Fan is the extension of our dancing body. In Chinese culture, fan is usually combined with Chinese Xiqu, martial arts and classical dance movements. When we move our bodies, the fan follows and generates beautiful images. In Chinese Xiqu, the fan choreography and skills are created to represent female images. By learning these movements, we could go into the life experience from women in the past. More importantly, through the skills, we slowly find out our own body movements and the way we want to dance with fans.

Also, fan is an extension of our mind. By drawing and writing on the fan, we express our thinking and feelings. The cultural heritage Nüshu ‘female script’ is a language invented by women who lived in Hunan province in China. JiXianlin, the late historian and linguist, once said that Nüshu is a feminist symbol since it was “created by talented women who were deprived of the right to education.”

women wrote  Nüshu on the fan and also read the fan from female friends. By exchanging the folding fans, two women could secretly communicate their feelings. Fan becomes a free space for women to share happiness and sadness under the eyes of men and the frame of patriarchal society. 

Fan is a media, a symbol, a connection. What I really want to do is to use fan as a tool to express our body and feelings.