本作品指向云南现代化过程中两个充满张力的视差性瞬间，也指向现代世界降临前那个晦暗不明的时刻。

 

1937年，在一篇名为“滇越旅途三日记“的文章中，署名“雪山”的作者自云南赴北平求学。此时云南与中国内地的最便捷连接，是经由法国殖民者修建的滇越铁路抵达越南港口城市海防，再换乘轮船至上海，进而转火车抵达其他城市。在滇越铁路的火车上，“雪山”遭遇了另外7位不通汉语的纳西人，并在交谈间自然而然成为了后者与现代事物之间的中介。当晚，他们在开远下车投宿。次日清晨，“雪山”敲响那些纳西人的房门，而里面传出一串纳西语的问话：“才是半夜，鸡还未鸣，起那么早做甚？”“雪山”以纳西语回复：“天明已久，同行已餐，你们再不走，我就自己去了！”一行人匆匆起床，赶往火车，发现其他乘客“已满车内矣”。这是一个前铁路时代的身体时间与铁路带来的钟点时间正碰的瞬间。

 

另一个瞬间诞生在1954年。从未踏足云南的广东籍版画家梁永泰完成了自己的代表作《从前没有人到过的地方》。在这个想象的画面中，一列火车呼啸着穿过架设于绝壁之上的桁架铁桥。群鸟惊飞，野鹿惊跑，在跳跃中张皇回望。火车带来的现代世界在汽笛声中进入云南，进入这一浪漫想象中的蛮荒。事实上，画面中的铁桥正是滇越铁路标志性的人字桥。然而，云南真是“从前没有人到过的地方”吗？

 

在第一个文本中，云南的土地和身体是那个熟悉的处所，而作为现代技术进入云南的火车才是那个陌异之物，才是“从前没有人到过的地方“；而对于那些业已熟稔于现代世界的人，火车则是熟悉的现代性的延伸：它将携带着整个世界，进入陌生的云南土地。这两个不可通约的视角构成了一道视差性的裂隙——其中，云南的某种可能性将破茧而出，并在一个多世纪的吞吐迭代后，化身为我们所处的当下。

 

2025年冬，我回到丽江，在纳西人的茨满村中搭设轨道，建造桥梁，让玩具火车重新穿梭在作为现代性的结果的、已经变得透明的日常中。

 

 

This work points to two tense parallax moments at the beginning of Yunnan's modernization, and to the uncertain moment before the advent of the modern world.

 

In 1937, in an article titled ‘Three Days in the Journey from Yunnan to Vietnam,’ the author, who signed his name ‘Xueshan’ (雪山, the snow mountain),  was traveling from Yunnan to Beijing to attend university. At that time, the easiest way from Yunnan to inland China was to arrive at the Vietnamese port city of Haiphong via the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway built by the French colonialists, and then take a ship to Shanghai, and then transfer to a train to reach other cities. On the train, Xueshan met seven other Naxi people who did not speak Chinese. He naturally became the intermediary between them and the modern world. At the end of the first day, they got off at Kaiyuan and stayed overnight. The next morning, Xueshan knocked on the door of the Naxi people's room, and a series of Naxi words came out from inside: ‘It's only midnight, and the rooster hasn't even crowed, what's the point of getting up so early?’ Xueshan replied in Naxi: ‘It has been long since dawn, and the peers have already eaten, if you don't leave, I will go by myself!’ The group hurriedly got up and rushed to the train, finding the other passengers already in the carriages. This is the moment when the natural time of the pre-railway era encounters the clockwork time brought by the railway.

 

Another moment occurred in 1954. Liang Yongtai, a Guangdong printmaker who had never set foot in Yunnan, completed his masterpiece, Where No One Has Been Before. In this imaginary print, a train whistles across a trussed iron bridge built over cliffs. Birds fly in fear, and deer run, looking back in panic as they leap. In the artist's romantic imagination, the modern world brought by the train enters Yunnan with the sound of the whistle, and enters the barbaric wilderness. In fact, the iron bridge in the print is the iconic herringbone of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. But is Yunnan really ‘where no one has been before’?

 

In the first moment, the land and time of Yunnan is the familiar one, while the train, which enters Yunnan as a modern technology, is the strange thing,  ‘where no one has been before’; but for those who are already familiar with the modernity, the train is the extension of the familiar modernity: it will carry the whole modern world with it and enter Yunnan’s strange territory. These two incommensurable perspectives form a parallax fissure - one in which a certain possibility of Yunnan will emerge from its cocoon and, after more than a century of iteration, materialise into the present we live in.

 

In the winter of 2025, I returned to Lijiang to build tracks and a bridge in the Naxi village of Ciman, so that the toy train could travel through the everyday life that has become transparent as a result of a century's modernity.