Searching for the Homeland with Stories and Sands: ‘My Tarim’ and ‘Sand, Sand, and Sand’

Over a hundred years ago, explorers, adventurers, and archaeologists from the West and East alike arrived to Southern Xinjiang, a region that was known in dynastic China as the Western Region (xiyu). They came here for different purposes—discovery expeditions, archaeological excavation, smuggling cultural relics, and many more. Whatever had been covered by the dunes of Taklimakan, they wanted to unveil it. In 1993, I was born to a Han migration family in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China. Even though I was raised in Urumqi (the capital of Xinjiang) and told the stories and legends of adventures in the desert, my recognition of the region has been excluded from the multi-ethnic and vast land of Southern Xinjiang. To uncover those customs and culture, relate them to my growing-up memories that make me who I am, I have been photographing the Tarim Basin in Southern Xinjiang since 2017. These photographs, most of which were taken during road trips along the still-thriving Tarim River traversing the desert land, are compiled into a project called “My Tarim”. In my second journey to Taklimakan, I looked at the tedious but pressing desert, starting to wonder whether I had managed to capture what the sand truly looks like. I had a dozen collections of sand samples. They were in different materials, sizes, and came from separate locations of the desert. Despite their distinctions, however, they are generally identified as mere “yellow sand”. Once I realized this and tried to pick up and observe the sand, I further found it impossible to isolate one piece of sand from the others. From this point, I decided to make “portraits” for the sand. After failing countless times with macro-lens and microscopes, I consulted an optic scientist, who was interested in my project and introduced me to the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). In March 2021, after pilot