The initial vision of this column was to experiment with a documentary-style form of writing, to record the encounters, people, and moments that emerge on dating apps. Over the past month, Orchid Pavilion was fortunate enough to register its own digital ID on Blued before the gay dating app was removed from major app stores. Within this online community, affectionately called Little Blue (小蓝）, the distance between people can be both extremely close and impossibly far.

 

In early November, I met an online acquaintance offline. He also became the very first person who formed a real connection with Orchid Pavilion. We spent an afternoon talking, simply, plainly, about family, desire, survival, and ideals:

 

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A few days ago, I asked whether he would allow me to record this encounter and share it in public sphere. He expressed a little hesitation, but eventually replied softly, “Mm.” Yet even after I tried to obscure his name, his job, and all information that could reveal his identity, he still sensed himself between the lines, uneasily.

 

With a lingering sense of responsibility, I attempted to blur the text further, hoping to soften his fear and concern. But I could imagine: no matter how much the writing is adjusted, once it originates from the real, the person involved may still feel exposed to unnecessary risk. So about half an hour later, I told him that the piece would not be published. He replied again with a quiet “Mm,” and I could feel the relief in his voice. In truth, I deeply understand his feelings. On the one hand, there is the fear of one’s identity and privacy being recognized by acquaintances or unwanted eyes; on the other, such publicity may feel, for many, almost equivalent to being forced to “come out” to readers. This is not merely his personal anxiety, this is the natural defensive reflex of many queer people who choose not to be public: we “stay in the closet.” And here at Orchid Pavilion, I do not wish to intentionally or unintentionally consume anyone’s story without their full awareness and consent. Thus, although documentary writing is truthful, it is not gentle for those who have experienced trauma or still live in fear.

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Blued Blue (Chinese title: 《蓝色奇遇记》),

               a semi-fictional short story about the ocean and the colour blue, written during a residency in Xiamen together with a friend far away.

 

 

I once considered replacing documentary writing with something more oblique, more literary. But even if the text still uses “he” as its narrative subject, the writer would be forced into constant ethical self-censorship, cutting, replacing, blurring, and no matter how it is handled, the subject’s unease would remain. At that moment, I remembered Blued Blue, a semi-fictional short story I co-wrote during a residency in Xiamen in 2022. In that work, we attempted to open a sea/blue zone between the present and the future, between the self and the other, placing stories overheard, observations from daily life, and our shared imagination together, while letting “I” become the narrative voice of an outsider.

 

In Blued Blue, “I” is the writer, and also the one who collaborates with me.“I” refers simultaneously to an individual and to an unseen collective. When a text is written in the first person, when stories and experiences fold, mix, and mutate in language and image, the stories no longer belong to any particular person. I imagine that anyone may find, somewhere in these narratives, an echo, an experience, a relationship, a feeling.

 

In the past, I tried to avoid “I” in the writings of Orchid Pavilion, hoping to hand the microphone to others and to the shifts happening here. But now I realize: they are “I,” and also “we.” I do not need to avoid myself.

 

Perhaps the column “Orchid Pavilion × Blued” can become a long-form serialized novel, with “I” as the narrative subject, and our shared experiences as its material.

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Derek Jarman and His Prospect Cottage

 

While revisiting the threads of Orchid Pavilion recently, I suddenly realized: as the orchid project continues, it leads me back to my most ordinary, most unadorned self, forcing me to reexamine my life as it is: monotonous, dull. I thought of Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage, the garden he built in memory of his lost friends, the birthplace of Blue and Modern Nature.

 

In the autumn of 2018, shortly before leaving the UK, I happened to buy Modern Nature at the ICA. At the time, I didn’t know Jarman, nor did I know that the book would become a future coordinate. Perhaps it was fate. As Orchid Pavilion expanded, I saw him again, accidentally, and unwittingly began building a relationship between “space,” “self,” and “writing” in this place and time.

 

Orchid Pavilion is my Prospect Cottage. It is also the blue expanse where “we” reside. Blued is no longer the Blue Jarman wrote about, but “I” will do my best.

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12 December 2025