a British church – a self-combed woman in the contemporary era wears a black veil in a foreign church, symbolizing an identity and loneliness that transcends time and space.
Cutting the red line – symbolizing the moment when she finally breaks away from social expectations.
I hope to enhance the narrative and immersion of the work through the combination of video and installation, allowing the audience not only to “use” the installation but also to enter the story through their senses and emotions.