During the Lunar New Year, people gather with their family and stay for long-lasting dinners and Mahjong competitions. One day, we left QiongLai to visit Jiong’s great aunt in the mountains. During lunch, in between conversations in Chinese with her relatives, Jiong chuckled to us: “Everything is organic.” We savored dishes like spicy chicken, pig ear salad, fried fish with chili sauce, boiled vegetable roots, chicken feet, all prepared in large iron woks over a wood fire, drinking gut-burning Chinese liquor poured from a plastic container. The atmosphere of the house and its surroundings were characterized by an eclectic mix of objects spread across the terrain of this traditional Chinese mountain dwelling. This was a place where Jiong spent considerable time as a child. Many farmers' houses in Sichuan have been destroyed since then. Between 2014 and 2020, the Chinese government  undertook the staggeringly complex operation of moving 100 millions of its farming citizens from the countryside  to rapidly-built towns. This process often resulted in the forced displacement of farmers like Jiong’s family, destroying their homes, or at least partly, as it happened to the house of her father – which sits a four hour walk away perched up in the mountain forest. Even though half of her father’s house is still standing today, Jiong’s father was part of the citizens asked to relocate. “It then becomes easier to control this more secluded part of the population," Jiong assumes.

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This passage to QiongLai offered a glimpse into the reality of the lives of farmers in rural China. Another part of the series focuses on China’s blossoming techno scene which has been solidified in Chengdu by a group of promoters and DJs that have been opening clubs all over the country. The Chengdu’s ”OGs”, as Jiong calls them, are portrayed in the series, offering an image of China’s nightlife far different from the usual scenes of KTV (karaoke) and flashy bars. Among the dynamic nightlife that has made Chengdu beloved by locals and travelers alike stands a community of ravers with whom Jiong grew up when she moved to the city, centered around a  techno club called .TAG. Each Lunar New Year, .TAG founder Ellen Hakka organizes an eight day marathon in her club perched atop the 25th floor of a building complex overlooking Chengdu’s skyline. “Friends from all across China gather for this event. Techno, hip hop, ambient, live performances, massages — and a legendary hot pot on the final day — are served to the ravers who usually come from family dinners straight to the club,” Ellen says.

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As Tell was offered to shoot freely within the club, in spite of its no photo policy, we see ravers, international DJs, and Jiong, partying till dawn. “One evening, one of the ravers at .TAG asked what I thought of China. As I was - and am still - discovering this complex country, I candidly replied ‘love it’. But societal pressure is hard on Chinese citizens, he explained, especially for ravers and queer people, namely, the crowd at .TAG. Threats of closure are constant as the police can raid down clubs and bars at any time, most of the time looking for drugs.” 

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China’s recent economic boom has been carried out by intense work, known as the ‘996’: working from 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week. However, in recent years, sociologists and China experts are witnessing how the generation that followed the 90s economic boom seem to be less keen on partaking in this model of life. Movements like the Tang Ping on social media – the act of taking a picture of someone lying on the floor as a way to reject the societal pressures to overwork and overachieve – show a rebellious side of the Chinese youth. The club culture, as it exists in Chengdu,  revolves around a longing for freedom and the choice of designing one’s life outside of the government’s expectations. “This community of friends around Jiong essentially witnessed and fostered the emergence of the techno scene there,” Tell recounts. “In a way, they offer very different images of what China is known for, or pictured as in Western minds.”

Retracing the life of subjects like his friends or own family has been a study that Julien Tell has been practicing throughout the years. The photographer grew up in Oakland, raised by his Japanese mother and around a community of second-generation immigrant kids like himself. “Somehow, looking at Jiong’s community back home and seeing their tight-knit friendship evoked memories of my own experience growing up in California. I have always been interested in the stories of people who migrated from a country to another, and the relationship one has with their home country.”