北京黑珍珠

[Běijīng hēi zhēnzhū]

“The Black Pearl of Beijing” (2019–2022) is a photography series shaped as an urban myth. Shot in Beijing during a period of lockdowns and collective unease, it focuses on the city’s textures, spaces, and fleeting human presence. When daily life was suspended and the future felt uncertain, mythology resurfaced as a way to explain the inexplicable. This project traces the elusive black pearl — a McGuffin that never existed, hovering between reality and myth, linking an ancient city to the modern metropolis, a memory to a dream.

18 images
shot on 35mm b&w film and digital

[the legend of the black pearl]

A long time ago, on the banks of the Wuding River, which was later renamed Yongding by the emperor Kangxi, there lived an old and melancholic dragon. This proud creature was sad and lonely, and when it cried, its tears would become the most beautiful pearls.

One night, the dragon saw a moon eclipse and its reflection in the river. Moved by such a beautiful sight, unparalleled by anything it had ever seen, the dragon wept for the last time. A large tear became a glowing black pearl, and as it dropped into the Wuding River, the dragon disappeared, never to return again. Time passed, and all dragons went extinct, but the people who lived around the Wuding River kept finding pearls. Only the infamous black pearl was never recovered, lost temporarily in the rivers and channels of the city that later became known as Beijing.

1.

In 2020, citywide lockdowns swept across China. Overnight, traffic vanished and people retreated indoors. Beijing fell unnervingly quiet: gated communities stationed new security guards, businesses shuttered; even pollution cleared up, and locals finally saw blue skies more often.

2.

People were talking to each other in hushed tones, exchanging conspiracy theories and rumors, avoiding eye contact with strangers. There was a feeling of massive paranoia and anxiety in the air. At the same time, the historical neighborhoods inside the Second Ring Road thrived: people spent a lot of time on the streets, men wearing 'beijing bikinis', playing mahjong outside their houses, stuck in public restrooms with no privacy, smoking 炫赫门 cigarettes, chatting and spitting on the floor while doing 'number 2'.

3.

I heard many urban myths about Beijing around that time: about a haunted house on Chaoyangmen Street, about a Ghost Bus number 375, about the dead souls haunting the construction of the first subway line in the capital, or about the sacking of Old Summer Palace by the Eight-Nation alliance. Inspired by these urban legends, "The Black Pearl of Beijing" is a myth in itself that shows the paranoid state of the modern metropolis from an outsider's point of view.

4.

The project documents the textures, spaces, and daily life of Beijing during a moment of suspended time, capturing highways, rivers, streets, and the people who inhabit them. It blends documentary observation with myth-making, using photographs to register reality while the story of the Black Pearl overlays a layer of legend and speculation. At its core, the series explores how a city preserves its identity through human presence, memory, and storytelling, showing that even amidst modern urbanization, myths emerge to help make sense of the world.