ChenXueling
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CHU HUA YUAN 2025
( Leaving the Garden )
( Leaving the Garden )
Leaving the Garden （dialect: chu hua yuan）explores narratives of growth among young women in the Chaoshan region of southern China. During a short summer vacation, I captured with my camera the transition in my two nieces—aged thirteen and fifteen—from the start of their holiday to the beginning of the new school term. This project explores how tradition shapes femininity while presenting the growth experiences of local women.
In Chaoshan culture, women share a profound connection with deities—spending more than seventy days each year engaged in rituals and prayers. The photographs focus on details within the girls’ living environments: offering plates and oil lamps used for worship, bamboo sleeping mats unique to Chaoshan, rosewood furniture, and patterned curtains. Together, these objects construct a spatial narrative imbued with local memory and a distinctly feminine presence.
During the process of photographing, I gradually became aware of the diminished visibility of women in Chaoshan society. In the local dialect, daughters are referred to as “zou hai”—literally “children who will eventually leave.” Family resources are often preferentially allocated to sons. For mothers, this imbalance is regarded as “tradition” and does not negate their love for their daughters. Many Chaoshan girls grow up within an environment where tenderness and conservatism coexist, unconsciously inheriting and perpetuating these traditions.
Leaving the Garden takes its title from the Chaoshan coming-of-age ritual (chu hua yuan), re-examining the lived experiences of women in the region and the influence of local traditions on femininity. The work reflects on their position between affection and restraint, tradition and self-awakening, at the threshold of departure.