I don’t know how many times each Chinese has to sit in front of a red cloth to take a portrait photo for how many official papers. I have no idea when this red background kicked in as in other countries normally the background colour is not red. Chinese likes red and therefore red is used extensively hence becomes a traditional colour. As institutional or official images take this red colour from the tradition, red becomes a signifier for these institutional governance or rules. The government must have billions of passport photos like this and they are all stored and archived. China has a big population and the recent economic upcoming resulted from this abundance of labour. Made in China becomes a phenomenon. Lots of comments and perceptions on this phenomenon. Lots of them are political. Some of them are negative on this phenomenon with the conspiracy theory against China as a threat. Some of them are neutral. Some of them are with humane concern on the living standard of these labours. People in the west use products made in China every day. Do they care what is behind this phenomenon? Do they care what happens in China and what these workers are doing and living? From inside China, the government, institution, company and factory have the Chinese way of controlling and managing people. This is the heritage from the communist era, and of course from the two thousands of years of feudal system, and from the ancient Chinese philosophy too. I put people’s portrait with red cloth behind to signify ‘something’ and I turn the sitter around to conceal the face to raise or arouse questions.
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