弦歌 (Xiángē)·The String Ode
Youjun Zhang
Upon a wisp of the gilded glimpse of the nascent sun, to an area where the spring grasses wave in tide with the foretell of the wind that has yet to come - encrypted in the crystalline knot of the season’s lores, on that side of the mountain and on the other side of the vale; the sound of string echoes with the songs of the spring, of those that is silently unfettered and of those that has yet to come in the encounter. It lauds their own legends with guarding the ode of the ongoing. Upon a memory: love is the renaissance of romance.
弦歌 (Xiángē)·The String Ode is a project illustrating the time-honored wedding customs of Chinese ethnic minorities. This newspaper is a series of broadsheets containing the stories of the 55 ethnic minorities in China. Featuring the folk songs, poems and myths, each issue tells a different story of traditional wedding customs for each minority by illustrating the ancient legends and traditions embedded in their wedding customs, history of traditional wedding rituals, and contextual information about the culture, geography and language of the ethnic minority.
As the news in paper form has accompanied human communities since the beginning of printing, the project explores the transformations of its contemporary communication. By looking closely at these wedding customs of Chinese ethnic minorities: their traditions, music, and expressions, the project investigates the many ways a universal idea of romance is expressed and experienced through long-standing ceremony and ritual.