MONOLOGUE IN THE RUINS

In these houses, everything left behind is unwanted trash—portraits of parents still hanging on the walls,a dinner left untouched on the table,and secrets written on the walls that can never be taken away.

In 2018, we visited the Ankang public housing community before its demolition. Behind the sealed buildings, a shattered window revealed what remained inside: rooms filled with personal belongings. We decided to open the doors and step into one room after another, beginning to film. The traces of life and abandoned objects drew us in: portraits of parents, family altars, military flags and ID cards, a table of rotting food, countless pairs of baby shoes, powdered milk, knives, medicine bottles and syringes, a wig on the bed, and a pink dress and doll lying next to a knife… It was as if the residents had suddenly disappeared in a single moment. These objects became clues and messages left behind—they life and yet fragments of memory. Each room felt like a person’s inner world, about to be discarded. We kept asking ourselves: Who once lived here? Ankang was labeled a slum—a place where people on the margins of society were housed: individuals with disabilities, refugees, young single mothers. They had been relocated and concentrated into this space. We eventually found some former residents and asked:“Is there a memory you most wish you could leave behind?” Their answers, like the objects in those rooms soon to be destroyed, may seem insignificant and nothing. but they are also unspeakable memories, about to be buried with the city’s redevelopment. Buildings can be demolished, erasing the memory of the land. Objects can be discarded, banished from reality. But the nightmares exist in our subconscious refuse to fade. We bury them deep inside, yet they have already changed us.