Born to a Chinese mother and an American father, I photographed the city during a pivotal period in my life, using the camera to find my bearings and to explore my connection to China.

I focused on the city’s everyday fabric—its buildings, lanes, parks, and the people who moved through them—turning away from monuments toward the ordinary: small details and gestures that hint at deeper shifts, moments where disparate elements briefly align to reveal something not yet defined. For both the city and me, it was a time of searching and improvisation, when direction had not yet been set.

The decade 1998–2007 marked a threshold between two Chinas: the more open, fluid years at the turn of the millennium and the more assured nation that took shape after 2008. The work reflects that earlier, unsettled interval—before the present order was fixed. Seen today, these photographs offer both a historical and personal record of a city, and a country, still in the process of defining itself.

Now, as China moves with greater certainty on the world stage, the work returns to that earlier in-between moment—marked by openness, uncertainty, and the possibility of what was still to come.