The World in a Drop of Rain
群山下流动的雨滴
Subject 主题Time 时间 ｜ Location 地点
Project Overview 项目概述
Raindrops Flowing Beneath the Mountains | What Is the Poet’s ‘Homeland and the World’?
群山下流动的雨滴｜什么是诗人的“故乡与世界”？
Opening Time: January 27, 2024, at 2:30 PM
Exhibition Dates: January 25 – March 11, 2024
Exhibition Venue: Lin’s Mansion (Former Residence of Lin Erjia), Gulangyu, Xiamen
开幕时间:2024年1月27日，下午2:30
展览时间:2024年1月25日至3月11日
展览地址:厦门鼓浪屿·林氏府(林尔嘉故居)
Poet/Artist: Yang Jin’an
Film Production: Record Film Group & Shi Jiajie
Project Planning: GyreCraft
Exhibition Director: Huang Xiaowei
Curator: Long Yitang
Assistant Curators: Li Shiyi, Wang Xinyi
Collaborating Networks: Oceanography Project, Record Film Group, Overseas Chinese Farm Initiative
Visual Design: BEKKAI Studio
诗人/艺术家:杨金安
影像创作:记述电影小组&施佳杰
项目策划:环流GyreCraft
展览总监:黄晓伟
策展人:龙奕瑭
助理策展:李诗怡、王心怡
同行者网络:海洋学项目、记述电影小组、华侨农场计划
视觉设计:Design by BEKKAI Studio别解工作室
The 2024 Siming Mountains & Sea Art Season is an innovative series of art exhibitions and cultural events that weave together art, city, tourism, and daily life through new artistic exploration routes across mountain and sea landscapes. From January 10 to March 11, 2024, a series of exhibitions and urban cultural activities will be held in various locations throughout Siming District, Xiamen, including Huangcuo Taitou, Zhongshan Road, and Gulangyu. As part of the Gulangyu section, the first installment of the “Southern Memories” Micro Film Exhibition Series, curated by GyreCraft, features a solo exhibition by poet Yang Jin’an, who lives in a Huaqiao (overseas Chinese) farm. Titled “The World in a Drop of Rain”, the exhibition will be held at Lin’s Mansion (former residence of Lin Erjia), Gulangyu. The project includes a specially commissioned film by Shi Jiajie and the Record Film Group, and also features Life Monthly as the supporting exhibition publication and media observer.
2024思明山海艺术季是一项创新型的艺术展览及文化活动，通过山海艺术漫游新线路，将“艺术·城市·文旅·生活”有机串联。2024年1月10日-3月11日期间，一系列艺术展览与城市人文活动将在厦门思明区的黄厝塔头、中山路、鼓浪屿举办。鼓浪屿板块由环流 GyreCraft 策展“南方记忆”影像微个展(第!期)将于厦门鼓浪屿·林氏府(林尔嘉故居)呈现生活在华侨农场的诗人杨金安的个展「群山下流动的雨滴THE WORLD IN A DROP OFRAIN」，该项目邀请施佳杰&记述电影小组专门拍摄一部影片;同时特邀《生活月刊》作为展览刊物支持与媒体观察。
Poet Yang Jin’an was born in the village of Ngrombo on the Indonesian island of Java. As a young child, he returned with his family to China, eventually settling in the Shuangdi Overseas Chinese Farm in Zhangzhou, Fujian. Ngrombo and Shuangdi belong to different geographies—one nestled in the tropical rainforests of the archipelago, the other in the mountainous interior of southeastern China. Across these spans of space and time, the poet’s language re-stitches the two into a single lived world. In his forthcoming poetry collection, Raindrops Flowing Under the Mountains, the motifs of “homeland,” “garden,” and “world” recur frequently—59 mentions of “homeland,” 73 of “garden,” and 154 of “world”—forming a poetic landscape defined by movement and return. His language is populated by an entangled ecology of humans, animals, plants, ghosts, and memories: masked palm civets, yellow cats, lean goats, heartbreak grass, banana spirits… Within these scenes, the boundary between fiction and non-fiction dissolves, and a hidden world begins to emerge. His long poem A Chinese Farm in Times of Upheaval (Love Song) recounts the journey of returned overseas Chinese in the 1960s: departing from the port of Surabaya in 1960, passing through Singapore, arriving in Guangzhou, and finally reaching Shuangdi in early 1961 by train and winding mountain roads. The themes of “waiting and pausing,” of “being en route or arriving,” create a lyrical rhythm that reflects the poet’s complex relationship to identity, language, and homeland. “Is this a homecoming—or an arrival in yet another foreign land?” This is a central question for both the returning diaspora and the poet himself.
诗人杨金安出生于印尼爪哇岛Ngrombo村，自幼随家人迁回中国，落脚于福建漳州的双第华侨农场。Ngrombo与双第，分属热带雨林与东南山地，一个在海岛世界的边缘，一个位于大陆腹地的垦殖场，它们在时间与空间的跨度中，被诗人的语言重新缝合。在他即将出版的新诗集《群山下流动的雨滴》中，“乡”“园”“世界”频繁出现——59个“乡”、73个“园”、154个“世界”——构成一个不断往返的诗歌地形。他的语言中混杂着人与动植物、神话与记忆、鬼魂与现实：果子狸、黄猫、瘦山羊、断肠草、香蕉鬼……诗歌在这些图景中不断打破虚构与非虚构的边界，召唤出一个潜藏的世界。长诗《巨变中的中国农场（情歌）》讲述了上世纪60年代归侨从南洋出发、抵达中国的旅程：1960年从泗水港登船，途经星加坡，到达广州，再转火车与山路，最终在1961年抵达双第。“停留与等待”“途中与归属”构成了旅程的抒情节奏，也折射出诗人对身份、语言与故乡的复杂感知。“这里到底是故乡，还是他乡？”——这是归侨群体的困惑，也是诗人的根本命题。
In the 1990s, amid a time of rapid societal transformation, Yang co-founded the “New Death Poetics” collective with fellow poets. Through self-published journals, collaborative writing, and performative acts, they responded to historical and cultural disorientation. Their 1997 “Book Burial” was one such act—refusing to reconstruct historical narrative, they enacted a Dadaist gesture of turning poetry into a force that pierced and intervened in reality. Yang Jin’an’s writing does not trace “home and nation” in a linear path. Instead, it loops through memory, reality, imagination, and return, continually asking: “Where am I from? Where do I belong?” This inquiry echoes a broader diasporic condition: returning from Southeast Asia, he belongs neither fully to the overseas Chinese community, nor entirely to his ancestral “homeland.” Raised in a state-administered settlement, his world was structured differently from the rural communities that surrounded it. Thus, his poetic work speaks not only to personal emotion, but also to the social and historical structures that shape identity. His experience reminds us that questions of “home,” “identity,” and “belonging” should not be confined to fixed categories, but reexamined through the interrelations of place, history, and the world. This exhibition begins with his writing, using it as a lens to revisit the unique histories of returned overseas Chinese, and to reflect on locality and mobility in our present moment. The project will continue through field research, textual inquiry, and collaborative work—expanding the cultural imagination and real-world dialogue between diasporic communities in Southeast Asia and their sites of return in China.
1990年代，在社会急剧转型的背景下，杨金安与诗友创立“新死亡诗体/派”，以诗刊、集体写作与行为行动，回应历史与现实的不安。1997年的“葬书”行为即是一种拒绝重建历史的姿态，他们以达达式方式将诗歌转化为介入现实的能量。杨金安的写作，不是线性地追溯“家与国”，而是在“记忆–现实–想象–回返”的循环中不断追问：“我是哪里人？我属于哪里？”这种追问也指向更广义的离散经验：从南洋归来的他，不属于侨，也不完全属于“原乡”；作为国家体制安置的“归侨”，他的成长环境又与周边农村社会格格不入。因此，诗人的个体书写不仅关乎私密情感，也关乎社会结构与历史机制。他的经验提示我们：关于“故乡”“身份”“归属”的讨论，不应停留于固有认同，而应打开对地方、历史与世界关系的重思。本展览正是以此为起点，试图从一位诗人的书写中，回望归侨这一特殊群体的历史处境，也在当代语境中重探地方性与流动性的意义。未来，项目将延伸出更多田野调查、文本研究与同行合作，持续拓展南洋离散与中国回归地之间的文化想象与现实对话。
The orchard that poet Yang Jin’an cultivated at Shuangdi was not only a place of labor and growth, but also the site of the poignant book-burial incident
诗人杨金安在双第所开垦的果园也是葬书事件的发生地
In the 1960s, passenger ships served as vital links for overseas Chinese commuting across the South China Sea
60年代往返于南海，侨民乘坐的轮船
Documents belonging to Yang Jin'an (Quan) and his father and grandmother—including his quarantine certificate issued upon entry at age two, family photographs, naturalization certificate, and a ticket for the ship Dabao’an—were provided by the artist and are used with permission.
杨金安(全)与父亲、祖母的证件及2岁入境检疫证和家庭合影、入籍证明，以及乘坐“大宝安”轮的船票图片由艺术家本人提供，授权使用Yang Jin’an in a newly cultivated, Mexican-style plantation at Shuangdi Farm, filmed by Shi Jiajie & the Jishu Film Collective. Used with permission.
杨金安在双第农场一片被承包商新开垦的墨西哥风情种植园中
由施佳杰&记述电影小组拍摄，授权使用