Beijing Project n.22 Deng Dafei 邓大非

In a message to the staff of Bernard Controls, Deng Dafei 邓大非 presented his project: exchanging a book. The book, Lü hen 履痕 (Footprints), collects the essays his father wrote at home after retiring. He first wrote them on paper; then his son opened a blog for him, “Yi suo ju” 一蓑居, named after a line by Su Dongpo. Over six years his father kept writing, answering every comment, and gathered tens of thousands of readers – old friends and former students found him again through his texts, and he made many new friends.

His father, born in 1938 in Fuxin, Liaoning, bears the same name as Deng Shichang, the naval hero of the 1894 Sino-Japanese War. When the boy was named, north-east China was under Japanese occupation; his own father, a teacher, chose the name of a ship’s captain, hoping his son would be as strong, brave and resilient. The times he lived through were indeed full of upheaval – from Manchukuo to the war against Japan, the Nationalist government, the civil war and the political campaigns after 1949 – and he, an ordinary person, was swept along by them.

The book is no grand narrative of history: it records his memories from childhood to the travels of his retirement. History becomes the concrete experience and warm details of an ordinary Chinese life – an old man’s notes in his free time, a summary of how one ordinary person spent his life.

The artist offered the book as a gift in exchange: after reading it, each person could choose an object of equivalent value to give him in return – anything but money, for example a letter, a photograph or another object, ideally marked with the giver’s name and a short description.

Deng Dafei’s website