In September 1989, I traveled by international train across Lake Baikal, Siberia, the Ural Mountains, and to the beautiful Baltic city of Riga to participate in the Third International Tapestry Art Symposium and Artist-in-residence, which lasted for three months. The long journey and the great leap of geography prompted me to conceive the work “Qi (Match)”. I used three words - “Heaven”, “Man” and “Earth” in the work, and each word was cut into two halves and woven in Hangzhou, China and Latvia respectively, expecting that the tapestry parts completed in the two places would meet and fit together one day to form a complete work - a harmony of heaven, man and earth.

Before going to Riga, in July 1989, I wrote: “Although museum art has nurtured many great artists, it has tombed many geniuses. For most tapestry artists, the static three-dimensional space formed by museum walls and the general public tapestry can no longer satisfy their creative desire. I wish to free myself from the restraints of easel art, to achieve the great transcendence of time and space, and to vitalize the hollow artistic theories in social life. The capacity and limit of an artwork are defined as soon as it is completed. Conversely, its completion process is a dynamic, moving vehicle of art, history and thoughts, embodying great potential and infinite possibilities. Time and space continue to expand during its movement. The tapestry ‘Qi (Match)’ marks my attempt to explore this aspect.”

However, something unexpected happened and soon the Soviet Union collapsed and Latvia became independent. The return of the other half of the tapestry I had made in Riga, the capital of Latvia, fell into the sea without a trace. At first, I was very upset that the work “Qi (Match)” could not be put together as planned. But when I reconsidered about it, I realized that the unification of “heaven, man and earth” is a utopian ideal in itself, but the impetus for the creation of this ideal - my passionate waiting - actually shows that the creation of “Qi (Match)” has not ended, but is in a kind of present tense, where it continues to measure the changes of time, geography, history, and society. The incidental events have enriched the content of the tapestry “Qi (Match)” with the length, thickness, elasticity and uncertainty of the fiber, so the work is a kind of unfinished completion and finished incompletion. I finally realized that “the process is more important than the result” in art creation. This invaluable experience inspired me to explore the history by expanding the entire life of the silkworm nirvana reincarnation of the dynamic body in time and space.

Roughly speaking, from 1989 to 2020, I have raised and experimented with more than 1 million silkworms in 31 years, and if each silkworm spits out 1,000 meters of silk, the total length of silk can circle the earth more than 30 times.