Identity, nostalgia and choreography | Ergao @TEDxXiguan

What reminds you of home, childhood and maybe some of your earliest memories? In this talk and performance, choreographer Ergao (Qiwo He) takes us on a journey with him through some of his early memories, his identity struggle and homesickness, and shows us how all of them affect his dance work.

This talk was presented at a TEDxXiguan Conference and was selected and edited by the TEDxXiguan( Now TEDxGuangzhou) team to feature online. 

Hello! I’m Ergao. That’s how my friends call me. My real name is He Qiwo. I was born in Yangjiang, a coastal city in Guangdong. Therefore, it shouldn't be difficult to picture me as a mermaid when I am in red, white and blue nylon canvas. I am joking.

This man in the photo is my father, who has started many different businesses in his life. 

On a whim, he founded an empty space in a village in Yangjiang. He thought it was the perfect place to raise infant rabbits since the village only had the elderly and children. He could simply ask someone to clean up space and prepare some organic grass. When the rabbits grew up, he could sell them.

One day, I went to the market with my cousin to buy some clothes, similar to the size of my father's. I wanted to take a series of photos on Yangjiang Twins, so my father took me to several spots. As you can see in the photo: green meadowland and extravagant landscape. In fact, there was some rubbish outside of what has been shown in the photos. During the photo-shoot, I told my father to try dancing, and I would follow him. Most of his poses were simple, either lifting a leg or raising a hand. Those were his understanding of dancing.

That reminded me of when I was 16 or 17, my pelvis was terribly injured when dancing in an art school. My father took me to the doctor and asked, "dancing is not a physical exercise. Why are you seriously injured?" 

From that, I realized he did not know about my career as a dancer. 

After that, my father started several businesses again. What I remember the most was in the 90s, exactly in 1995, he earned a lot of money from selling pirated DVDs in Yangjiang. He frequently went to Guangzhou for restocking. It happened to be the summer vacation, so he asked if I wanted to go with him, I said "yes" right away. You know, at that time, it was a seven-hour coach ride from Yangjiang to Guangzhou, and we were on a sleeping couch. When we arrived, he took me to McDonald’s. I was like, "Oh my god! McDonald’s can only be seen from the TVB series." I couldn't help saying "wow" when I actually hold a hamburger in my hands. I was extremely excited about it.

Therefore, I took a big bite of the hamburger without hesitation when my dad passed it to me. I wanted to spit it out right away. You know, I have never tried any cheese before. Not to mention lettuce, bread, meat, sauce, pickles, especially the typical smell of pickles. This mixed taste made me almost throw up, but there was a voice inside me and told me not to. Because the hamburger was so expensive. I managed to swallow it down and passed the remaining hamburger to my father. 

My father thought he needed to bring some souvenirs back after traveling all the way to a big city, so he bought about 200-yuan hamburgers and chips. Then we went back to Yangjiang in another seven-hour coach ride. So, hamburgers in my memories were mixed with all kinds of smell — the smell of gasoline, feet and McDonald's itself.

I still remember when we went back to Yangjiang, I was carrying a bag of hamburgers, and I looked very carefully at every scenery of Guangzhou. All my imagination of Guangzhou was from TVB series, which should be the skyscrapers all around and be international.  But at that time, many places were still in construction. They looked like real estate or shopping malls. Most of the construction sites were covered with this red, white and blue nylon canvas.

I was very curious about what it would look like from the inside. Would it look like Hong Kong in the TVB series? Then, I made a little wish. I wish I could escape Yangjiang and could stay closer to Hong Kong. 

As I wished, I left Yangjiang in 1999 and came to Guangzhou to learn dancing. I later got a scholarship and went to Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts to further my dancing skills.

In the first month after arriving in Hong Kong, I realized my ideas changed, especially about dancing and bodies, because back then, dancing was about obedience. Your movement must be standardized, which meant the teacher commanded guys to dance manly, and girls to be graceful. Follow the standard, then you are right.

When I was in Hong Kong, a lesson made a big impression on me. In pairs, we should jump in diagonal from one corner to another. I was left alone, because of a lack of confidence. I told my teacher I couldn't do that. And the teacher said: "Ergao, go, go, go", and then, "Allez, Allez, Allez". I said: "okay, Allez." But I still couldn't, you know? Thanks to some students' cheer-up, I closed my eyes and quickly jump to the opposite corner.

Someone was cheering behind me. I remembered it well, not because of how well I danced back then, but I suddenly realized that I needed to explore myself in the future, and I also needed encouragement both from others and my own.

Maybe a few years ago, no, maybe last year. There was a trendy video of a kid jumping over a pommel horse in a kindergarten in Japan. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't jump over it. After being encouraged by his teachers and peers, he finally made it. When watching the video, I thought about myself, leaving my hometown, to be serious, when I was a teenager, to encounter life on my own. Right. That's to say, life, oneself and individuality, should all be explored on one's own.

Not long after I graduated in Hong Kong, I started to participate in different European dance troupe projects as an independent dancer, as a guest dancer, or as a project researcher.

I don't know if you have similar experience, that when you leave your hometown for a while, you'll miss the food at home. You want to rush back home for that food as soon as you land. What you miss might be, for example, like me, Yangjiang people, I want to have Yangjiang-style Steamed Chicken, which is different from what they have in Guangzhou. And the beef noodles, or other food I ate in my childhood, the familiar taste I grew up with.

Every time I go home, a lot of relatives and friends will drop by for a chat. What they talk with me can boil down to several topics, "He, you are a dancer. Will you be like Yang Liping in the future?"

Right. Then dance. What kind of dance does dancer Yang Liping do? Chinese Peacock dance. Then they think I am doing the same thing. What concerns me is that they believe you go abroad for performance or cultural exchange, so you must earn euros. It seems that you will be rich and lucky in your life, just like Miss Yang Liping being looked up to. The more they think like that, the more expectations they have on me. the more I am stressed. Because if I can't live up to their expectations, I will end up being a nobody.

So, I thought how to shatter their expectations on me.

Fine, everyone does not "get off her clothes"(when she dances), then I will do it. I will undress on the stage. Therefore, in this dance work, I have dug out small holes in my clothes to be somewhat exposed. Some works maybe even more "exposing", as I took off my clothes piece by piece.

I also began to explore my own choreography. They may not be elegant, and some are even relatively erotic and rude. Like in one of my works, I transformed the theatre into a man's public toilet to explore our identities in the public toilet. 

But I was aware that something in these works is full of hormones because we were young.

Just like when I went piercing my ear in the past. When my parents found out, I pulled it out. The next day I would pierce the other ear. If I got caught again, I would pull it out again and get three more the next day. If they pulled out one piercing, I would still have two. Ultimately, my ear bones were full of piercings. So, I was aware of those hormones -- the urge of fighting against something. I thought maybe there was something I needed to let go. 

Until a few years ago, about three years ago, when my mom moved to Hong Kong, I finally knew what I should let go. As a new resident in Hong Kong, she needed to learn new skills. She decided to work at McDonald's. One day, I took my passport and left for Hong Kong. I wanted to see my mother's life there and how she worked at McDonald's. I ordered a meal and sat in the corner. I asked my friend to record it. Here is the video clip.

Sitting there numbly, I was pondering, as if my dream shattered. Why did my mother move to Hong Kong, and not me? My fantasy about something nice, something close to the West, and the happiness seen on the TV were all shattered at that moment. In front of me was an under-privileged figure. And that figure was my mother, my closest family member. 

Then I thought about what I should let go? I wanted to look back on my past to find what is in my DNA and what I’ve forgotten.

I initiated a dance group called "Ergao Performances" with my friends. We are now doing some research on disco, disco in China. This work is called "Disco-Teca." In these four walls, we want to examine how our previous generation squandered their youth and how their cultural values differed from their previous generation. 

And this work is called "Dim Sum Depot". Because I want to show, for example, in Cantonese morning tea culture, how we maintain relationships and interact with our family through tables or drinking tea. 

This work is called "Kung Hey Fat Choy". Namely, it's about money. 

During the Spring Festival this year, I happened to be in Zurich for the third month. I was facetiming my dad and wanted to share the scenery of Zurich with him. My dad looked around and asked, "Why does Zurich look like our village in Yangjiang?" On the day of the Spring Festival, I facetimed him again. As expected, it is "Wishing you prosper" that the first blessing he gave me, and "Wishing you good health" followed.

As a Cantonese, I suddenly understood why I love money so much. Because in this red envelope, it is loaded with responsibility and love.

I have been living by myself in Guangzhou in recent years. So, like some of you, no matter where I go, I don’t feel like I am home. As great changes have taken place in Yangjiang, I don’t even consider there as my home anymore. I used to think about how I can have a good relationship with my family. But every time we call each other, we'd dig out a lot of harmful topics, and then the call would end with quarrels.

So, I found a solution. I asked if they could teach me how to cook because I don't want to order takeouts anymore. They were very excited and said yes. My dad immediately sent me a little bear stew pot, which is widely used in the student dormitory. He also sent a big package of soup bases, in which he has distributed the soup bases into small bags. He told me as long as I put one bag of the distributed soup base and a piece of pork into the stew pot and set it for four hours or six hours, the soup would be ready when I got home. I said okay. So now every time I go out, I will follow his steps.

As soon as I got home from work, I can smell the soup in the little bear stew pot.

The tastes of these soup are similar, just the taste of bitter Chinese medicine. Although my dad said this soup is good for kidney, this soup is for clearing wetness in your body, and then that soup is for clearing the heat inside you. But to me, they all smell the same, bitter Chinese medicine. So, when I open the door, step into the house, I smell it and I know I am home.

Homesickness to me maybe the taste of bitter medicine. Maybe this is my homesickness.

Thank you.

About the speaker

Ergao

Dancer/ Choreographer, Founder & Art Director of Ergao Dance Production Group

His body can visually embody narratives, through which we can confront ourselves, societies and looking for the roots of our wandering souls.

Ergao was born in Yang Jiang, a small town in Guangdong Province. Graduated from APA, Hongkong, he is a multi-media dancer and choreographer who work across dance, film, installation and another creative medium. He founded Ergao Dance Production Group (EDPG) in 2007 in Guangzhou, with a focus on dance theatre, dance film, community art, and dance education. He uses the body as a site of artistic investigation to explore Chinese social and cultural identities, sex, gender, and other social problems through interdisciplinary practices.

Selected works: Disco-Teca adopts 80s disco culture to invite the audience to explore their identities that are in a constant of flux. This is a Chicken Coop that investigates the interactive impacts between urban development and rural places through our shared memories with chickens and childhood.

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翻译：Winnie Zeng

校对：Lenette Lua, Annie Yin, Claire Lin

排版：Isabella Chan

制作：Jimmy Tan, Winnie Zeng

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