Golden Fairy Tales
Yi De’er (translated by Beatrice Leanza)
Yi De?er, Study for Golden Fairy Tale – The Intellectual in the Water, color photography, 2004.
The sun after the rain is much clearer than the usual, and the sunlight shines over the not yet crowded road. The rain water quietly flows into the lanes on the side of the street, mixed up with wooden sticks, paper pieces and similar waste. In the dirty rivulet a sparkling golden candy paper shows up.
In this small and dry town beyond the Great Wall, apart from the rainfall, it is an ordinary morning; people?s hasty pace and cars? fast speed wheels graze past the golden glittering paper covered candy vendors. No one cares if the packages hold aromatic chocolate or a cheap fruity bonbon, whether they will melt in the mouth of a young girl during her birthday party, or in the hands of a hardworking old man on a sickbed. This is a real world.
During my childhood, there was a voice often warning me to make a diligent man of myself, to speak steadfast, be elegant and helpful. The voice spoke of the sweetness of an honourable man, wrapped up in golden paper to allude to all its preciousness. Every time that the inevitability of reality and the longings of the psyche mingle together, I?d often recall the voice furtively and taste the sweetness a bit, so to awaken the adrenalin. Yet the sugar melts, bit by bit, until one day there will be no remaining trace, until there will be no record even of that taste.
And I don?t even know when that little piece of paper slipped from my fingers, falling onto the street bustling with life, into the rising clouds of dust, rolling into the turbid water running toward the drain.
