William Yang
"China is so big you can only experience a tiny fraction," says Australian visual artist-performer-photographer William Yang. "And as we know, it's changing such a lot and very quickly, which is fascinating, but also misleading."
Yang has become a favourite performer across Australia - and the world - with his storytelling-picture shows such as Sadness, Friends of Dorothy, Blood Links, Shadows and Objects For Meditation and his new performance work - William Yang's China - is devoted to travels in China - land of his ancestors but a foreign place to the man from Far North Queensland.
"It's actually been quite a problem for me in China," says Yang. "Particularly since I've been performing there, rather than just visiting. Because they have expectations of me that I can't fulfil - I can't speak Chinese, for instance."
Racism is a subtext in Yang's work - how can it not be for a boy who grew up "other" in 1950s Australia? - and he is aware that it's not confined to Australia. But he has a different view.
"I say the whole world is tribal," he says. "People tend to protect themselves and their tribe from opposing tribes - wherever they are and whoever they are."
Yang has been visiting China since 1989 and has an interesting take on the kind and rate of change there.
"It was very much more restricted then than it is now," he remembers. "I first visited just after the Tianenmen event and I noticed it was very restrictive. I got ticked off for taking picture on a train, for instance, and I found it chilling to be so under surveillance.
"One day I was going to Nick Jose's - he was cultural attaché then - and I left an envelope in the taxi. During dinner there was a knock on the door and someone had come to deliver the envelope. I was amazed that they knew where I was, but Nick said - they know everything about you. It is much less like that now."
The freedoms in China today are about money and a growing middle class, Yang thinks.
"People weren't allowed to travel from town to town, now the greatest crowds of tourists at the famous sites are middle class Chinese. I've been climbing the sacred mountains and last time I was at Huang Shan and it was crawling with CHinese tourists. They want to be like other affluent people anywhere."
But, says Yang, the changing way of life in China seems to be more about the cities than about the vast areas of the country that still remain rural and largely untouched by the 21st century.
[page]"I was travelling in central China and it;s not dramatically different now. It's still a life that's rural based and on agrarian traditions. People seem happy - happier than the average Australian going to the office anyway!"
Yang's work has changed almost as much as Chinese society in the 20 years covered by the new show and for many of the same reasons: progress, technology and competition. He is no longer simply a photographer ...
"My business card says 'visual artist/photographer' because it's hard to be just a photographer - even if I wanted to, which I don't really. Digital photography has changed everything. It's too easy to produce an image now - anyone can do that. So you have to think of other things. I've gone to digital projection in my shows now, it's a technical development, I suppose. And I've got better at putting them together.' He laughs. "Well you'd have to hope I would after all this time."
The new show features live music by Nicholas Ng on the erhu (Chinese violin) as well as Yang's trademark perceptive and often unexpected take on storytelling.
"It's a fascinating place and there's so much to tell," he says of China. "There's more in the 90 minutes than in a lot of past shows, I've condensed and condensed. I just hope it makes sense. But there are things I just can't bear to drop - like the bit on calligraphy, which I love. It's not dramatic, it's like a little bit of dead wood really, but I want to keep it because I find it interesting. It's a dilemma sometimes, but I hope I make the right choices."
Yang's past track record in managing to enthral an audience is not littered with wrong choices, which means the new show will probably join the repertoire and continue to take him around the country and around the world telling stories and showing pictures.
William Yang's China, Performance Space @ Carriageworks, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh; March 20-24; ph: (02) 9209 4614 or moshtix.com.au
