Nothing that says something

Xu Bing describes going back to the factory where his Book from the Sky had been printed from the 4,000 blocks he had hand-carved with invented characters:

Once Book from the Sky had been exhibited continually around the world to broad critical praise, I just thought of those carved blocks.  When I returned to China in 1994, I went back to the factory once to retrieve the blocks, and to see everybody.  I would pass a small bridge on my bicycle, then down a straight road lined with trees on one side.  When I saw a yard with several rows of single-storey buildings, I would know I was almost there.  But the factory gate was padlocked.  I was peering inside when a middle-aged woman appeared from behind me and said: "The factory moved to the other side of the village."  There was a boy at her side, and she sent him off: "Go find the factory director and tell him somebody's here!"

The new factory was not far from the old one, and the factory director was still the same, except that he now walked with some difficulty.  He had come from his house, and revealed that something had happened there.  It seemed that his youngest daughter had suffered a bout of hysteria.  He called out to someone" "Go find young Xu's blocks, and bring them."  With that, he turned to me and breathed his familiar sigh, "After the move, I'm not sure if they're still there."  In a while, the same person returned, carrying a rice sack with a bunch of black stuff in it.

"Empty it out!"

The contents spilled onto the ground.  There were the pieces of type.  It looked like a pile of coal briquettes.  But upon closer inspection, they really did have characters, with a thick layer of ink stuck to them.  They looked as though they had been through a lot, not unlike the antique blocks.  One complete chase and a few characters survived, which was enough to leave me quite satisfied.  As for the model books with the 'coded' symbols, they were simply gone and that was that.  But it was okay.

I asked: "What about Miss Bian and the others?"

"She went off and got married in some village, isn't that it?"  Then his sigh.  It seemed as though he were asking somebody else.  I wonder, now that she was married, whether she was still leaning over a printing press all day.  The factory had changed; the personnel had changed.  What would never change was the printed sets of Book from the Sky.

On the road back, the trees were light green, and I carried a rice sack that was filled with something other than rice.  In mind, I wasn't really sure what to think.  From 1987 to 1991, what was I like?  What did I do?

I can only say: a person who spent four years of his life making something that says nothing.

from Tianshu: Passages in the Making of a Book.  John Cayley, Xu Bing & others.  Ed. Katherine Spears.  London" Quaritch, 2009.