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Music: Nàng by Helly Tong
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The first step of the VR project is to examine some previous works that deal with the One Child Policy in China or related issues in Mixed reality settings.
One key detail that is adopted from the research to the VR experience is the red flags. These in real life are flags for the dead, used for aborted babies, impressively mentioned and captured in One Child Nation documentary film. It has the baby's name in the middle, date of death and parents’ names on bottom left, a short message from their parents on the top right. The flag is researched in details and recreate as close to the original as possible regarding cultural and spiritual appropriation.
One Child Nation is a documentary film co-directed by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang, premiered in 2019. The film reveals the China’s one-child policy’s complex consequences and expose the creeping power of propaganda (Wang &Zhang, 2019). One Child Nation is the foundation for the creation of Heihaizi VR experience, from interviews of people under the period of the policy to the visual elements of Chinese propaganda products. It also provides a great amount of real-life and self experience toward the topic.
Images by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang via the official film trailer - One Child Nation (2019)
Bodyless is a VR experience about the creator’s memory in the 1970s, during the period of Taiwan’s martial law. The similarity between this and Heihaizi is that they are both VR experiences where limitations from the government applied on human qualities are illustrated in a surrealistic and fairly haunting way.
Images by Hsin-Chien Huang via Bodyless Trailer (2019)
In the book China’s Hidden Children: abandonment, adoption, and the human costs of the one-child policy, Johnson (2016) claims to have spent years talking with the Chinese parents who had to abandon their daughters during this brutal birth-planning campaign. The book (Fig.6) exposes the naked truth, statistics, and personal stories about what actually happen to the children victims: from being killed while fetus, arranged adoptions to being sent to rural areas, from being relinquished in public places to being trafficked (Johnson, 2016).
The Flesh & Blood Forest is the first destination that awaits the user. The phrase “flesh and blood” usually implies a kinship bond, but here it also has a gruesome connotation: the literal flesh and blood of the child. The forest represents the earliest stage of life for the child victims: the aborted fetuses. Everything in this place, from the ground to the plants, animals, and sky, is composed of human organs and elements. The place is a visual metaphor for a fetus that is developing and nourished inside the womb.
The second location user will reach is the Abandoned River. Abandoned River when first heard sounds like river where nobody visits, but it is also the metaphor for abandoned babies. Under this river hides the secrets of the second stage of ages of child victims: babies. These are babies in real life, after being born healthy and successfully, got abandoned to death or being human-trafficked for being an unwanted second child. In the VR, babies hidden under the river is a visual metaphor for a deadly secret.
The third location is Cave of the Unknown. “The Unknown” indicates Heihaizi, children that are not registered, which means they have no names, no families, no healthcare or education. These children in real life are sent to orphanages even though their real parents exists. As a result, I come up with these characters. They are the third stage of child victims: children. Since they have no identity, they all look the same and have no mouth. This is also a choice of metaphor: they can only witness and hear the situation, but cannot speak up due to the restriction of the government.
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Music: Nàng by Helly Tong
Project Research Document
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