Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry: Re-membering Identity (Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences) 3031325265, 9783031325267

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN MOVEMENT ACROSS EDUCATION, THE ARTS AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry Re-membering Identity Ying Wang

Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences

Series Editors Alexandra Lasczik, Faculty of Education, Southern Cross University, Bilinga, QLD, Australia Rita L. Irwin, Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

This series is a new and innovative proposition in the nascent and growing space of movement studies. Emerging and established scholars who are beginning to work within the contemporary practices and methods of movement, seek resources such as this series seeks to provide. Education is very much tied up within an awareness of space and place, for example, a school can begin to take on an identity of its own, with as much learning taking place within its corridors and playgrounds as occurs in the classrooms. As learners interact with these environments through movement it is essential for researchers to understand how these experiences can be understood, allowing for a very interdisciplinary approach. This series specifically explores a range of movement approaches, including but not limited to walking research, a relatively new and exciting field, along with several other paradigmic lenses. The series will be commissioning in the Palgrave Pivot format.

Ying Wang

Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry Re-membering Identity

Ying Wang Faculty of Education and Social Work University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand

Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences ISBN 978-3-031-32526-7 ISBN 978-3-031-32527-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32527-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

In my heart There is a distant mountain I can’t recognise its colour I can’t remember its shape In the wind and rain of time It is so blurry Yet so heavy My distant mountain You are so far away But I can never leave you behind I can still hear the wind on the mountain Smell the trees and rain on the mountain Under the evil of ghosts’ torture You look so haggard Yet still strong and resilient In everyone’s heart There is a distant mountain Unable to be near Nor leave it far behind 遠山

This work is dedicated to my ancestors 先輩們, who left their knowledge, wisdom and enlightenment in the soil of my homeland 家鄉 where my life took seed 種子.

Foreword

Where are you from? Where are you from? Innocuous curiosity Friendly banter Conversation starter Where are you from? Dangerous accusation Vicious gossip Dialogue silencer Are you one of us? You don’t look like you’re from here? Don’t mistake this for a question It’s singling you out Disciplining difference Why are you here? Who let you in? You don’t fully belong here Any where Any more Where is home?

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FOREWORD

For me, where are you from? has always had a ready and easy answer: County Kerry, Ireland, where us O’Connors are from. Not that I was born there. My father was born in New Zealand and I was born here in Aotearoa too. The last member of my family born in Kerry was Patrick Maurice in 1850. Patrick rode with the Moonlighters. The family legend told how he shot someone under a full moon and the family decided it was no longer safe for him to stay in Ireland. They looked at a map of the world and decided the safest place, the furthest place he could go would be New Zealand. A hundred and sixty years later, Patrick’s photograph is on my desk in my office at home. I wear the ring he wore, engraved with the Irish harp. My father had worn it as a wedding ring and the shamrocks that surrounded the harp were nearly worn off by the time I got given it when I was only 17. Forty-five years I’ve worn it and I’ve taken it back to Kerry, to the farmhouse Patrick left. I’ve felt it on my finger for all those years, reminding me of who I am and where I am from for nearly all my life. Kerry. Kerry, a word whispered by my father. And Kilcusnan, the farm where the O’Connors who stayed, still live. 8 miles on the road to Tralee, my dad would describe it. On my first trip to Kerry many years ago I met a man one night in a bar in Killarney. He came up to me and spoke in Irish. I muttered, “I’m sorry, I’m not from around here.” “Well, that would surprise me, looking at you. You look like you’re from here.” “Well, my family is from here. I’m an O’Connor,” I volunteer. “No finer name in all of Irish history,” he declares. I risk it. “And my grandmother was an O’Neill.” “No two finer names in all of Irish history.” By the time I’d shouted him a third pint I was a Kerry man through and through. We cursed the English landlords, sang the Boys of the Old Brigade and raised our pints as we tunelessly bellowed A Nation Once Again. The romanticism of Irish rebellion and the stories my father told of Patrick meant when I was a boy I asked dad, “Am I Irish too?” “You don’t have to be born in a stable to be a horse, son.” My dad never visited Kerry. If he had he would have realised that it might be where we are from, it makes us Irish, but it’s not our home. Aotearoa is my home and where I truly belong. Patrick is buried here,

FOREWORD

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part of the soil, as are all his children, all his grandchildren including my dad, and I too will find my final resting home a long way from Kerry.

Where Are You From? Where Is Home? Ying’s critical autoethnography tells the story of how she seeks to more fully understand where she is from. She also wonders, as a Chinese woman living in Aotearoa, if there is anywhere she can call home. Her quest for temporary resting places in the limbo of in-betweenness that characterises her life as artist, researcher and therapist in Aotearoa is deeply unsettling. It throws into sharp relief the everyday racism that stings. It poignantly reveals the sorrows of adjustment and the joys of grudging acceptance. It finally tells of Ying’s emerging sense of home that springs from the grace of shared community and a recognition that to settle in a new land means holding on to, not letting go of the past. William Wordsworth understood that we are not born in utter nakedness, nor in entire forgetfulness. We carry with us the lives of all those who have gone before us, literally in our DNA and more poetically in our hearts. Ying has trailed clouds of glory in her study with the potency and elegance of her arts-making. The truth of her study can be found in the beauty of her images, her narratives and poems that weave through and amidst her rich theorising. Ying’s book reminds me that the arts provide a way of seeing, of knowing that takes us beyond everyday understandings, to deeper and more powerful ways of being. Arts-based research opens the space for Ying to grapple with perhaps the hardest set of questions we can ask of ourselves: Where am I from? Where is home? Where next?

Professor Peter O’Connor Te Rito Toi: The Centre for Arts and Social Transformation University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand

Preface

As an immigrant, I live between two cultures. This book, Re-membering Identity, is an arts-based journey of exploration into the concept of inbetweenness, as it occurs within the process of moving between my root culture and adopted culture. I have adored arts since I was a young child, but I turned my back on arts-making during my young adult years when I was told to “forget about it and be real” by my parents. For many years, I was afraid to make arts, feeling as if I had betrayed my old friends. I left arts to focus on following a stable and promising career path. I gained my first design qualification in China and became an interior architect. As my parents wished, I made a comfortable living in a “real job”. After moving from China to New Zealand in 2002, and following completion of a Master of Design degree in 2005, I entered my first academic position as a design lecturer. This respectable academic job made my parents proud, but did not make me happy. Some years into my teaching career, many experiences involving being an Asian in my teaching profession injected negativity, challenges and struggles into my life. During this time, when I realised that I was suffering from depression because of my displacement issues, I discovered that my long-forgotten friend Arts had not abandoned me. My dear friend called me into a safe and therapeutic space where I learnt to talk to arts in an honest voice, and to be brave enough to show arts my vulnerability. Arts listened to my deepest shame, confusion and pain from my displacement journey.

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Arts taught me to look at my struggles and challenges from a different perspective. Since then, arts have continually enabled me to look at my immigration journey in ways I have never considered. Arts brought me back to my identity as an artist. After experiencing the power of arts as therapy for myself, I decided to redirect my career path into creative arts therapy. In 2013 I became the first Chinese immigrant student in the Master of Arts Therapy in Whitecliffe’s Creative Arts Therapy programme, which is currently the only clinical arts therapy training available in New Zealand. In those three years of study, my friend Arts accompanied me as I overcame my doubt, fear and anxiety, not only from changing into a new profession while at the prime age of my previous profession, but also from experiencing the transformative power of arts more deeply and impactfully for myself during the learning process. Now, as the first Chinese immigrant in New Zealand to be registered as a creative arts therapist, I am extending the learning I gain from arts in my clinical practice into my community. Arts helped me to gain my new identity as a therapist. In my research project for my Master of Arts Therapy degree, with arts, I explored my emotions associated with being an immigrant as well as an emerging creative arts therapist for the first time. I knew this Master’s research project was just the beginning of an important journey for me. I continued my journey with my friend Arts in my doctoral study at the University of Auckland where I conducted a creative, profound and transformative arts-based research project. I have brought my passion for arts into my subsequent post-doctoral research fellow role where I invite my friend Arts to join me in finding our shared voices at the powerful intersections of arts and education, arts and wellbeing and arts and social transformation. Arts have enabled me to continue to explore as a researcher. A/r/tography has been well-recognised as a means of exploring lived experiences from the perspectives of artist/researcher/teacher (Springgay et al., 2005; Irwin, 2013; LeBlanc & Irwin, 2019). To expand on this notion, I include the role of therapist in the inquiry, as well as incorporate various reflective therapy practices into a/r/tography. A/r/tography as a living inquiry allows me as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist to occupy the in-between space between my cultures, between my identities and between arts-making and theory (Irwin, 2004; Pinar, 2004).

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This book showcases how I as an artist/researcher/therapist embrace the vast creative possibilities of using arts-based inquiry to create an inbetween place where I explore the co-inhabitation of my two cultures. I do not confine my identity in a fixed form as an artist/researcher/ therapist. I see myself as containing many real moments from my life experience, as a self in an ever-changing process. The term of identity in this book is not a subjective thing locked up within myself, but it is the identity formation process which is informed by my experiences and interactions. Arts-making provides the ideal site for exploring my identity formation process as intra-actions between myself and the world although the artworks flowing from the process do not depict my identity itself. In this book, I address how arts-based inquiry creates the space for me to understand my identity/ies through encountering and being in the world through the arts-making process. Similarly, it is difficult to define what my immigrant culture is because of my existence in a fluid in-betweenness between my root and adopted cultures. In this book, I hope to underline the importance of arts-based research methods for providing an in-between space to explore multilayered identity/ies and to work with emotional, sensitive, rewarding or difficult experiences and memories from multi-layered displacement experiences. My displacement experiences are also enriched by my creative arts therapy practice. In my therapy practice, I have met many inspiring minds and souls from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. My multi-layered displacement experiences are not just about me, but the encounters with them, my clients from my community. This book therefore also depicts a fluid in-betweenness between myself and others such as my clients, my community, my friends and my family through the arts-making process. This book is a snapshot of the ever-changing fluid in-betweenness of moving between my two cultures. I still encounter, experience and interact with new moments continuously in my everyday life. If I take future snapshots of my displacement experience in different stages of my life, they will be different from this book. As an immigrant artist/ researcher/therapist, I hope my friend Arts will accompany me on my lifelong a/r/tographic journey. The following acrostic poem is an invitation for you, my readers, to begin this a/r/tographic journey with me.

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Arts never leave me Returning to this long-distance journey T ogether we persist in the place in between Old and new Give and gain Re-membering identity Actively and passively P oetically and artfully H armonising a balanced self Y ielding a new possibility of living in between

Auckland, New Zealand 2022

Ying Wang

References Irwin, R. L. (2004). A/r/tography: A metonymic métissage. In R. L. Irwin & A. De Cosson (Eds.), A/r/tography: Rending self through arts-bsed living inquiry (pp. 27–28). Pacific Educational Press. Irwin, R. L. (2013). Becoming a/r/tography. Studies in Art Education, 54(3), 198–215. LeBlanc, N., & Irwin, R. L. (2019). A/r/tography. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.393 Pinar, W. F. (2004). Foreword. In R. L. Irwin & A. De Cosson (Eds.), A/r/ tography: Rending self through arts-based living inquiry (pp. 9–25). Pacific Educational Press. Springgay, S., Irwin, R. L., & Kind, S. W. (2005). A/r/tography as living inquiry through art and text. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(6), 897–912. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1077800405280696

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Professor Lexi Lasczik and Professor Rita Irwin for their guidance and belief in my work. They are profound influences on the worlds of arts-based education and arts-based research. In the original doctoral inquiry that this book is based upon, Professor Peter O’Connor and Dr. Esther Fitzpatrick as my two research supervisors provided their knowledge, support and trust. They let me see the warm and authentic hearts behind their professional titles and knowledge. I am and will always be thankful to Professor Peter O’Connor, the director of the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation, University of Auckland, for his inspirational work in arts and academia, his guidance and encouragement for my academic career and his belief in my work. I am most grateful for the deep knowledge and wisdom that my ancestors have left in my body, mind, heart and soul. I am thankful for my guqin teachers Kong Qin and Zhang Li who brought this traditional artform to New Zealand with their immigration journeys. I am lucky to have my husband as my best friend, best support person and wonderful father for our children. With his love and support, I hope to pass my heritage of ancestral knowledge and wisdom to our children and many following generations through this work.

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Contents

1 4

1

Prologue References

2

Introduction Multi-layered Inquiry for Multi-layered Identity In-Betweenness Within the Guqin In-Betweenness Concepts The Eastern Way of Artistic Knowing Overview of This In-Betweenness Journey References

5 8 12 14 19 20 22

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A Journey In-Between Preparing for Departing/Arriving Departing/Arriving in Two Lands A Poem for Finding a Stone Depart/Arrive—Another In-Betweenness References

25 25 34 40 77 81

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A Stone In-Between Intra-Action and Entanglement with Stone Stone, Place and People Identity as Stones Identity Development as Stone Formation References

83 84 87 93 95 97

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CONTENTS

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Identity Making Through Guqin-Making Coming to the Foreign Land Making the Shape Gaining the Voice Adding the New Layers Sanding Away the Unwanted References

101 102 107 119 125 130 137

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Making Identity Through Crisis Encountering Crisis Creating Space Finding a Voice Focusing on the Body Entering In-Betweenness Again References

139 140 143 146 151 155 161

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Re-Membering in Harmony Resting Awakening Re-Membering References

163 164 168 170 174

Epilogue

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Index

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List of Images

Image 2.1 Image 3.1 Image 3.2 Image 3.3 Image 3.4 Image 3.5 Image 3.6 Image 3.7 Image 3.8 Image 3.9 Image 3.10 Image 3.11

Lost tree (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019. Ink and watercolour on paper) Home far away (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Watercolour on paper) Migratory bird (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper) A distant dream (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper) Grand night (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper) Cubicles (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper) River (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph) Door of half house (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Watercolour on paper) Antique-looking (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper) Antique-looking room (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph) Antique beam (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph) Antique timber (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph)

6 34 36 38 42 44 46 48 50 51 52 53

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LIST OF IMAGES

Image 3.12 Image 3.13 Image 3.14 Image 3.15 Image 3.16 Image 3.17 Image 3.18 Image 3.19 Image 3.20 Image 3.21 Image 3.22 Image 3.23 Image 3.24 Image 4.1 Image 4.2 Image 4.3 Image 5.1 Image 5.2 Image 5.3 Image 5.4 Image 5.5

Stairs to guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph) Guqin & inkstone house (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph) Playing guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph) West Lake (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper) Lotus (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper) Bridge in my dream (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2016, Chinese ink on paper) The stone bridge (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph) Tombstone (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph) Grieving (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper) Grandmother (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2017, Oil on board) Banana leaf in my dream (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2016, Ink on paper) A monk (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph) Stone (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper) Stones (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) Cairn (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Stone artwork on beach) Balanced stones on my desk (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) Details of old and dusty timber (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) The outline of the guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) The basic shape (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) My guqin head details (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) The undulating shape (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

55 57 59 61 62 64 65 66 67 70 73 74 76 88 91 93 103 108 109 113 115

LIST OF IMAGES

Image 5.6 Image 5.7 Image 5.8 Image 5.9 Image 5.10 Image 5.11 Image 5.12 Image 5.13 Image 6.1 Image 6.2 Image 6.3 Image 6.4

The leaf stalk on guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) Carving voice (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) My guqin inside details (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) Testing strings on my guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) Putting my name inside my guqin (Source 2019. Photograph) Wrapping with linen cloth (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) Guqin with rough layer (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) Guqin after layering and sanding (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) My garden tea house (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph) Lacquering stage (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2020. Photograph) If the cloud knows (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2020. Watercolour on paper) Qingxin guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2020. Photograph)

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118 120 121 123 126 127 131 136 144 151 153 159

CHAPTER 1

Prologue

Abstract To begin this book, I describe my first moment encountering the guqin—an ancient Chinese artform—to illustrate why I have used guqin-making as a site of arts-based inquiry to explore the in-betweenness of moving between my root culture and adopted culture. Keyword Arts-based inquiry · In-betweenness · Transplantation

I am not a musician. Actually, I had very limited knowledge about music and I was terrible with rhythm before this research journey. I did not even know what a guqin was, until the Spring of 2017. One spring night, when I was listening to traditional Chinese music while preparing creative arts therapy sessions for a group of immigrant clients, I was suddenly drawn to the strange but somehow familiar sound of a guqin instrument. That night, a haze of light rain enshrouded the trees beyond the window of my house. Looking out the window, looking at these misty tree tops in the mountains of West Auckland, New Zealand, this gentle traditional Chinese music triggered my homesickness. I missed my homeland which was far away and in the opposite season, autumn. Gazing into this misty air, and with a sense of sadness and loss in my heart, I closed my eyes and listened to the guqin music. With my eyes closed, I felt the guqin © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. Wang, Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32527-4_1

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music was entering me through my heart rather than my ears. Feeling the music of the guqin resonating inside me, I was imagining a guqin musician from ancient times playing the guqin in the shade of a tree and creating soulful music by intertwining the sound of wind or water with their heart. Closing my eyes as the music of the guqin flowed, I heard the guqin’s talking. The guqin was speaking warmly to me: “Come back home, my child …”. “Where is my home?” In the more than two decades of my immigration journey, I have asked myself this question again and again. The landscape in my homeland is different from the view outside of my window. Looking at the graceful dance of the trees under the mist of rain in this foreign land, I reflected on my own immigration journey as a transplanted tree.1 The seed of myself as a transplanted tree was firstly sown in the soil of the Chinese city of Hangzhou. More than twenty years ago, I took a chance to be transplanted to this foreign land, New Zealand, which at the time I knew almost nothing about. Arriving in this strange land by myself, I soon discovered the challenges I needed to face in terms of cultural, linguistic, social and political adjustments. Immigrants, as with trees, are at first sown and cultivated in their homeland. Because of hopes of a better environment and future, immigrants transplant themselves into a foreign land. During this transplantation, an immigrant birthed of their culture of origin, like a tree, must first cut off some extra leaves (such as self-belief and pride) and cut off their fine roots (such as family, friends and customs) in order that they can be lifted out of the old soil. In the early stage of transplanting, the tree experiences a lot of pain: at the beginning, it would not adapt well to the new soil and water (such as language and culture); it may have suffered from the severing of the roots; the tree would drop a lot of leaves. For quite a while, the growth of the tree would be invisible, but the suffering would be obvious. In my early immigrant experience, as a newly transplanted tree, I tried my hardest to fit in, despite carrying the pain of having cut off my roots. Bearing the pain of being unable to speak my mother-tongue, I had to learn to communicate in my second language despite my embarrassment about my accent. Bearing the pain of shame, I had to hide my shock and fear from my encounters with discrimination. Bearing the pain of loneliness, I had to try to be more Westernised in order to blend into my adopted culture. As a transplanted tree, I desired to fully arrive in this new land and to let this adopted land embrace me, accepting me to grow into its soil. However, despite how hard I tried, I realised that I

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could not be the same as the other trees in my adopted land. During the process of transplantation, I as a transplanted tree was hurt, and becoming unhealthy. For some time in the middle of my transplantation, I was totally lost. I felt an important part of me was hidden and buried. In the coldness of my grief at losing my homeland, root culture and identity, I as a tree once lost my roots, my leaves and my strength. On that misty night, I answered this inner call as a lost tree in my adopted land. I followed the guqin’ s call to reconnect to my lost roots. Guqin in Chinese refers to “ancient 古” and “instrument 琴” which indicates its long history of more than 3000 years (Kouwenhoven, 2015). Despite my anxiety from having no knowledge of this ancient instrument and having very limited ability in music, I decided to answer this call from the guqin to “come back home”. By answering this calling from the guqin, I decided to learn about this ancient Chinese instrument, and to undertake guqin-making as my research journey into the in-betweenness of moving between my root culture and adopted culture. After some research, by chance I found a guqin-making master who had recently immigrated to New Zealand from China. Without hesitation, I contacted him and asked to join his guqin-making class. On the first day of my guqin-making journey, I met another lost tree in my guqinmaking teacher’s workshop—a section of a beam reclaimed from a manyhundred-year-old house in my homeland. Guqin-making requires very old and seasoned timber historically sourced in China. The only thing I knew about this piece of wood was that it travelled many miles from China to New Zealand across the sea. It was part of a house beam built to provide warmth and safety for its owner, but now, arriving in this foreign land, New Zealand, it was just a piece of meaningless, old and dusty timber. When I met this timber for the first time, it was like finding an old friend. I could have an in-depth and honest conversation with this lost tree about the meaning of our displacement journey, the meaning of being in this foreign land, and re-membering our identities together. This re-membering journey was not easy for me and this old, dusty timber. To re-member, I had to see myself from perspectives which I had never considered before this journey. I had to learn to confront my past, piece by piece. I needed to immerse in the present, moment by moment, in the process of making a guqin from this old, dusty timber. I compare this process of re-membering through guqin-making to the process of Kintsugi. Kintsugi is a traditional Japanese craft that follows a philosophical view which treats ‘scars’ as parts of the object’s history,

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and uses all broken parts of the objects to create an opportunity for new insights (Witt, 2018, p. 55). Kintsugi as arts-making confronts loss and destruction as a tangible philosophy of rebirth (Kitty, 2020, p. 16). In the guqin-making process, moment by moment and piece by piece, I hope to confront loss and create something for our identities which is more unique, strong and resilient. By immersing in the process of guqin-making, I hope to create a unique arts-based inquiry to understand how my displacement experiences from moving between my two cultures impact upon my identity formation process. I am interested in what I can learn about my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist through cultural knowledge and my ancestors’ wisdom which I encounter in the guqin-making process. Holding this old and dusty timber, I hear the calling. Following this calling, this old timber and I invite each other to bravely enter this journey of re-membering our identities together.

Notes 1. Poet and writer Ross Gay compares the immigration journey to trees. He relates his social commentary on immigration to a fig tree in his poem To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian (Gay 2013). In my book chapter, Poet Tree, I used arts-based inquiry to explore my immigration journey through the metaphor of transplanted trees (Wang 2020).

References Gay, R. (2013). To the fig tree on 9th and Christian. The American Poetry Review, 42(3). https://aprweb.org/issue-index/2013-may-june Kitty, A. (2020). The art of Kintsugi: Learning the Japanese craft of beautiful repair. Schiffer Publishing. Kouwenhoven, F. (2015). The Guqin zither. In M. Church (Ed.), The other classical musics (pp. 104–125). Boydell Press. Wang, Y. (2020). Poet tree. In F. Iosefo, S. Holman Jones, & A. Harris (Eds.), Wayfinding and critical autoethnography (pp. 196–213). Routledge. Witt, A. (2018). Kintsugi++. Issues in Science & Technology, 34(4), 55–66.

CHAPTER 2

Introduction

Abstract In this chapter, I discuss the multi-layered arts-based research methodology I use for this study of identity and how I creatively explore the in-betweenness of moving between my two cultures. The existing theories about in-betweenness—concepts of liminal space, third space and the concept of in-betweenness derived from the traditional Chinese philosophical view of harmony—are interwoven through the discussion to position this project scholastically. Engagement with guqin-making is the central element of this arts-based inquiry. Some knowledge about this ancient Chinese musical instrument is reviewed backgrounding why this ancient arts-making form was chosen as part of the exploration of inbetweenness. The Eastern way of artistic knowing is outlined to indicate how it relates to the research methodology of this arts-based research project. Keywords Critical autoethnography · Arts-based inquiry · A/r/ tography · Liminality · Third space · Harmony

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. Wang, Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32527-4_2

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Image 2.1 Lost tree (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019. Ink and watercolour on paper)

迷路的樹, 在異鄉望著遠山 腳下的根, 向深處延伸 帶著對遠山的眷戀 帶著對異鄉之土的切望

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A lost tree Looking at a distant mountain from a foreign land The roots under it extending deep With nostalgia for the distant mountain Longing to be embraced by the foreign land

This is a journey of in-betweenness, as it occurs within the process of moving between my two cultures, here and there, old and new, past and present and loss and gain, from an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist’s perspective. In this research, I move between my root Chinese culture and adopted New Zealand culture by “using both feet” to take a journey of wayfaring and wayfinding between “holding on” and “letting go” and between “lost” and “won” (Colquhoun, 1999, p. 32).1 Since New Zealand’s colonisation by European immigrants, it has been an inbetween land for its people. New Zealand, from a bicultural perspective, is comprised of two main cultures—tangata m¯ aori (ordinary or usual people) and others. The others were given such names as tangata ma (white people), tangata pora (strange people), tangata tupua (foreign or demonic people) and eventually became known as p¯ akeh¯ a in official documents (non-M¯aori or European) (Phillips, 2015). In this book, as a Chinese New Zealander, I “use both feet” to navigate and explore the in-betweenness between my root culture and adopted culture through creativity, with the hope of discovering the unknown destination of my immigration journey (Image 2.1). In this in-betweenness journey, I move between my cultures through different languages, such as visual, narrative, academic and poetic languages, and using both English and Chinese. Throughout this artsbased journey, I interchange between these languages naturally, and engage with these languages both passively and actively in order to immerse in the emotive qualities of my stories and to embrace different possibilities yielded by the different languages. While I move between my two cultures with these languages, I also find myself knowing and learning from engaging with these different languages. These visual, narrative, academic and poetic languages help me to connect body, mind and heart with diverse embodied experiences. I use academic language to discuss theories around the concept of in-betweenness and related identity theories. I use narrative language to document my arts-based research journey. I use poetic language to capture the hidden memories and feelings of my experiences. I use visual language to capture the intangible qualities of

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emotions and to transfer the invisible to visible. I use images not only to illustrate my arts-making process, but also as visual language to capture emotive qualities of my stories which are otherwise difficult to express through words alone. Therefore, these images I leave in my text are part of my visual narratives rather than simply illustrations. That is the reason I do not state figure numbers in my writing. Throughout my narrative, artwork and poetry, I use Hsi 兮 as a ‘signpost’ indicating a space for pause. Hsi 兮 in traditional Chinese literature represents the rhythm particle similar to a dash.2 Hsi 兮 is used as an abrupt remark or an interruption similar to ‘ah!’. In this book, my emotions within my narrative drift like a river. I use Hsi 兮 to create flow and rhythm, and more importantly to create a space for readers to immerse in my story as well as their own emotions evoked by my narratives. I invite my readers to travel with me, breathe with me and dip into embodied memories with me as we flow and as we pause.

Multi-layered Inquiry for Multi-layered Identity In this book, Re-membering Identity, I re-member, not simply remember; I re-member my multi-layered identity/ies as a New Zealand Chinese immigrant artist/researcher/therapist through a multi-layered arts-based inquiry. I focus on a set of concerns: foregrounding personal and professional experience as an immigrant creative arts therapist, seeking my personal responses from observing and working with creativity, demonstrating a sense-making process through arts-based methods and critically depicting insights into a cultural phenomenon. Arts-based research, as Elliot W. Eisner points out, is a “soft-form” of qualitative research, and faces an arduous task in the educational research community to establish and retain its position as a legitimate form of inquiry (Eisner, 2008, p. 19). There are no comparable conditions for arts-based research, but the unique conditions that define arts-based research are also the ones that personalise the study or situation, allowing the researcher’s unique perspective to work its magic in illuminating the scene (Eisner, 2008). I follow Eisner’s call in promoting the practise of arts-based educational research and bringing in multiple perspectives in educational research. In this book, I have designed my own arts-based research road to get closer to my destination (Eisner, 2008, p. 22). Through this cultural journey of moving between my root culture and

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adopted culture, my quest blends autoethnography, a/r/tography and arts-based research methods creating a multi-layered arts-based inquiry. The term arts in this book does not refer to artistic products, “words” or “things”, but performativity of phenomenon in order to meet the real moments of my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist (Barad, 2003, p. 801). Drawing on my creative arts therapist colleague Deborah Green’s doctoral research where she proposed including therapist as the T for her a/r/tographic exploration into her challenging dual-role as both quake-survivor and therapist (Green, 2016), this arts-based research enables me to explore the distinctive dynamic relationships between my multi-faceted identities of immigrant, artist, researcher and creative arts therapist. Through the lens of critical autoethnographic research and a/r/tography, this cultural journey provides a unique standpoint for an exploration of arts-based research methods evolving from moving (between cultures), walking (in homeland and adopted land), making (an ancient Chinese musical instrument), resting (with arts-making) and awakening (as an immigrant artist/ researcher/therapist). As an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, through the living inquiry of a/r/tography, I use the arts-making process as “a way of sharing inbetween space residing between” my root culture and adopted culture, between past and future, between knowing and not knowing and between learning and practising (Triggs & Irwin, 2019, p. 3). Along with this research journey, I am “questioning and questing” through making arts and moving between my cultures, in order to “navigate through/with/in the complex process” of conducting this reflective, responsive, embodied and critical research (Irwin, 2014; LeBlanc & Irwin, 2019, pp. 7–8). My insightful voice as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, my imagined connections with my guqin, and my embodied intuition in the making/ moving process create different possibilities for “exploring the relationships between theory and practice” through this fluid and open-ended living inquiry (LeBlanc & Irwin, 2019, p. 16). A/r/tography helps me to stay engaged with my embodied experiences/memories, with my two cultures and with the world in the research process (Springgay et al., 2005). Critical autoethnography is a method of cultural and social study from the self-perspective which involves looking into identity, feelings, memories and experiences within the self and looking outward through the self’s relationships, cultures, communities and societies (Wyatt & Adams, 2014,

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p. 46). My immigration stories, through the qualitative research methodology of critical autoethnography, indicate “theory is a story” and “theory tells a story in non-ordinary language” (Holman Jones, 2016, p. 228). As a Chinese New Zealander working as a creative arts therapist, I often encounter feelings of unease and tension in my practice, but there are also sometimes moments of surprise, elation and enlightenment while working with my clients in the community or in a therapeutic space. Through critical autoethnography, these feelings and experiences can be documented as stories, analysed as research data and presented as critical and theoretical understandings for the topic of the immigrant creative arts therapist identity formation process. Although creative arts therapist is my professional identity, I do not intend to include therapeutic interventions or techniques in this book. However, moving between two cultures as an immigrant enriches my arts therapy practice experience, which I intend to address in this book. As a critical autoethnographer and an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist in this research, I focus on how I “do theory and think story as living bodies of thought” (Holman Jones, 2016, p. 235) and how I explore “relational inquiry, relational aesthetics and relational learning” (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p. 115). A/r/tography and critical autoethnography both involve the integration of my personal and professional experiences as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist. In this book, critical autoethnography and a/r/tography are used complementarily, naturally and creatively. A/r/tography is focused on the interrelationship between my arts-making, practice and research while critical autoethnography allows me to explore my identities, cultures and broader social/cultural issues. I not only write stories through the lens of self by looking into my hidden stories, and the stories in my body and my past, but also, by looking outward, I focus on how social, cultural, political and historical contexts impact my identity transformation process. I also focus on how I sit in this in-between space between my root culture and adopted culture, between art and graphy, between practising and learning, while being attentive to this in-betweenness for this dynamic living inquiry (Irwin & Springgay, 2008). In this book, I write my stories which arise alongside my arts-making process. Writing stories about a vulnerable self in research involves writing about others to present the self in a complicated and honest manner (Ellis, 2007, p. 14). However, in this research, ‘others’, such as my clients, my friends, my family and the people I meet in my everyday

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life, are the mirror for my ‘self’ to reflect on and observe my identity formation process. I study the ‘others’ within my ‘self’ rather than study the ‘others’ as research subjects. Therefore, through interweaving the relational experiences with others, I reflect on, rethink and observe the self within the process, and “move from studying them to studying self” (Tillmann-Healy, 2003, p. 735). This research recognises the selfothers entanglement from “the experiences that have salience in our lives, whether these experiences thrill, surprise, intrigue, sadden, or enrage us” (Adams et al., 2015, p. 22). In this moving-between-cultures journey, arts-making breaks the barrier between my root culture and adopted culture, and provides an in-between space for my two cultures to meet, interact and transform. Arts-making invites me to see my hybrid cultures within my identity formation process from different perspectives and with vigorous curiosity. Arts-based research challenges existing habits of seeing and being, and changes the ways of knowing associated with traditional Western research methods, “thus undoing dominant and oppressive ways of knowing and instigating acts of resistance” (Capous-Desylass & Morgaine, 2018, p. xvi). Arts-based inquiry generates data and creates knowledge through the use of embodied experiences, senses and emotions by utilising the embodied self (Eisner, 2002). Through arts-based inquiry, I hope to share “the heart of my relationship with my work” with my readers (Leavy, 2009, p. 2), and to offer alternative possibilities for engagement with research (Springgay et al., 2005). Arts plant the seeds of curiosity about vulnerability, empowerment, inspiration, possibility and passion in my mind and heart. As an artist and creative arts therapist, working with arts both for myself and with others, I am drawn to the safe, unthreatening and limitless space within arts-making. As an immigrant living as a minority in an adopted Western culture, with less power than mainstream society, research through arts enables me to offer my powerful voice from creative explorations of my lived experience and knowledge, and to make sense through artsmaking (Capous-Desylass & Morgaine, 2018, p. vx). Entering these unlimited spaces within arts-making, I transfer ambiguous and intangible emotions and feelings into colours, shapes, lines, poetic words, rhythms and metaphors. My feelings, emotions or memories from my displacement journey become visible, hearable, touchable and observable. Arts-based inquiry provides the space that allows me to “transcend ethnic identities and spatial boundaries” to enter this in-betweenness between my two

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cultures for this research (Capous-Desylass & Morgaine, 2018, p. vii). Arts-based inquiry also helps me tease apart my chaotic and disorganised emotions and feelings, in order to let the “unexpected light and sound” come into my consciousness (Greene, 1980, p. 316). Through arts-based inquiry, I wait patiently for these spontaneous enlightening moments. This arts-based inquiry into movement between cultures recognises the powerful intersection of my two worlds. I was born into my root culture and educated into and practised in my adopted culture. I am drawn into this “complicated, challenging and interesting” intersection of my “two powerful worlds” (Smith, 2012, p. 19). Through a unique decolonising research inquiry, guqin-making, I aim to explore and understand my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist at this intersection of my root culture and adopted culture. Both my guqin-making process as arts-based inquiry and the process of qualitative research are viewed as “craft” in this project (Leavy, 2009, p. 10). Both guqin-making and qualitative research need holistic and dynamic practices, reflective and descriptive processes and problem formulation and solving abilities as well as intuitive creativity (Leavy, 2009, p. 10). In this arts-based research, guqin-making as inquiry enables me to work with ‘something old’ from my ancestral knowledge and wisdom and to generate ‘something new’ for “new ways of knowing and discovering” and “new ways to think about research” (Smith, 2012, p. 28). This book acknowledges the significance of my ancestors’ traditional philosophical perspectives for this research and attempts to account for how, and why, such decolonising arts-based inquiry may have impacted on my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist. This is a multi-layered arts-based inquiry through my critical autoethnographic and a/r/tographic narrative, the creation of images and poetry, and through guqin-making and music-making/playing. Exploring my multi-layered identity/ies as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, this book expands the discussion of the concept of in-betweenness through an alternative ontological and decolonising perspective on the dynamics of moving between my root culture and adopted culture.

In-Betweenness Within the Guqin Guqin-making plays a significant role in embodying the insights of traditional Chinese philosophical values (Tan & Lu, 2018). Important knowledge has been embedded in this ancient artform: for example, traditional

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language and music, forms of cultural knowledge and traditional philosophical perspectives. Guqin-making as an artform has been influenced by Chinese philosophical thinking around the in-betweenness concept of yin-yang thoughts and harmony. The guqin as musical instrument and artefact, from its physical appearance, materials used in its construction and its sound quality, follows holistic harmonic perspectives. A guqin’s shape, size and structure are correlated to the concept of harmony in relation to the human body, nature and the universe. Heaven and earth, six directions, mountain and water, dragon and phoenix, male and female and the four seasons are all represented in the construction of a guqin (Lu, 2019, pp. 87–88). Guqin-makers from ancient times attempted to symbolise the harmonic relationships between humans, nature and the universe in the creation of guqin instruments. Music in ancient China was used to connect to the “cognisance of the existing spirits” (Hsu, 1978, p. 43) and the guqin was the instrument for this kind of process from the Age of the Five Rulers of Fu Hsi about 2852 BC (Hsu, 1978). Many existing pieces of guqin music are from hundreds and even thousands of years ago and many of them are accompanied by poems written to record the deep emotions and feelings of their writers. Playing the guqin, for my ancestors, was the way to connect and communicate with nature, and to understand the meaning of life and freedom. For them, the guqin was not only an instrument but a trusted companion to have a conversation with. In this book, my guqin is my trusted companion sharing the journey of moving between our root culture and adopted culture. Unlike instruments intended for performance, the guqin is considered an instrument for private musing and reflection. In traditional Chinese philosophy, the guqin was the “truth tool” for the “search for truth” and the “search for harmony” (Tan & Lu, 2018, p. 139). Guqin players search for truth from guqin music in order to reside in xing 性 (the inner self) through the Buddhist concept of mingxin jianxing 明心見 性 (clearing the heart-mind and seeing the inner self) (Tan & Lu, 2018, p. 142). When guqin artists perform, they adjust their posture and breath to reach the natural and harmonic state of being calm with no desire (xujing wuyu 虛靜無慾) which represents Daoism’s doing by not doing (wu wei無為) (Di, 2016). In light of these perspectives, the guqin is the ultimate private site for people to enter their internal world in order to seek the inner self and identity. From guqin-making to guqin-playing, self-reflection, self-regulation and self-cultivation have been embedded

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to achieve the harmonious state within the instrument, within the music, within the self and within the nature and universe around the self. In other words, the guqin helps people to achieve harmony through simplicity without intentionally pursuing this result. Therefore, guqinmaking is the ideal exploration site for me to explore the in-betweenness within myself through self-reflection, self-regulation and self-cultivation. Listening to and playing guqin music written hundreds and even thousands of years ago, and the process of making a guqin connect me to my ancestors’ world. With this connection between myself and my ancestors, I experience and feel my ancestors’ emotions, feelings and souls intermingling with my own in a poignant, emotional and spiritual in-between place between the past and the present, between my homeland and my adopted land. I document the process of making this ancient artefact to immerse in my embodied experience of guqin-making. This process is a rich site for reflection on my displacement experience and professional experience as an immigrant creative arts therapist for an exploration of moving between my two cultures. Guqin-making is a highly skilful crafting process. In this book, many complex steps of guqin-making have been simplified in the narrative in order to foreground the research topic.

In-Betweenness Concepts Within in-betweenness of liminality 3 I stop and rest I immerse in the dark but fruitful between-and-betwixt 4 I reflect on my displacement experience in the liminal space Within the in-betweenness of third space 5 I stop and rest I study my identity formation in the hybridity 6 I allow the different mes to meet, to fight and to emerge in the third space My ancestors come to my dream Lead me to an in-between place Tell me the name of the place called harmony My ancestors Show me how to swim through the empty void space To invite the difference, tension, conflict in

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Without anxiety and resistance Just let them be Let them lead me to reveal another in-between space I follow my ancestors’ voices Swimming with difference, tension and conflict In crisis, I meet opportunity 7 In coldness, I meet warmth My body, heart and soul floating in harmonic space Moving between my two cultures Without anxiety or resistance. Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2020

In the poem above, I invite three in-betweenness concepts—liminal space, third space and harmonic space—into the poetic exploration to understand my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/ researcher/therapist moving between my root culture and adopted culture. Immigrants’ displacement experiences of being in-between can be compared with the concept of liminality. The concept of liminality in immigrants’ identity formation process represents a time when fragments of identity from immigrants’ past experiences within their root cultures have “lost their grip” and the identity fragments from their experiences of being in their adopted culture have “not yet taken definite shape” (Turner, 1992, p. 133). From my viewpoint, the in-betweenness experienced “neither here nor there” and “betwixt and between the positions” for an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist resonates with the concept of liminality—between from here and from there, between departing and arriving, between the past and future and between the old me and the new me (Turner, 1969, p. 95). As an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist, the in-betweenness of the liminality of my identity formation process is a temporal continuity rather than a fixed point. This temporal continuity is influenced and challenged by my daily personal experiences and professional practice. The concept of liminality contains real moments of migrants’ experiences of dealing with changes and challenges around them in everyday life (Kalua, 2009). As an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist, the concept of liminality provides the possibility of exploring my experiences of moving from my root culture to adopted culture with a continual perspective, and gaining knowledge from my “relativity and fluidity” as a human creation (Kissil et al., 2013, p. 139). However, moving between my root culture and adopted culture, I am not travelling

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in one direction only. My growth and transformation from my displacement experience and practice experience as an immigrant arts therapist are not necessarily sequential. Through my research journey, in my displacement experience, I find that I travel back from my adopted culture to my root culture too. Every time I have the opportunity to travel back through arts-making to my root culture, and to the past and the old me, I gain more insight and understanding about being in my adopted culture and the new me. Therefore, my identity formation process is not only in one direction in a liminal space. Through another in-betweenness concept, the hybridity of the third space provides the possibility to let my root culture and adopted culture meet, and to generate constant transformation within my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist. The inbetweenness of the third space is an ambiguous area where two or more cultures intermingle. Bhabha (1994) describes this ambiguous hybridity of third space as “the borderline experience” and “the moment of panic” (p. 207). In this contradictory and ambiguous in-betweenness, cultural statements and systems are constructed by their enunciation (Bhabha, 1994). Identifying the limitations of multiculturalism, Bhabha (1997) argues that modern migrants have a part culture or in-between culture where they are baffled by being between alike and different, of root culture and host culture. This ‘part’ or ‘in-between’ quality of immigrant identities is not a fixed concept but a complex and dynamic transformation with many levels—individual, collective, social and cultural. Arts-based methods allow me to observe this changeable partial within the hybridity where “both past and future can work together to create a new outlook” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 219). In this in-betweenness of third space, I have the opportunity to study the other in me from my “multiple others interacting through different times and spaces” (Wang, 2004, p. 147), and have conversations with the others in me from the past and now, and from homeland and adopted land. However, the concept of third space only represents a single layer of my identity formation process. In this book, I undertake a multi-directional and multi-layered cultural journey through exploring the Chinese philosophical concept of inbetweenness, harmony. In this study, I emphasise the impact from this traditional philosophical perspective of harmony on my arts-based journey of moving between my root culture and adopted culture as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist. Harmony is the central concept of Chinese culture, and the essential notion of harmony in Chinese philosophy

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is sustaining the harmonic state within nature, humanity and society (Lee, 1992). The concept of in-betweenness in Chinese philosophy is complex and has deep cultural and historical roots. I do not intend to comprehensively delve into the concept of in-betweenness from a Chinese philosophical perspective and its place within Chinese history and culture, rather it is an attempt to bring relevant elements of this complex and historical concept into this exploration. Therefore, the Chinese philosophical concept of harmony in this research is general and fundamental rather than profound and comprehensive. In ancient Chinese literature, harmony is widely regarded as an ideal and desirable wisdom for life (Li, 2008, p. 81). From times earlier than the pre-Qin classics, the primary Chinese word for harmony is he 和, and the concept of harmony also appears in other Chinese words such as mu 睦, xie 諧 and xie 協 (Li, 2008, p. 81). It is necessary to point out that he 合 in Chinese is different from he 和 although they are pronounced the same. He 合 (unity) in Chinese represents “joining in” or “becoming one” which tends to create a static or fixed state, and he 和 (harmony) represents the dynamic interactive process of different elements (Wang, 2005, p. 212). Therefore, harmony is not a state but a process of harmonisation (Li, 2008, p.85). Harmony as a critical concept came from Chinese ancestors’ observations from daily activities and yet they reflected on their understanding of harmony from a higher perspective (Li, 2008, pp. 84–85). Ancient Chinese people recognised the different elements in the process of harmonisation and they believed that there could be no harmony without difference or contradictions—“harmony 和 of yin and yang 陰陽” (Yang, 2008, p. 27). In Chinese history, the concept of harmony between contradictory elements has been recorded since ancient times. For example, the combined concept of Dong 動 (motion) and Jin 靜 (stillness) was a pre-Qin concept which was recorded in Yong Ye of the Analects 雍也. In Yong Ye of the Analects 雍也, Confucius says “the wise find pleasure in water; the virtuous find pleasure in hills; the wise are active; the virtuous are still” (as cited in Li, 2015, p. 106). Laozi (1972 Ch. 16) compares the concept of motion and stillness to the vegetable world and he says: “We see each of them return to its root. This returning to their root is comparable to the state of stillness” (as cited in Li, 2015, p. 106). Li (2015) analyses the concept of motion and stillness in traditional Chinese philosophy and points out that the “returning to their root” 归根 is regarded as returning to stillness but the stillness is not

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absolute inactivity (p. 107). Laozi (1972) proposes that the action of reaching stillness is in keeping with the natural flow and keeping still in order to control or overcome actions, which he calls “wu wei” 無為 (a natural state of doing nothing for the sake of doing it) or no-action (Ch. 37). Later, scholar Wang Bi (王弼, 226–249) also agrees that “stillness is the basis for activity”. He writes, “All existent beings originate from vacancy and all activities from stillness, therefore, although creations repeat themselves, they will finally return to vacancy and stillness” (as cited in Li, 2015, p. 109). Laozi and Wang Bi both argue that “stillness is the ruler of movement” (as cited in Li, 2015, p. 110). Zhu Xi (朱 熹, 1130–1200) proposes that “motion and stillness do not appear at the same time; yin and yang are not equal in position”, and “it is magical but unpredictable, stillness is in activity and activity is in stillness” (as cited in Li, 2015, p. 113). Wang Fuzhi (王夫子, 1619–1692) thinks that “motion and stillness are just the motion and stillness of yin and yang … activity exists in stillness and there is no absolute stillness” (as cited in Li, 2015, p. 114). Zhang Zai (張載, 1020–1077) and Wang Fuzhi (王夫 之, 1619–1692) developed the ‘two as one’ theory and they both considered that all things have two contradictory aspects; they suggested that all movement is caused by the contradiction between yin and yang , but contradiction will lead to conflicts, which will be resolved in harmony (as cited in Li, 2015, p. 124). To conclude these views from ancient Chinese scholars, the in-betweenness of the harmonic space is an active and ever-changing harmonisation process between differences and contradictions, and harmonisation can only be achieved between contradictory/ different elements. These ancient views regarding movement and stillness also provide a unique perspective for exploring the in-betweenness between my root culture and adopted culture. From a traditional Chinese philosophical perspective, studying the movement between my root culture and adopted culture is also the search for the “stillness in the activity”—the resting in-between place between my two cultures; but this stillness is not a fixed place. The action of returning to the root, stillness or harmony is one of repetition rather than linear. Zhang Zi (張載, 1020–1077) writes: “We talked about return and repeat, once it ends, there is a beginning, the circulation is endless” (as cited in Li, 2015, p. 127). This repetitive process of beginning and ending contains many forms of yin and yang ’s correlation: Maodun 矛盾(contradiction and opposition), Xiangyi 相依 (interdependence), Huhan 互含 (mutual inclusion), Jiaogan 交

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感 (interaction/resonance), Hubu互補 (complementary/mutual support) and Zhuanghua 轉化 (transformation) (Wang, 2015). These correlationships between contradictory/different elements create the endless and repetitive harmonisation process in the harmonic space. In this book, I intend to explore these correlationships arising from moving between my root culture and adopted culture.

The Eastern Way of Artistic Knowing According to yin-yang thinking, reality is unity in diversity and the he 和 (harmony) is not the whole picture but one snapshot of the world (Wang, 2015, pp. 28–31). Although reality in Chinese thought is a constantly changing process, the transformation process is not a chaotic mess but a dao 道 (way) which the transforming process of reality follows (Littlejohn, 2016, p. 19). In other words, the transforming process has its principles or patterns for those who pay attention to it. In this book, from the perspective of harmonisation, I intend to pay attention to artistic knowing in the arts-making process in order to understand my identity transformation process arising from moving between my two cultures. The way of knowing from a traditional Chinese perspective has its own historical and philosophical roots. From a traditional Chinese viewpoint, the known cannot exist in itself and the relationship between the known and the knower becomes the cognitive facilitator in the knowing process; therefore, the known cannot be separated from human actions (Yang, 2005, pp. 58–59). Wang Fu Zhi (王夫之, 1619–1692) says of the interactions between the known and the knower that “as both a thing for itself and a thing for a human being, the known demonstrates its actuality” and through the interactive process “the known becomes open to the knower” (as cited in Yang, 2005, pp. 59–60). In other words, the known cannot be realised without the knower, and the knower has to be ready in the process to realise the known. Contemporary Chinese philosopher Jin Yuelin (金岳霖, 1895–1984) in his book On Dao 論道 points out “even if I can forget that I am a human being, I cannot forget the universe and all the creatures are in unity with me”; therefore, it is not only necessary to know intellectually but also emotionally (Jin, 1987, p. 17). In other words, in the process of knowing, the knower’s sensations, memory, feelings and emotions interact and intermingle with its known—knowledge (Yang, 2005, p. 61). Knowledge from a traditional Chinese philosophical

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perspective entertains both important and trivial questions “concerning the universe and human life” (Liang et al., 2001, p. 116). From the understanding of the principle or pattern of reaching harmony to the discussion of the process of knowing, it can be argued that substance body/thing and conscious mind are both needed in the study of the in-betweenness concept of harmony. Encouraged by ancestral Chinese knowledge of the process of knowing, I aim to gain new understanding/the known from my sensations, memories, feelings and emotions through the arts-making process as I, the knower, move between my root culture and adopted culture intelligently and emotionally. Traditional Chinese arts, for example guqin-making, poetry and music, offer me culturally relevant artistic approaches for exploring the in-betweenness from my displacement experiences. For this identity study into the concept of in-betweenness, the Chinese concept of harmony not only provides the potential theoretical framework but also offers the research method of Eastern artistic knowing through me (the knower) to understand my in-betweenness as I move between my two cultures (the known). As the known in the Chinese concept of harmony is the ongoing process of knowing, arts-based research provides the ideal space for the interaction between the known (the study of the identity formation process) and the knower (me as an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist). In this book, I as a knower with my research intentions use artistic knowing to discover new knowledge through the concept of harmony. I am interested in how arts-based methods help me to understand the harmonisation processes taking place as I move in-between my root culture and adopted culture as an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist.

Overview of This In-Betweenness Journey Each of the following chapters focuses on different stages of this artsbased research journey. In the chapters titled A Journey In-Between and A Stone In-Between, I use arts-based inquiry through narrative, image and poetry to document my embodied experiences while walking in my homeland and my adopted land as I prepare to begin guqin-making. Through my stories of preparing for departure, departing my adopted land, walking in my homeland, departing my homeland, arriving in my adopted land and my reflections on walking at a beach in my adopted land, I immerse myself creatively in the act of travelling and explore my

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intra-action with the impact from walking in my two lands as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist. Chapter 5, Identity Making Through Guqin-Making , delves into the concept of in-betweenness within the actual guqin-making process, and interweaves this with an exploration of the philosophical understanding of in-betweenness drawn from the traditional Chinese concept of harmony. There are five sections in this chapter which unpack the different layers and relationships within the concept of harmony through reflections on the guqin-making process, and my embodied experiences which it evokes. Chapter 6, Identity Making Through Crisis, explores how the concept of harmony and identity development theory help me deepen my understanding of the inbetweenness within my identity formation process during the Covid-19 crisis. It also explores how arts-making as inquiry manifests my identity transformation as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist. The final chapter, Re-membering in harmony, focuses on a broader context rather than personal narratives to establish the unique viewpoint of the inbetweenness concept of harmony. It attempts to establish this new theory as a cairn for future study journeys into cultural identity. In this book, my journey of moving between my two cultures comes to a close with a moment of reflection at a time when the Covid-19 crisis is easing in my adopted land. This arts-based research is “open and ongoing as the reader enters” (Schultz & Legg, 2020, p. 248). While engaging with my stories and arts-making process, I encourage my readers to open their hearts to face their own shadows and struggles from their personal or professional life, to realise their own tensions and conflicts from moving between their cultures, and to understand the negative and positive impacts of their own in-betweenness. I invite you, my readers, to immerse with me and to pause with me in order to unearth the hidden, to remember the forgotten and to realise what is important in our ever-evolving identities.

Notes 1. Glenn Colquhoun (1999) describes both the M¯aori cultural elements and colonial p¯ akeh¯ a elements of his migrant experience through the profound metaphor of walking by “using both feet” and he posits that “one is for holding on” and “one is for letting go” (p. 32). Colquhoun (1999) also remarks on the in-betweenness within himself in the poem Race Relations and states that “one half of me lost a war the other half won” (p.30).

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2. Yucai Duan (段玉裁 1735–1815) in his book Shuowen Jiezi Zhu说文解字 注 (1808) describes Hsi 兮 as a ripple in the river of poetry which indicates to the readers to have a pause before continuing reading. 3. The concept of ‘liminality’ was introduced within a cultural anthropology context in Arnold Van Gennep’s seminal work, Les rites de passage (Rites of Passage in English); Victor Turner drew on Van Gennep’s concept of liminality to help articulate his own theory of liminality in the late 1960s. 4. In The Ritual Process: Structure and Antistructure, Turner (1969) defines liminality as “neither here nor there” and “betwixt and between the positions” (p. 95). Turner (1969) argues that although this kind of dark and fruitful liminal space is structurally invisible, therein lies a realm of pure possibility. 5. Homi Bhabha (1994) develops the concept of third space within postcolonial theory, and provides discussable points regarding identity issues. In-betweenness resides in Bhabha’s concept of the third space through the transformational value of the ongoing changes of hybridity which “are neither the one nor the other but something else besides” (Bhabha 1994, p. 28). 6. Bhabha’s idea of hybridisation is the concept of the emergence of new culture forms from multiculturalism and he suggests that in the inbetweenness of third space, hybridity “enables other positions to emerge” (Bhabha 1994, p. 211). 7. In Chinese, ‘crisis’ is 危機. The first character signifies danger, and the second character is a part of the Chinese word for ‘opportunity’ 機會.

References Adams, T. E., Holman Jones, S., & Ellis, C. (2015). Autoethnography. Oxford University Press. Barad, K. M. (2003). Posthuman performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831. https://doi.org/10.1086/345321 Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge. Bhabha, H. K. (1997). The world and the home. In A. McClintock, A. Mufti, & E. Shohat (Eds.), Dangerous liaisons: Gender, nation, & postcolonial perspectives (pp. 445–455). University of Minnesota Press. Capous-Desylass, M., & Morgaine, K. (2018). What brought us here. In M. Capous-Desylass & K. Morgaine (Eds.), Creating social change through creativity: Anti-oppressive arts-based research methodologies (pp. vii–xix). Springer Nature. Colquhoun, G. (1999). The art of walking upright. Steele Roberts.

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Di, Z. (2016). Study of the unity of heaven and human in Chinese Guqin art 中国 古琴艺术的“天人合一”自然观研究 (Doctoral thesis). Shan Dong University. Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of the mind. Yale University Press. Eisner, E. W. (2008). Persistent tensions in arts-based research. In M. Cahnmanne-Taylor & R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Arts-based research in education: Foundations for practice (pp. 16–27). Routledge. Ellis, C. (2007). Telling secrets, revealing lives: Relational ethics in research with intimate others. Qualitative Inquiry, 13, 3–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1077800406294947 Green, D. (2016). Quake destruction/arts creation: arts therapy & the Canterbury earthquakes (Doctoral dissertation). The University of Auckland. E-theses University of Auckland. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/28871 Greene, M. (1980). Aesthetics and the experience of the arts: Towards transformations. The High School Journal, 63(8), 316–322. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/40365004 Holman Jones, S. (2016). Living bodies of thought: The ‘critical’ in critical autoethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 22(4), 228–237. https://doi.org/10. 1177/1077800415622509 Hsu, W. Y. (1978). The Ku-Ch’in. Wen Ying Studios. Irwin, R. L., & Springgay, S. (2008). A/r/tography as practic-based research In M. Cahnmann-Taylor & R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Arts-based research in education (pp. 103–124). Routledge. Irwin, R. L. (2014). Turning to a/r/tography. KOSEA Journal of Research in Art Education, 15(1), 1–40. Jin, Y. (1987). On Dao 论道. Shangwu Yinshuguan 商务印书馆. Kalua, F. (2009). Homi Bhabha’s third space and African identity. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 21(1), 23–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/136968 10902986417 Kissil, K., Niño, A., & Davey, M. (2013). Doing therapy in a foreign land: When the therapist is “not from here.” The American Journal of Family Therapy, 41(2), 134–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/01926187.2011.641441 Laozi. (1972). Tao Te Ching. Vintage Books. Leavy, P. (2009). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Publications. LeBlanc, N., & Irwin, R. L. (2019). A/r/tography. Oxford Researc Encyclopedia of Education. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.393 Lee, Y. Y. (1992). The image of culture. Asian-Culture. Li, C. (2008). The ideal of harmony in ancient Chinese and Greek philosophy. Dao, 7 (1), 81–98. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-008-9043-3 Li, Cunshan. (2015). An outline of Chinese traditional philosophy. Paths International Ltd.

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Liang, S., Covlin, A., & Yuan, J. (2001). The cultures of the east and west and their philosophies. Dao, 1, 107–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02857466 Littlejohn, R. L. (2016). Chinese philosophy: An introduction. I.B. Tauris. Lu, J. (2019). Guqin. Songbo Publisher. Phillips, J. (2015). The New Zealanders. http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/the-newzealanders/print Schultz, C. Z., & Legg, E. (2020). A/r/tography: At the intersection of art, leisure and science. Leisure Sciences, 42(2), 243–2522. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01490400.2018.1553123 Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books. Springgay, S., Irwin, R. L., & Kind, S. W. (2005). A/r/tography as living inquiry through art and text. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(6), 897–912. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1077800405280696 Tan, L., & Lu, M. (2018). I wish to be wordless: Philosophizing through the Chinese Guqin. Philosophy of Music Education Review, 26(2), 139–154. https://doi.org/10.2979/philmusieducrevi.26.2.03 Tillmann-Healy, L. (2003). Friendship as method. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(5), 729–749. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800403254894 Triggs, V., & Irwin, R. L. (2019). Pedagogy and the A/r/tographic invitation. The International Encyclopedia of Art and Design Education. https://doi. org/10.1002/9781118978061.ead028 Turner, V. W. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and antistructure. Aldine Pub. Co. Turner, V. W. (1992). Blazing the trail: Way marks in the exploration of symbols. The University of Arizona Press. Wang, H. (2004). The call from the stranger on a journey home. Peter Lang Publishing. Wang, R. R. (2005). Dong Zhongshu’s transformation of yin-yang theory and contesting of gender identity. Philosophy East and West, 55(2), 209–232. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4487951 Wang, R. R. (2015). Yinyang narrative of reality: Chinese metaphysical thinking. In C. Y. Li & F. Perkins (Eds.), Chinese metaphysics and its problems (pp. 16– 32). Cambridge University Press. Wyatt, J., & Adams, T. E. (2014). On (writing) families: Autoethnographies of presence and absence, love and loss. Sense Publishers. Yang, G. (2005). Knowing, being, and wisdom: A comparative study. Dao, 5(1), 57–72. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02857004 Yang, Q. (2008). Possible inspiration offered by the yin-yang theory of the book of changes regarding the course of human culture in the twenty-first century. Contemporary Chinese Thought, 39(3), 23–38. https://doi.org/10. 2753/CSP1097-1467390302

CHAPTER 3

A Journey In-Between

Abstract In this chapter, through personal narrative, poetry, photography and painting, I document my experience of departing and arriving between my adopted culture and my root culture. Using my personal voice, I discuss my ethnic and national identity as a Chinese New Zealander through the lens of my displacement experiences. Through my stories of preparing for departure, departing my adopted land, walking in my homeland and departing my homeland/arriving in my adopted land, I immerse myself creatively in the journey and explore my intra-action with the impact from this trip on myself as an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist. This chapter establishes the core concept of the harmonic relationships within the in-betweenness of my identity formation process. Keywords Ethnic identity · National identity · Homeland · Adopted land · Displacement

Preparing for Departing/Arriving At the beginning of this arts-based research journey, I decided to go back to my homeland for a visit. This decision came with no clear plan for what I might find for this study of the in-betweenness between my two © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. Wang, Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32527-4_3

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cultures. My intuition told me that I needed to travel back to my root culture in order to connect with the different elements of this research into my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist. I was excited about the trip, but also a bit worried. I was not entirely sure of the purpose of this trip, but I believed reconnecting with my birth land would help me to immerse deeper into this cultural phenomenon of guqin-making as inquiry. I was indeed curious about how my root culture environment, walking on my homeland physically and intra-acting with the places/people/things in my homeland would enrich my understanding of the concept of in-betweenness in my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist (Rousell et al., 2020). My excitement about going back to my homeland was soon cooled by a new realisation: at the same time I am trying to find a sense of home in my adopted land, my hometown is becoming a more distant land to me. This realisation started with my visit to the Chinese Consulate for my travel visa application. As the Chinese government does not allow dualcitizenship, I could not retain Chinese citizenship when I became a New Zealand citizen, and I needed to have a visa to visit my family and friends in China. I waited in the Consulate’s visa office for my turn to hand in my documents for my travel visa application. The queues were very long. As I waited, I kept an eye on the call numbers above the service windows. A European man was waiting in the seat next to me. He also seemed bored from the long wait. At one point, he turned to me and asked: “Renewing your passport?” I answered: “No, I am applying for a visa.” He asked: “Why do you need a visa? Are you Chinese?” My immediate response was: “Yes, I am Chinese.” Then I paused, and added: “I am a New Zealander too.” His facial expression was interesting, and I could not read the meaning from it clearly. He changed the topic and excitedly told me his plans for his first trip to China. But I was not in the mood to listen. I could feel my face was a bit red. I knew it was coming from a moment of embarrassment—I am Chinese but I now need permission to go back to China. My New Zealand passport not only has the purpose of enabling me to travel between countries but also the utilitarian value of affirming my identity (Ching, 2018). I have encountered conflicts between nationality and ethnic identity for many years as a Chinese immigrant living in New

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Zealand. However, the Chinese government recognises only one nationality, which means legally I am not allowed to be multi-national as a Chinese immigrant under Chinese law.1 When I obtained New Zealand citizenship, my Chinese nationality was automatically taken away by my mother country. I wonder how I should answer the question: “Are you Chinese?”. Ethnically, I am Chinese, but by law, nationally, I can only be a New Zealander. The complexity of my ethnic and national identity as a Chinese New Zealander is also reflected in Chinese authorities’ views of Chinese who have settled overseas. In the Chinese Central Television’s Spring New Year galas, the hosts always greet overseas Chinese by calling them “sons and daughters of the Chinese nation”. Chinese officials increasingly include all people of Chinese descent regardless of their nationalities or having not lived in China for generations as “sons and daughters of the Chinese nation”. China claims loyalty of overseas Chinese and uses overseas Chinese around the world “as its own” for its own political purposes by “placing ethnicity above nationality” (Ching, 2018, pp. 229–230). Though Chinese officials call for loyalty from overseas Chinese, I have found my rights as an overseas Chinese to be very different from Chinese nationals. While planning my trip to China, I needed to make reservations for hotels in different cities. Having Chinese as my first language made this task easier because I could visit Chinese-language travel sites instead of the sites only for foreigners. I soon discovered that with a New Zealand passport, I could not book at any of the large number of hotels which only accept Chinese nationals. Many of these hotels, which often have better prices and better rooms, require visitors to have a mainland Chinese national identification card. Popular choices such as Airbnb/ homestay have also become difficult for me to book as they are required to report details of foreigners’ visits to local police, and many are not willing to go through that hassle. Following this discovery about the Airbnb situation, I found out that I would also be required to report to the local police station within 24 hours of my arrival and departure if I wanted to stay with family and friends. These policies make me feel I am not one of the “sons and daughters of the Chinese nation”, but a total outsider being controlled and watched. In this situation, my nationality is placed above my ethnicity. This complex reality regarding overseas Chinese’s ethnic and national identity is also reflected in the views of general mainland Chinese. At times I feel it is difficult to discuss many things with my friends and

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family members who are living in China. Once, I posted a picture of my hometown disappearing in heavy smog on my social media moments, with words expressing my sadness. One of my former school friends in China angrily commented under my post: “Go back to your foreign country! You don’t belong here”. As an overseas Chinese person, I not only do not have the right to book many hotels in China, but I also have no right to express my true feelings about my homeland. In this situation, my nationality is also placed above my ethnicity. Ironically, I have been told “Go back to your country!” by strangers several times in New Zealand. The tensions around overseas Chinese’s ethnic and national identity sometimes surface in mainstream New Zealanders’ views in everyday life. Occasionally, some people in New Zealand made me feel like an outsider in my adopted land in a nice way. One weekend, I went on a sailing experience with my family on Auckland’s Waitemat¯a Harbour. The captain of the sailing boat was a nice, older p¯ akeh¯ a 2 man. He was standing on the deck and greeting everyone. When he saw me, he asked: “Oh, where are you from?” With my p¯ akeh¯ a husband and my teenage mixed-blood children standing next to me, I answered with joy: “We are from West Auckland.” He continued his questioning: “But where are you really from?” I have been asked this question again and again: at conferences, on my street or at my work, and I have grown used to it. I answered: “I lived in Wellington for several years before coming to Auckland. Before that, I came from China.” The captain seemed not to hear the first half of my answer. He smiled and said: “China! Great! Which city exactly?” These days I am well prepared to answer these questions, which often come in exactly the same order. I answered: “A city called Hangzhou, about two hours’ drive from Shanghai.” I have to add Shanghai every time I answer this question. It seems most local New Zealanders only know two cities in China, Beijing and Shanghai. The captain continued this friendly conversation with me: “Oh, Shanghai. Have you seen the sea before?” I stood there for a moment with a confused look on my face, then answered politely: “Yes. I have seen the sea before.” With a lovely smile, the captain said loudly and proudly in front of my husband and children: “Welcome to New Zealand!” The sailing trip was wonderful, but I was not in the mood to enjoy it after this conversation. I was not sure if I had been too sensitive. It

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was just a warm greeting. But this warm greeting made me uncomfortable. It reminded me: “I am always an outsider in this adopted land”. My children were also confused about this greeting. During the conversation, the captain seemed not to see my children or my husband who were standing beside me. My children were born in New Zealand, and this is the only country they have ever lived in. If I am always an outsider of my adopted land in some people’s perception, how about my children? This nice captain reminded me that my ethnicity is always placed above my nationality in many New Zealanders’ minds. Where should I go back to then? New Zealand or China? When I was preparing for the trip to my homeland, I had an uncomfortable realisation: As an immigrant, living between my homeland and adopted land, I had become homeless!

Hsi兮 On top of my uneasy feeling of homelessness, while I was preparing for the trip to China I was also weighed down by a sense of worry. Besides my concerns about whether I would have substantial and meaningful findings for my guqin-making on the trip, I was also nervous about writing anything about my homeland, especially knowing my narrative was going to be published. This fear came from discoveries I had made about my motherland since I moved to New Zealand. I was born in China and educated there until my early adulthood. Since I was a little child in kindergarten, I was taught to treat my home country and the Chinese Communist Party as my ‘mother’. I learnt many children’s songs praising this ‘country/party mother’. On national days, I was always dressed in my best skirt to celebrate my mother country’s birthday. Before I moved out of my homeland, I had never had any doubtful thoughts about what I learnt about my mother country. When I moved to New Zealand, I was able to find many movies, documentaries, news stories and books about China’s recent history. Through these I learnt about many historical events which people are forbidden to talk about in my home country. My curiosity about my homeland’s ‘hidden’ secrets grew the more I learned. Goodall Jr (2005) relates narrative inheritance to a family’s toxic secrets. He explores the power of stories told by family which are constructed out of secrets, lies or distortions. Untold family stories and family secrets “take a powerful toll on relationships, disorient our identity,

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and disable our lives” (Imber-Black, 1998, p. 16). Each time I discovered a new untold secret of my mother country, I felt I had been “betrayed by the truth” (Goodall, 2005, p. 495). The trust I had towards my mother country since I was little was further shaken by each discovery. The first time I realised that what I had always been told was not entirely true, my previous understanding of my identity was crushed. Just as Goodall Jr’s (2005) own family secret changed his relationship with his father, knowing the untold stories of my mother country changed my view towards my mother country. In critical autoethnography, I not only write about the pride and admiration I feel towards my birth culture, but also the scars, bruises, tumours and pain I might forget or newly discover. Ellis (2007) focuses on the relational ethic in critical autoethnography research. She describes her concerns about autoethnographic writing— “My biggest fears in writing about my mother while she was alive include hurting her and the changing relational dynamics that might result” (2007, p. 18). This is similar to the fear I have regarding writing about my motherland from this trip. Goodall Jr (2005) calls families “miniculture”. He writes: “The downside of treating families as miniculture is that families, like cultures, actively brainwash their young” (p. 508). Since I was a little child in China, one of the most important subjects of my studies was politics. I was required to memorise all of the great sayings and quotations from Mao’s or Deng’s theoretical socialist views. I had to pass all the written exams on these quotations, and in these exams I needed to link my personal thoughts and understandings to communist thinking. I also remember that, when I was a young child, I could not listen to radio stations which came from outside mainland China. From my parents’ conversations, I learnt there was a criminal act called “listening to enemies’ stations”. This is similar to the way that people in mainland China today cannot use foreign apps such as Gmail, Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Using apps or software to bypass the country’s internet firewall and avoid being blocked is jokingly referred to by mainland Chinese as “getting over the wall”, which is an illegal act in China. I grew up in a miniculture created by my mother country, and this miniculture is still in place. Going back to my motherland so that I could write about my experience, I had to prepare to engage with this miniculture again. To slot into the miniculture during my trip back to my homeland, I needed to ‘be good’. From when I was a little child, ‘being good’ was related to a person’s relationship with the mother country and the

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communist party. In primary school, only obedient children with the highest achievements could be awarded red scarves which symbolised being a ‘communist successor’. In high school, we were required to join the Communist Youth League. As members of the Communist Youth League, we regularly needed to learn the newest communist and socialist concepts from our great country leaders. At university, top students were ‘encouraged’ to join the Communist Party which would increase the chances of gaining a scholarship. From a very young age, I was educated to be an obedient follower for my mother country/party. All such miniculture messaging I learnt from my childhood has been deeply engraved in my identity as a Chinese immigrant. Every family develops its own rules to maintain its secrets and unwanted or unpermitted disclosures of family business are like boundary turbulence (Petronio, 2002). I was bound by the family rules of my mother country from my childhood into early adulthood. To this day I still feel the aftereffects of living under these family rules. Preparing for my trip to China, I was worried about the boundary turbulence I could create as a critical autoethnographer. I realised that I would be writing critical autoethnography which would be published and I had no power to take it back once it was made public. Given the importance of ethical considerations in critical autoethnography, it is also critical to take political considerations seriously. I was afraid to write any text about my trip back to my motherland.

Hsi兮 But I could make arts. Arts-making offered an alternative tool for me to record, express and process my personal views or political opinions about my motherland. Through arts-making, I could explore the power of discovering ‘family secrets’ with political considerations in mind for my critical autoethnography journey. Through poetic language, metaphorical language and visual language, I could express my feelings about the trip honestly, metaphorically, safely and also meaningfully. As a creative arts therapist, I work with many clients who have developmental traumas and are anxious to discover their ‘family secrets’. Through arts, they explore their honest feelings, painful memories and powerful insights in movements, metaphors, colours, lines, shapes or rhythms. Through our creative process, my clients do not tell me the details of their ‘family secrets’, but I can communicate well with them through creative

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language, and support them to process these ‘family secrets’, and to grow in the process. With arts-making, on this trip back to my motherland, I could use a creative process to deal with my ‘family secrets’ and grow beyond the miniculture. With this idea in mind, I prepared a small stack of postcard-size paper sheets and a watercolour sketch kit instead of my computer for my trip. I wanted to record postcard snapshots of my trip as travel souvenirs or a travel journal to capture my experience of going back to my homeland. I did not have a rigid plan for my trip to China, but I had a role as a bricoleur, and I was conscious of the self of the stories I wanted to create for developing this research into moving between cultures (Fitzpatrick, 2017). In the process of recording my trip through arts-making, I needed to keep in mind my research topic and aims while I immersed in being present and active in order to observe my embodied experience, evoked memories, vivid feelings and emotions from walking in my homeland again (Chang, 2013; Fitzpatrick, 2017). I needed to be prepared with my artistic skill and research knowledge and to be aware of what might come to me along this journey. Settling on the idea of making arts for my travel made me more relaxed, so I was more in a travel mood when it came to packing my luggage. I needed to get prepared for this long-distance voyage but what should I take with me? When I told a friend who travels often between New Zealand and China about my trip, she suggested I buy some fashionable new clothes. I wanted to travel light. When I travel, I often dress in active-wear for comfort. I replied that I have enough travel clothes for the trip. My friend said: “If you plan to visit your friends and family in China, you should wear more presentable and fashionable clothes. Otherwise, you might be looked down on … even in restaurants by waiters. You can’t be too Kiwi in China”. I opened my notebook and wrote down under my to-take list: some presentable clothes. Then, my mother had a serious conversation with me about gifts. She said it was our Chinese tradition to bring gifts to friends and family when visiting. I said I had thought about getting some little things from a local market. I love hand-made crafts and I thought it would be a good idea to share what I love. My mother shook her head: “No, no, no. Your gifts can’t be too little. Otherwise, you might be looked down on and make your friends disappointed. You should get more New Zealand health and make-up products. They are more popular in China”. She passed me a list of names of my relatives in China: “And these ones. You need to

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prepare something for them too”. I looked at the names. Some of them I did not really know that well—like a cousin’s parents-in-law, or cousin’s cousins. But I knew it was important for my mother to ‘have face’ (有臉 面). I opened my notebook and wrote down: gifts for everyone. While preparing my luggage, I had already encountered conflicts between the two cultures. What I should take in my luggage seemed to have come down to how I saw my identity—was I a New Zealand traveller or a Chinese returner? My luggage had become a site where my root culture and adopted culture clashed. With these lists, preparing my travel luggage had become exhausting and stressful. In my bedroom, I straightened my back from my stooped position and looked out the window. It was a sunny winter day. I love the warm sun in the cold depths of winter. It makes everything so hopeful. The view outside my window was beautiful—golden and light greencoloured tree tops. Looking at the relaxing view, I realised I did not want to travel anywhere. I wanted to see my hometown again, but I was so attached to this home too. I wanted to go back to my other home, but I did not want to leave this home. At that moment, my sadness was not from feeling homeless, but about the distance between my two homes. Looking at the sky, I imagined if I was a bird, how far I would fly to get back to my other home. I wished I was a migratory bird so I could fly freely between my two homes—without fear and political consideration, without visa, luggage, fashionable clothes and gifts. I just wanted to move freely in the in-betweenness between my two cultures (Image 3.1).

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Image 3.1 Home far away (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Watercolour on paper)

Hsi兮 Departing/Arriving in Two Lands On the plane from New Zealand to China, I was anxious. It was a twelvehour flight—twelve hours not touching the ground. With my eyes closed, every movement of the plane became so noticeable. With my eyes closed, in the darkness, I saw another dark space in my mind. I had recently been to an exhibition about immigration at Auckland Maritime Museum. In the exhibition The Immigrants (2019), there was a replica of the cabin of one of the original wooden ships in which early immigrants travelled from their hometown to their unknown land—New Zealand. The replicated ship cabin moved as if floating on the sea. When it moved, it made a horrible creaking sound from the wood. The oily smell of the timber gave me a headache. I could not imagine the smell mixing with rotten food, people’s sweat and vomit. However, it was normal for early Chinese

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settlers to travel in this kind of dark, terrifying and disgusting space for several months from China to New Zealand, several not grounded months. What made those early Chinese settlers endure the fear and distress in these dark and smelly cabins to travel to a strange, distant land? New Zealand was ‘New Golden Mountain’ for these Chinese settlers but not a place to call home. The first group of Chinese migrants, mainly from south China, were forced out of China to go gold-seeking because of the breakdown in economic infrastructure and governance resulting from the First Opium War (1839–1842) (Ng, 2003). The majority of Chinese sojourners who came to New Zealand during the goldrush period intended to save enough from their earnings to take back to China to enable a better quality of life. In Ng’s study (2003) the numbers of Chinese gold-seekers’ deaths in New Zealand indicated most Chinese gold-seekers in New Zealand returned home during their lifetimes. The majority of Chinese sojourners who died in New Zealand also were exhumed in order for their bodies to be sent back to their ancestral land— the SS Ventnor which sank off the Hokianga Heads in 1902 was carrying the remains of over 500 Chinese sojourners (Ng, 2003). Through these numbers, it is possible to infer that early Chinese sojourners did not connect with New Zealand as their home because they were more willing to go back to China, whether alive or dead. But, why did I leave my home country in the first place? Would I be willing to go back to China, especially after this visit? In between my homeland and adopted land, in the plane, I had many questions about this trip in my mind. I not only had questions about this trip to my hometown, but also a task I had given myself to prepare for my guqin-making journey. I wanted to find an object for my guqin-making—something that would represent my home, my culture and my roots. I imagined that I could put this found object onto my guqin to honour our homeland. I did not know what it would be, in the same way I did not know what answers I might find during this visit. With my eyes closed in the plane, in the darkness, I could not visualise my home in China. I had been away from my hometown too long. My last visit was almost ten years previously. Hearing the loud engine sound of the plane and feeling the rough, shuddering movements of the aircraft, I was growing more and more anxious. I did not have a physical home in China anymore. I did not have a house or apartment in China. I did not have a bank account or any money in China. I did not even have local legal identification anymore. What were the physical links between me and

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my hometown? Becoming more and more anxious, with my eyes closed, I tried to visualise my comfort places. The first image was the view from my bedroom window in the house I had lived in for more than ten years in West Auckland, New Zealand. Then, I heard my children’s laughter from the playhouse we built in our garden. On the plane from New Zealand to China, was I going home or leaving home? Inside the plane, my body and my mind were floating and drifting in the air, between departing and arriving (Image 3.2).

Image 3.2 Migratory bird (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper)

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“Where is my home?” The migratory bird cried “The warming south land with spring flowers I miss you, but are you my land?”

No answer in the wind The coldness piercing the wings Flapping harder and harder In between

“Where is my home?” The migratory bird cried “The buzzing north land with busy birds I miss you, but are you my land?”

No answer in the rain The wetness weighing on the wings Flapping harder and harder In between Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2019

In the shuddering airplane, feeling the weight in my heart, I was drawing closer and closer to China. I opened my entertainment screen’s digital flight map again and again to see how close I was to my home country. Finally, through the plane window, I could see the city, the buildings, the rivers and the mountains. The plane prepared for landing. The engine was louder and the turbulence was more violent. I looked out the window with my heart pumping fast. The objects, buildings, rivers and mountains became closer and closer. Through the low clouds, I saw the land under grey-tinted air (Image 3.3).

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Image 3.3 A distant dream (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper)

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It is like a distant dream I was born in this land Growing, standing, walking and running on the land

It is a distant dream I am looking at this land through the grey clouds I could be these little dots Living in these cubes

I am in this dream Looking at myself from outside of myself Disorientated Confused Puzzled

A loud sound Is waking me The ferocious monster shaking me up

Myself like a soul Out of my control Jumping back to my old body Bam… With a loud sound I wake up In my old body As one of these little dots Living in these cubes

In my old body I do not feel fear Only with emotional tears I hold myself in my old body

Trembling in my old body I start crying Finally, and physically

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I can smell again my favourite flowers I can taste again the foods I craved in my childhood I can touch again my grandmother’s wrinkled skin I can hear again the love in people’s whispers Everything I missed in my distant dream Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2019

When the plane touched the land, I realised that all my anxiety was unnecessary. My mind, body and soul missed this place. However long I had been away, I missed my homeland. At that moment, the worries about my questions and my task for this trip faded away. I knew I was back! Hsi兮 兮

A Poem for Finding a Stone Here is a poem for finding a stone A stone I dream to own

Under the grey air And a pair of dragon eyes I search and re-search With care and fear

With no directions in my mind Without a map and a guide I find myself lost in the journey to find a stone A stone I dreamed to own I don’t know where to find it No idea of the colour or shape But I am afraid Without my stone My guqin will not sing my mother’s tune With hope I arrive in a big place

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The biggest place in the world Lost in the centre ground Lost in the people’s pushing around I raise my head The pair of dragon eyes follow me everywhere I search and re-search With care and fear Hiding myself in the grey and dusty air The lights looked especially grand In the day and night Through the thick dusty air The city is pretty like a wonderland Many people are wandering around Some without facial expression Some with overwhelming passion I walk through them Follow them

See Image 3.4.

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Image 3.4 Grand night (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper)

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They hide themselves in cubes With little windows full of metal bars They say they are safe and comfortable in these cubicles but they don’t have their stones They ask me why I need to look for mine I say: “everyone has a stone And everyone should find it” They laugh at my innocence And tell me their advice: “no one wants a stone now Everyone just wants a diamond” I leave them behind Listen to the sound of them endlessly working in these cubicles Looking for a diamond which they dream to own They work continuously Day and night To provide the grand light To light up the enormous concrete forests Shining through the thick grey air Day and night

See Image 3.5.

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Image 3.5 Cubicles (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper)

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Here is a poem for finding a stone A stone I dream to own I don’t know where to find it No idea of the colour or shape But I am afraid Without my stone My guqin will not sing my mother’s tune I go to another place to try my luck I am excited soon after arriving at the beautiful site Fewer people jostling my back Fewer roads to tempt me off the track There are so many ancient stories about it I must find my stone with little effort

See Image 3.6.

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Image 3.6 River (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph)

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Immersing in the beautiful themes Listening to the song from the river waves I am seemingly forgetting the air and eyes To sing and feel with my closed eyes The autumn breeze is singing the old tune But soon, I notice Many people follow me With smiles on their faces They are looking for their diamonds With my purchase They are closer to their dreams “Come and buy You are a stranger to us And you don’t know the price”

Looking at their strange smiles I walk away with sadness I am a stranger to them Although we might once have had the same stones I lost my stone They lost theirs An old lady stands on the stone path She is interested in talking to strangers She asks me: “Where are you from, little miss” I answer: “A place under long white clouds” She smiles: “I remember long white clouds Once were above my house” She points to the door of her house “Here is my half house Once full of laughter These words on the door are my dreams”

See Image 3.7.

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Image 3.7 Door of half house3 (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Watercolour on paper)

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With sparks in her eyes “I was born in this house Married and had babies My half house was gone With my lifetime of memories” I ask her with curiosity “Where is the other half house?” She raises her head Looking at the pair of dragon eyes With care and fear Hiding her sadness in the grey and thick dusty air After seeing the lady’s dark but sad eyes I no longer enjoy the scenery Thinking of all the tragedies Walking through these enormous fake antiques How many treasured memories Disappeared under giant building sites My stone maybe was also lost In the process of it The process of finding diamonds

See Image 3.8.

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Image 3.8 Antique-looking (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper)

I look at the beauty But my heart is empty Walking through room by room In these antique-looking Huge gold-digging machines I read stories on the walls About how much people look forward To the bright future ahead No one mentions The stones and those memories

See Image 3.9.

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Image 3.9 Antique-looking room (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph)

There are diligent details On the beams of these rooms I thought about the instrument I am making The timber of my guqin is also from an old building Just like the old lady’s half house In my heart I am praying “Please, please Let my piece of timber be full of good memories Rather than someone’s tears and sadness”

See Image 3.10.

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Image 3.10 Antique beam (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph)

Walking along the river I find a guqin workshop Many old beams are standing beside the door next to the street Every one of them has a price tag on it The owner walks toward me with a grin on his face Shows me the greatness of these old timbers He says: “I make fine instruments But what is your budget, little miss? The higher price you can pay The older timber you can take away” Looking at the beautiful details of these beams Every one of them wants to tell me Their good memories tears and sadness

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No, no, no My guqin These beautiful instruments Have also become the tool for finding diamonds

See Image 3.11.

Image 3.11 Antique timber (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph)

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I walk away from these old beams My mind is trying to silence their cries and complaints Suddenly I hear a comforting voice A guqin singing From a little window buried in the alley’s deep sides I follow the voice to wooden stairs In a small room at the top A gentle young lady is playing my favourite tune A song about a full moon night wrapped in quietness

See Image 3.12.

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Image 3.12 Stairs to guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph)

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The little room is full of all kinds of inkstones. And beautiful instruments hanging on the walls The lady has gorgeous dimples on her face She does not talk about price But offers me a cup of tea and a plate of sunflower seeds Telling me the stories about her stones in a tender voice She says: “Some have forgotten the value of their stones, But I find my peace in my music and inkstones” I look at her and wait for her advice “I don’t know where to find my stone No idea of the colour or shape But I am afraid Without my stone My instrument will not sing my mother’s tune” She does not offer her answers But guides me to sit in front of one of her instruments

See Image 3.13.

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Image 3.13 Guqin & inkstone house (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph)

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I hear the song flowing out of my heart I remember the countless lonely nights The shining moon is above the adopted land Always comforting my homesickness I start playing my favourite tunes A song about a full moon night wrapped in quietness Outside this little wooden window Above the peaceful river The bright moon has found my tears on my face

See Image 3.14.

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Image 3.14 Playing guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph)

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I finally arrive in my home city I was born and grew up in her beauty I remember all her loveliness and tenderness But standing in front of her I have lost my words Where is my beautiful mother? Through the grey and thick dusty air I see her pale and emotionless face Seeing her again after all these years My heart cannot feel the joy But is full of grief and sadness For my beautiful hometown She is not the same as in my childhood memories

I raise my head The pair of dragon eyes are sneakily following me around I search and re-search With care and fear Hiding myself in the grey and thick dusty air

See Image 3.15.

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Image 3.15 West Lake (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper) I remember the most beautiful scenic themes The central lake in my home city is full of lotus With luscious green and pink colours In my dreams I have painted these flowers Again and again with great homesickness On countless nights I woke up with lonesomeness And tears flowing down my face In this autumn I am standing in reality Looking at the withered lotus leaves I realise I have found the part of my missing stone I thought I could find what I have missed the most these many years But it has disappeared with the past without any trace I cannot take this part of my stone with me It has weathered into sand Leaking through my hands and fingertips

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I left my homeland in my life’s spring Now I am back in my life’s autumn The flower season has gone I have missed this beautiful blooming season I have to remember to appreciate the little greenness that remains Rather than burying myself in grief and sadness I have to learn To enjoy the loveliness of autumn’s tints To let this part of my stone go Although it was so precious

See Image 3.16.

Image 3.16 Lotus (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper)

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With sadness and hope I look for the stone bridge near my old house Where I was born and grew into my youth years I dreamed about the stone bridge so many times In the times I was struggling in my adopted land I miss it so much As if it is the solid anchor in my childhood memories I hope my remaining stone is under it I find a green sign pointing to the ancient bridge made of stone The bridge is still above that river with little change But a massive concrete forest has covered it Standing on the stone bridge I barely recognise it I used to cross the bridge twice a day for school On that bridge as a young girl I watched the birds singing and boats floating I waited for my grandfather to finish his tea meeting

See Image 3.17.

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Image 3.17 Bridge in my dream (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2016, Chinese ink on paper)

Now standing on that bridge I raise my head I see the pair of dragon eyes’ cautious gaze I cover my mouth and nose Struggling to breathe in the grey dusty air And the pungent smell from the dark river Which has no sign of life in it My grandfather’s teahouse has long gone As well as my old house I touch the engraved familiar name of the stone railing With a troubled and sorrowful heart People have buried a part of my stone in the concrete forest In the process of finding diamonds The bridge is at the same location but in a different place I am standing on the same bridge but as a different me Looking at the concrete forest With great sadness and unwillingness I farewell this part of my stone

See Image 3.18.

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Image 3.18 The stone bridge (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph)

With sadness and hope I visit my ancestors’ graves The cemetery is overpopulated after so many years Just like the city centre that’s still within my sight It is difficult to find my ancestor’s tombstone Just like being lost in the city’s ever-changing streets I remember following my parents in this cemetery In every spring Ching Ming 4 Festival With food and flowers in their hands Now just me With food and flowers in my hands Calling my ancestors in my heart

See Image 3.19.

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Image 3.19 Tombstone (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph)

The tombstone has aged and weathered The tree next to the tombstone is still there Only taller and stronger It has accompanied my ancestors for so many years in peace Standing in front of my ancestors I have aged and weathered With all the stories in my adopted land I sit down beside their graves As if I was sitting beside my ancestors like in the old times Can they hear my stories? Can they see my tears? Can they forgive that I left the land where they have lived? I talk to them silently in my heart Hope for answers which will never come

See Image 3.20.

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Image 3.20 Grieving (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper)

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My ancestors They are parts of my stone Deeply permeated into the soil underneath I cannot take every capillary of my roots They grow into the earth intensely under my knees With my ancestors’ flesh and blood over generations I am mourning and mourning Grieving the parts of my stone I have to unwillingly leave behind

With sadness and hope I visit my school in my hometown Where I cried and laughed Hoped and was disappointed The school has become a deluxe edition Compared to the humble buildings of the past Alongside my two old school friends I feel like I have walked through a time machine in seconds Many old buildings have been demolished in the past few years The abandoned dining hall is waiting for the next round

Standing in front of the old dining hall My friends and I remember earlier times My friends speak with wistful expressions “In this hall, we had nothing but dreams and hopes Now we have a lot of things but no dreams We have to bury ourselves and our kids in the huge waves Which push us to find diamonds”

Standing in front of the old dining hall We have endless things to talk about from the old eras The embarrassing moments The hard exams The emotional tears The memorable secrets The disappointing regrets Just before departure with my friends I realise They are also parts of my stone Permanently engraved in my heart

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But I cannot take them with me Like other parts of my stone With sadness and hope I visit my grandmother She still has her gentle smile and short silver hair Wearing floral clothes and without many teeth She sometimes cannot remember me now But she still remembers the singing from her childhood She used to sing that song to settle me on many nights When I was crying for comfort My childhood memory was full of her calm voice My mother’s tune was from her soft singing on those nights I hold my grandmother’s hands to feel her Her wrinkled skin is soft and thin It reminds me I cannot hold her forever She will fade with the wind, rain or clouds Like other parts of my stone Sinking into the soil of my homeland underneath I say goodbye With great sadness and unwillingness Leaving another part of my stone behind

See Image 3.21.

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Image 3.21 Grandmother5 (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2017, Oil on board)

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Here is a poem for finding a stone A stone I dream to own I don’t know where to find it No idea of the colour or shape But I am afraid Without my stone My guqin will not sing my mother’s tune

I raise my head The pair of dragon eyes are tirelessly following me around I search and re-search With care and fear Hiding myself in the grey and thick dusty air Near the end of my journey for finding my stone I still do not have it in my hand With great wretchedness I am wandering around without purpose In mountains I hear the wind It tells me to follow it I follow the wind through the bamboo forest Hear its singing resonating with the stone path Further and further Away from the city’s busyness The Nanping 6 evening bell is nearer and nearer As well as the Guihua’s 7 familiar fragrance Under the temple’s roof lines The green banana leaves are just in season Dancing in the autumn drizzle With the shape I always dream of on my lonely nights In these dreams in my adopted land The banana leaf 8 cries with me “Where are you from and Where are you going?” I ask the leaf The banana leaf says

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“I am going back to where I am from Becoming soil embracing the roots” In these dreams, I cry “Where is my soil and where are my roots?” Under the temple’s roof lines The green banana leaves are just in season Dancing in the autumn drizzle With the shape of the instrument I am making Behind the rockery garden I touch the rock with my eyes closed I hear my grandmother’s singing I hear my friends’ laughter I hear my grandfather’s voice over the bridge I smell the fragrance from blooming lotus I smell the sweetness from Guihua flowers I smell the aroma from green tea fields I saw myself as a child playing between the rockeries I saw myself as a young girl running on the white dyke I saw the lake under blue sky and white clouds Behind the rockery garden I touch the rock with my eyes closed I am mourning and mourning The parts of my treasured stone I have to leave behind

See Image 3.22.

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Image 3.22 Banana leaf in my dream (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2016, Ink on paper)

Under the temple roof lines Under the banana leaves There is a monk Sitting as still as a stone The wind quiets The drizzle disappears The noise from the far away city fades The wave of pushing people weakens A monk sits as still as a stone Reading his comforting words from old wisdoms I suddenly can see a solid stone in him Whenever and wherever He has his stone In his heart No one can take it Nothing can fade He is with his stone always

See Image 3.23.

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Image 3.23 A monk (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Digitally edited photograph)

Under the temple roof lines Under the banana leaves In this temple There is a story about another monk The monk Xinyue 9 from almost 400 years ago He left his homeland for an adopted land With his artistic talent through art and music Introduced the great history and culture To the people in the adopted culture Over many years in the foreign land He wrote and played his music To grieve what he had lost To remember what he had to leave behind To form a solid stone in his heart

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A stone could be his anchor To anchor his roots in the foreign land To anchor his cultures to the foreign people To anchor his destiny as an immigrant He passed away in his adopted land Never going back to the soil and land he loved and missed His name and his art were remembered By his homeland and his adopted land forever Here is a poem for finding a stone I have been looking around and around For a stone I dream to own It does not have a colour or a shape My ancient wisdom and philosophies Will help me to find it My guqin will help me to form it With this stone in my heart My instrument will sing my mother’s tune Whenever and wherever Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2019

See Image 3.24.

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Image 3.24 Stone (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang, 2019, Ink and watercolour on paper)

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Depart/Arrive---Another In-Betweenness On the last day of my China trip, my friend was driving me to the airport. Waiting in rush hour traffic in a Shanghai street, a dry and yellow Chinese parasol tree leaf fell on to the shiny front engine cover of his MercedesBenz SUV. My friend looked at it and, with a hint of sadness, he said: “The autumn leaf is falling, and you are leaving too.” I asked him: “Do you know where the leaf is going?” “Where?” He asked. “It is going home. 落葉歸根 (fallen leaves return to the roots) – to revert to one’s origin” I answered with an old Chinese saying. “But where is its home?” I put my hand on my chest, and answered with another old Chinese saying: “此心安處是吾家10 (Home is where the heart settles)”. Looking at my friend, I said in a firm voice: “I am not leaving but arriving.” Walking in my homeland, I realised how ‘Kiwi’ I had become. In my hometown, I spoke my hometown’s dialect, and my appearance was the same as the locals. However, people often noticed I was different from them and, sometimes, when they sensed the difference, they treated me like an outsider. The taxi drivers sometimes chose the longer route as they figured out that I did not know my directions well. In markets, the shop owners often charged me higher prices. In hotels, when I showed my New Zealand passport as my identification document, the front desk staff often gave me strange and unpleasant looks. This being ‘different’ feeling makes me uncomfortable in my hometown, but also makes me realise the Chineseness in me is relative rather than absolute. I am different everywhere—in my homeland and in my adopted land. In my adopted land, I have often been asked: “Where are you from?” Now, when I go back to my homeland, people in my hometown ask me: “Where are you from?” This not belonging anywhere feeling has become stronger after my China trip. In previous trips to my homeland, I have also experienced ‘reverse racism’. On these trips, with my p¯ akeh¯ a husband and my mixed-blood children beside me, I endured several unpleasant experiences. Most of the time, people would look at my family with indifference as if we were some kind of quizzical oddity, but occasionally, there were some upsetting verbal outbursts. Once when we were enjoying taking a walk beside West Lake in my hometown, two men pointed at my baby in our pushchair

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and said in Chinese: “Look at this mongrel 雜種!” In some local Chinese minds, marrying someone of another culture, having children within a mixed-race marriage or having a foreign passport might be an act of ‘betrayal’. Chinese immigrants going back to China are sometimes treated as a different race. In my adopted land, people try to figure out how Chinese I am; In my homeland, people try to gauge how foreign I am. So where am I departing from, and where am I arriving?

Hsi兮 From this trip to my homeland, and through the poetic exploration of finding a stone, I have realised that the stone I am looking for is not physical. The connection I want to have with my root culture is also not necessarily something from my physical homeland. The stone I am looking for is a spiritual connection with my root culture. This spiritual homeland of mine is full of rich cultural knowledge and philosophical wisdom. Through arts-based inquiry, I hope to find this spiritual homeland inside me, in my heart and soul. I want to connect with this spiritual home, as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, regardless of whether I am in my homeland or in my adopted land. The word She De 捨得 is a valued term in ancient Chinese philosophy. Its meaning is that we have to give up something in order to gain something else. Through critical autoethnographic exploration, a/ r/tography and arts-based inquiry, this trip allowed me to understand more about what I really want to leave behind, what I have to give up and what I have gained as an immigrant. What I want to leave behind is the “dragon eyes”, “grey and dusty air” and the “push for finding diamonds”. As an immigrant, I made a choice to try to have a better life by leaving what I do not want behind, but this choice also comes with a price. Moving from one culture to another culture, I have to tolerate the pain from the process of pruning my own roots. Leaving behind some parts of my old identity is a necessary step in moving from my homeland to my adopted land. I have to give up something in order to gain something else. The balanced, harmonious state of being within this inbetweenness will take shape in the process of giving up 捨and gaining 得. I compare the concept of harmony 和 with immigrants’ identity formation process. Immigrants have contradictory cultures within themselves. According to the in-betweenness concept in the traditional Chinese philosophical theory of harmony, the immigrant identity formation process

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is stimulated by the movement between the contradictory aspects of different cultures. The contradiction leads to struggles and conflicts. To resolve these conflicts within the immigrant identity formation process requires an attempt to reach a state of harmony between the two different cultures. Therefore, for immigrants, luo ye gui gen落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots) is not the action of returning to immigrants’ root culture but an active attempt to find a stable balance between the root culture and adopted culture within themselves. I did not find the stone I was searching for on my visit to my homeland, but I felt I had found a place to put it. With my hand on my chest, I felt the desire to fill the space I had found in my heart with the stone I wanted to form with my culture’s wisdom and philosophies. On the plane from China to New Zealand, the engine noise was as loud and annoying as always. I asked myself whether I was disappointed about not finding a physical object to add to my guqin. My heart was again full of anxiety, just as it was when I was on the plane from New Zealand to China. Reflecting on the experiences from my China trip however, I felt I had planted something in the in-between place in my heart—between my homeland and adopted land; between my root culture and adopted culture; between who I was and who I will become. With this seed in my heart, I became more settled in the in-between place of the plane journey between my two lands. Looking out the plane window, I saw the morning rays appearing on the horizon. My homeland was falling further and further behind me, but I felt the spiritual distance between my motherland and me was becoming less and less as my desire to learn from my root culture grew stronger and stronger. I was leaving my physical homeland, but I was preparing to arrive in my spiritual homeland. In my therapy practice, I often encounter Chinese immigrant clients who have regrets about their decision to migrate to New Zealand. They often suffer feelings of grief and loss over what they missed and had to leave behind in their motherland. They often say they could be richer or more comfortable if they did not come to New Zealand. They often cry for the people and things they could not take with them on their immigration journey. This She De 捨得 concept is truly relevant for helping me as well as other immigrants I encounter in my creative arts therapy practice. As immigrants, if we want to find the balance in our own multi-cultures, it is necessary to learn how to give up and how to gain. Being in balance or harmony with the constant process of giving up in order to gain is

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the way (dao 道) to live in the in-betweenness. I am, as a New Zealand Chinese immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, looking for a stone representing this balance or harmony which can fill my heart with solidness/ stability and allow me to share these qualities with others. Through my embodied experiences and memories evoked by my arts-making, amid the messy process of searching for a ‘stone’ from my trip to China through arts-based inquiry, I have found this empty space in between my homeland and adopted land, and this empty space is the new destination for the next phase of this arts-based research journey.

Notes 1. Before 1980, Chinese people’s nationality could only be removed by applying for approval from the PRC’s government. In 1980, the PRC’s Nationality Law was changed to state that any Chinese nationals who settled in another country and gained foreign nationality would automatically lose Chinese nationality (Chinese Nationality Law, Article 9). 2. P¯ akeh¯ a is a M¯aori term for New Zealanders primarily of European descent. 3. The English translation of the Chinese on the door of the half house is: Ensuring people live and work in peace and contentment; Promoting social fairness and justice. 4. The Ching Ming 清明 Festival is a traditional Chinese festival during which Chinese people visit their ancestors’ graves to pay their respects and to share their feelings of grief. 5. My grandmother passed away just two months after I wrote this poem of stone. She is now singing with the wind, rain and clouds in my homeland and my adopted land. 6. The Nanping evening bell 南屏晚钟 is one of the most famous traditional landmarks in my hometown. 7. Sweet Osmanthus (Guihua 桂花) is a very popular tree in Hangzhou because of its distinctive fragrance. 8. In Chinese history, the banana leaf 蕉葉 has significant symbolic meaning in art and literature where it expresses the emotions of sadness and nostalgia related to missing people or places. 9. Monk Xinyue 东皋心越禅师 (1639–1694) was born in Zhejiang. He was a poet, painter, calligrapher and musician. He lived in YongFu temple in Hangzhou where he practised his art and philosophy for many years. After moving to Japan in 1676, he introduced guqin music and Chinese art to Japan. He brought three guqin instruments to Japan and was the first person to introduce the guqin to Japanese people. One of his instruments is in Tokyo museum (Chen et al., 2006).

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10. From 《定风波·南海归赠王定国侍人寓娘》 : A famous quote from poet Su Shi (苏轼1037–1101) from the Song Dynasty in China.

References Chang, H. (2013). Individual and collaborative autoethnography as method: A social scientist’s perspective. In S. Holman Jones, T. Adams, & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (pp. 107–119). Sage. Chen, H., Chen, S., Zhang, J., & Xu, Q. (2006). Dong Gao Xin Yue Quan Ji 东皋心越全集. Zhejiang People’s Publisher 浙江人民出版社. Ching, F. (2018). Nationality vs ethnic identity: Attitudes toward passports by China, other national governments and a multiplicity of people in Hong Kong. Asian Education and Development Studies, 7 (2), 223–233. Ellis, C. (2007). Telling secrets, revealing lives: Relational ethics in research with intimate others. Qualitative Inquiry, 13, 3–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1077800406294947 Fitzpatrick, E. (2017). The Bricoleur researcher, serendipity and arts-based research. The Ethnographic Edge, 1(1), 61–73. https://doi.org/10.15663/ tee.v1i1.11 Goodall, H. L. (2005). Narrative inheritance: A nuclear family with toxic secrets. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(4), 492–513. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040 5276769 Imber-Black, E. (1998). The secret lives of families: Truth-telling, privacy, and reconciliation in a tell-all society. Bantam Books. Ng, J. (2003). Traces of the past: Archaeological insights into the New Zealand Chinese experience in southern New Zealand. In M. Ip (Ed.), Unfolding history, evolving identity: The Chinese in New Zealand (pp. 31–32). Auckland University Press. Petronio, S. (2002). Boundaries of privacy: The dialectics of disclosure. State University of New York Press. Rousell, D., Cutcher, A. L., Cook, P. J., & Irwin, R. L. (2020). Propositions for an environmental arts pedagogy: A/r/tographic experimentations with movement and materiality. In A. Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles et al. (Eds.), Research handbook on childhoodnature: Springer international handbooks of educations. Springer Nature. The Immigrants (2019). [Exhibition]. Auckland Maritime Museum. Auckland.

CHAPTER 4

A Stone In-Between

Abstract In this chapter, I weave the concepts of intra-action and entanglement into this arts-based inquiry. I explain how the concepts of intraaction and entanglement allow me to create an in-between space between my two cultures through the arts-making process. I then continue with reflections on walking at a beach in my adopted land and imagine a conversation with a metaphorical material—stones on the beach. I intraact with these metaphorical stones in order to further explore the concept of in-betweenness as it arises from moving between my two cultures, and connect the in-betweenness concept to identity development theories. Through these arts-making processes, I reflect on my displacement experience by linking the transformation of identity to the transformation of stone. Keywords Intra-action · Entanglement · Identity development · Data object · Identity formation

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. Wang, Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32527-4_4

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Intra-Action and Entanglement with Stone In this in-between place between my homeland and adopted land, I am departing but I am also arriving. It seems to me that this in-between place between my two cultures does not contain any solid ground and the inbetweenness is not a solid thing. Exploring through moving between my two cultures is not “things-in-themselves” but “things-in-phenomena” (Barad, 2007, p. 141). Arts-based inquiry enables me to enter this not solid in-betweenness through intra-acting and entangling with the solid matter within the arts-making process. Through arts-based inquiry, I am “meeting” my embodied memories, “being” my embodied experiences, as a way of intra-action and engaging embodied modes of questioning/ questing through which I seek to understand the in-betweenness between my two cultures (Barad, 2003, 2007, 2014; Irwin, 2014). Through an a/r/tographic lens I see things “as difference and as simultaneity” and I intra-act with things, matter, materials and nature in a new way (LeBlanc & Irwin, 2019, p. 13). In this arts-based research, the dynamic force of intra-action determines that all things both human and non-human are continually and constantly “changing, exchanging, and diffracting, blending, mutating, influencing, and working inseparably” (Barad, 2007, p. 141; Hickey-Moody, 2020, pp. 724–725). I value every moment of “meeting”, because “all real living is meeting and each meeting matters” (Barad, 2007, p. 353). During the trip back to China, I intra-acted with the people I met in my homeland such as people on the street, my old school friends, my grandmother and my ancestors. I also intra-acted with non-humans I encountered when I was walking in my homeland such as the old timber house beam, the stone bridge, the banana leaf and the rock. Through entanglement and intra-action, I discover a different perspective for paying attention to the process of arts-making and my embodied experiences/memories arising within/with the process. In this book, I am interested in how my embodiment through arts-making enables me to enter the in-betweenness between my two cultures and how I can gain knowledge through my body and senses when moving between my cultures as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist (O’Connor & Fitzpatrick, 2014). The Baradian terms of intra-action and entanglement are “performative understanding of discursive practices” to understand and “determine what is real” (Barad, 2003, p. 801). “Performative understanding of

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discursive practices” supports my understanding of the process of artsbased inquiry. The arts-making process does not produce ‘words’ and ‘things’, and they are not simple representations of the process of this arts-based research. Narratives, poems, images, music and crafts from this arts-based research are not the products of efforts to represent my experience, but are the “performativity” of “the excessive power granted” to document and “to determine what is real” (Barad, 2003, p. 801). The gaining of knowledge from exploring the in-betweenness between my two cultures is not about looking for the absolute truth as the truth is relative with different locations and times (Eagleton, 2004). This research, through arts-based inquiry, looks into my experience of moving between my two cultures, and my experiences are not separated from the world. I am searching for the research methods of knowing which enable me to look at what is ‘real’ from my identity formation process in different locations and times, and in the world. In this book, arts-based inquiry is used as intra-action, entanglement and as “ongoing performance of the world” (Barad, 2007, p. 149). Through arts-making, a/r/tography and my autoethnographic voice, I create a “living body of thought” and living inquiry from intra-acting both with human others and non-human others in this research journey of moving between cultures (Holman Jones, 2016; Springgay et al., 2005). Through arts-based inquiry, my embodiment, and embodied entanglements with others, both human and non-human, stay alive in my “living body of thought”. Arts-based inquiry allows me to experience “movingwith and moving-through” in-betweenness between my two cultures with my embodiments as “an entangled and enmeshed” being (Lasczik Cutcher, 2018, p. xxvi). Identities in my research, as moments of being, are unstable elements, but the dialogical performance within embodiment helps me to move towards dispossession (Cooperman, 2018). Embodiment in arts-based research is a valuable site for obtaining knowledge and understanding about the complexity and fluidity of the identity formation process. La Jevic and Springgay (2008) propose embodiment as the seventh rendering of a/r/tography and argue that embodiment is an “interconnection between consciousness and materiality” (p. 85). In this arts-based research, I use my embodiment within the arts-making process to engage, to observe and to reflect on the human others and non-human others in my research journey. Arts-making is a kind of ongoing open-ended

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entanglement. Through embodied entanglement, observation and reflection, the knowledge of this identity study is generated from the embodied experiences and embodied memories evoked by the entangling artsmaking process. The ‘I’ cannot be separated from the body, as my body is the site of storage of embodied memories. In the process of arts-making, the smell of the material, the texture of the surface, the sound of the music and colours of the paint reactivate those embodied memories. The notion of entanglement is that these entities, human or non-human, do not have a pre-existing state, but rather emerge from the process of intraaction (Barad, 2007). Being present with somatic reactions brings back the hidden past of embodied memories to fresh moments of being. Springgay et al. (2005) use the frayed edges, cuts, tears and openings in pieces of fabric as a metaphor for a/r/tography and depict a/r/ tography as a living inquiry process of “opening texts”, “seeking understanding by continuing to un/ravel” and “stitching back in response” allowing “knowledge to be split open, revealed and ruptured” (p. 905). In this chapter, stone as metaphoric material provides an in-between space for me to intra-act with my two cultures, and allows me to observe, touch, feel and play with stones as a new way of engaging with my two cultures. Moment by moment and piece by piece, I re-member the elements of my identity formation process by intra-acting with stones, and I re-member these elements from my embodied reflective responses to the stones. Stone as metaphoric material provides non-literal language enabling this arts-based inquiry to permeate boundaries between my cultures, between story and theory and between question and answer (Springgay et al., 2005). I hope the knowledge I am questing for will emerge in colour, in texture, in weight, in temperature and in poetic words from my intra-action and entanglement with the stones. In the previous chapter, I stay within the process of dynamic intraaction of my journey of finding a stone through arts-making and poetic exploration during the research trip to China. In this chapter, I continue the process of intra-acting with metaphorical stone in order to seek out the knowledge of identity. Stones provide the moments of “meeting” and “being”, and these moments are the continuous and consistent actions which allow me to engage with, entangle in and re-configure the research process for exploring moving between my cultures. The objects in this arts-based research project such as the tree, the stone and the guqin, are not things, but things for me to intra-act within in order to understand cultural phenomena. Through arts-based inquiry, by intra-acting

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and entangling with the metaphoric material of stone, stone becomes a “data object” for my research as “an organic, speaking subject” (Jones & Hoskins, 2016, p. 77). Therefore, stone in this chapter is not just a simple metaphor, it is also a data object inviting me to ask questions, to reflect and to interact, and allowing the space for encounters between me as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist and my readers’ entangling experiences (Springgay et al., 2005, p. 906).

Stone, Place and People After the China trip, the idea of looking for a stone was stuck in my mind. For me, the concept of having a heart of stone is different from what is implied in the Western expression. The Western view of stone is of insensibility, immovability and hardness, and to have a heart of stone is to lack emotions and passion (O’Connor et al., 2009, p. 181). However, I was looking for a stone which represented the harmonic state within myself as a New Zealand Chinese immigrant creative arts therapist. I was looking for the harmonic solidness/stability in my heart which would fill the in-between space between my home culture and adopted culture. This stone I was looking for would not be insensible and immovable but filled with my emotions and passions as an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist living in between my two cultures. The long weekend after arriving in New Zealand from my China trip, I visited Long Bay Beach in Auckland to go stone hunting. I had been living in Auckland by then for more than a decade. These beaches were familiar to me. These beaches were my family and my children’s backyard, playground, dining room and celebration venue. I had never really noticed the stones on these beaches until my recent revelation about my interest in stone after my trip to my homeland. But, as soon as I began to pay attention, I saw stones everywhere—all kinds of shapes, colours and textures. Wherever they have travelled from, they were together in this place with me. I imagined that I was one of them and I was settling into the soil of this adopted land with them. I imagined we were having a noisy conversation together (Image 4.1).

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Image 4.1 Stones (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

Hey, you Where are you from, yellow stone? Among white, brown and black stones, Are you comfortable being who you are? Do you wish to change your colour? Hey, you Where have you been, yellow stone? The marks on you are different Are you comfortable sharing your journey? Do you wish you had not experienced these stories? Hey, you Where are you going, yellow stone? Will it be your final place? Will all this company from different-coloured stones, And the conversation with me,

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Be your next chapter of being who you are? Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2019

In this poetic exploration, I use the metaphor of different colours of stones to explore the discomfort of sharing my stories from moving between my cultures. I see myself as a stone which travelled from my homeland and joined many other stones in this adopted land. I also see myself as a stone which can accompany different-coloured stones in this adopted land through my therapy practice. Tim Ingold argues (2011) that human existence is not “place-bounding” but “place-binding” through an inhabiting path or trail. He says: “Where inhabitants meet, trails are entwined, as the life of each becomes bound up with the other” (Ingold, 2011, p. 33). Immigrants are like these stones: travelling from different cultures, experiencing different displacement challenges, but we meet and are entwined through our immigrant journey and in this adopted land. Place-binding with this adopted land, we are bound up with the other— all colours, all cultures and all beliefs. Our displacement experiences are our trails which indicate where we are from and where we have been. Ingold visually depicts (2011) that places are like knots and meshwork; therefore, places contain the trails, knots and meshwork of our inhabitations. I argue that immigrants’ identity formation process is also a trail of “point-to-point collection of data” (Ingold, 2011, p. 41). Critical autoethnography through arts-based inquiry allows me to intra-act with cultures, communities and societies and to identify this “point-to-point collection of data” from entanglements with the world through creativity. As an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, these points enable me to see the patterns and to analyse the development of my identity formation process. With pieces of my stories and fragments of my identity/ ies, I aim to form the stone of harmonic solidness/stability in the void space between my root culture and adopted culture. Stone is like identity, in that it is not a fixed thing but a process formed by experiences and interactions (Johnson, 2013, p. 36). Stone as matter presents moments of a process which can be compared to the fragments from the process of moving between cultures. Throughout history, stone has been used by various cultures for the purpose of remembering, such as in the construction of monuments. For example, cairns (man-made stacks of stones) have been used as trail markers in many parts of the world since ancient times. Cairn stones are landmarks denoting travellers’ arrival and departure. Warne thinks (2017)

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that cairns are more than just marks, they are stories from those who have gone before. However, those unknown stories, as Warne (2017) points out, can be only imagined. Cairns are made by the people who cared for their followers, and their followers might place another stone on the structure, as well as add another line to the stories (Warne, 2017). In my opinion, a cairn is a point among many points of a person’s trail and movement. I liken the identity formation process to a person’s trail. The process of identity formation is one of movement. Investigating the identity formation process is comparable to building a cairn from a moment of awareness of the movement (Image 4.2).

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Image 4.2 Cairn (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Stone artwork on beach)

I lay a stone in my heart The first stone of the cairn I want to leave The cairn will stay balanced in the wind and weather Standing sturdily in the landscape I lay a stone in my heart As a tired but experienced traveller

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I have been through the wind and weather I might have found a way to go through I lay a stone in my heart To construct a trail marker For many later arrivals To continue their journey Of finding a new home Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2019

From the journey of finding a stone in China, to the moment of encountering stones on a New Zealand beach, I see the stone as a metaphor as well as a conversational object of research for this study of moving between cultures. During the China trip, I was able to find the empty space between my Chinese root culture and my adopted New Zealand culture. In the moment of making stone art on Long Bay Beach in New Zealand, through poetic exploration, I realised the purpose of finding the harmonic solidness/stability in my heart as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist. My identity research is not only the study of the moments of my identity formation process as an immigrant, a creative arts therapist and researcher, but also the building of trail markers for others who are on this kind of displacement journey; if I compare this book to a cairn, future travellers/immigrants can add their stones on to this cairn’s story lines.

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Hsi 兮

Identity as Stones After gathering stones on Long Bay Beach, I sat in front of my desk looking at them, touching them and playing with them. They were all different. The textures on the stones were all unique—none of them were the same. They all had different shapes—none of them were identical. They were weighted differently—and some of the smaller-sized stones were heavier than some of the bigger ones. They responded to my body temperature from my hand differently—some of them changed temperature faster than the others. I put them into small stacks together, like mini cairns on my desk. They came from diverse places with their experiences and stories. Together, they were trying to tell me something. Something about identities (Image 4.3). I link the concept of identity to stones through a metaphoric lens: linking ‘what is the stone made of’ to ‘who am I’. Stone in the natural world has three types, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic, according

Image 4.3 Balanced stones on my desk (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

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to how the stone is formed and structured (Raymond, 2002). Comparably, Sedikides and Brewer (2001) illustrate three levels of identity: individual, relational and collective. Through these levels of identity perspective, identity can be understood as the process of how the identity is formed, maintained or transformed over time (Schwartz et al., 2011). I can see the similarities between the formation of stone and formation of identity. Stone as a metaphoric material provides a visual and tangible platform for understanding identity theories. Igneous stone is formed by crystallisation of melted rocks, and the melting process is normally referred to as magma (Raymond, 2002, p. 2). It is like a pure infant who has just come out of the earth mother’s tummy. Igneous stone is young, pure and simple, and made of crystals, rock fragments and gases. My identity in my igneous stone stage is influenced by my birth—the place I was born, and the DNA in the cells of my body. An individual’s personal identity in this stage is conceptualised by self-definition (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). In my igneous stage, I understand my identity from simple facts—Chinese, black hair, yellow skin, etc. My identity in my igneous stone stage is objective and physical which is comparable to a materialist/somatic approach to personal identity (Bernecker, 2009; Olson, 1997). These physical, material and embodied elements are deeply embedded in my identity, and are unchangeable in the process of moving between my root culture and adopted culture. Sedimentary stone is formed by a chemical and biochemical process through conditions of pressure and temperature (Raymond, 2002, p. 2). Sedimentary stone is layered with different materials such as fragments of grains of rocks, minerals, fossils and other types of stones (Raymond, 2002, p. 2). My identity in my sedimentary stage can be compared to one layer of material among other layers of materials or stones. In this stage, my identity is identified in the context of a group of people or community—for example as a child, wife, mother or therapist. My identity is like one element of the whole stone, and my identity is formed in relation to others. In this sedimentary stone stage, relational identity is not determined by an individual but is defined or recognised by a social group or audience, such as personal spaces, families or roles within a larger system as a particular identity (Marková, 1987; Schwartz et al., 2011; Swann, 2005). My relational identity is interpreted through different social roles such as wife, mother, therapist and researcher. My relational identity is also defined by environments and locations, for example, as an immigrant or a foreigner. In studies of relational identity,

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it is shown that relational identity depends on connections and intimacy through interpersonal interaction between individuals such as work relationships (Sluss & Ashforth, 2007) and performance of household tasks (Garrido & Acitelli, 1999). These interpersonal interactions are like the chemical and biochemical formation process of sedimentary stone. My relational identity is changeable in the process of moving between my cultures, depending on where I am and what I do. Metamorphic stone is formed originally as igneous and sedimentary stone by responding to heat, pressure, chemically active fluids or gases, and direct stress; through the process of formation, metamorphic stone shows bounded, flaky and fluid texture and is mixed with all other materials in its form (Raymond, 2002, p. 2). To compare the metamorphic stone formation process to the collective identity formation process, both processes involve the development of bonding and mixing. From sociology, collective identity is an individual’s self-conception in the context of his/her cognitive, moral and emotional interactions with a group, a community, a social category or institution (Polletta & Jasper, 2001). On the other hand, Weber (1978) suggests class, status and party are the main factors in forming collective identity from a political science perspective. Collective identity is formed by a particular group or social category as a process through cognitive definition, active relationships and emotional investments (Melucci, 1989). In this metamorphic stone stage, my identity formation process is impacted by social and political factors, for example, as a Chinese immigrant living in New Zealand society. My collective identity is developing through the process of moving between my cultures, depending on my self-conceptions.

Identity Development as Stone Formation I compare the stone formation process with Erick Erikson’s identity development theory. Identity to Erikson is about sameness and continuity within social roles (Erikson, 1963). In terms of the definition of identity formation, Erikson (1968) claims that “identity formation … begins where the usefulness of identification ends” (p. 159). Erikson emphasises the identity crisis as central to his concept of eight stages of identity development and thinks each of the identity development stages contains conflicts as well as different possibilities (Erikson, 1959, 1963, 1968). For Erikson, the term of crisis represents a crucial turning point when identity development needs to move from one stage to another for further growth

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and differentiation (Erikson, 1968, p. 16). Crisis in Chinese translates as wei ji 危機. Wei 危 means danger and ji 機 means opportunity. In this Chinese concept, crisis represents moments of urgency as well as possibilities. Erikson holds a similar view of crisis in his identity development theory and points out that identity crisis in individual life and contemporary crisis in historical development are inseparable as “the two help to define each other and are truly relative to each other” (Erikson, 1968, p. 23). From my viewpoint, Erikson’s theory on identity development emphasises the importance of social elements especially when identity development meets moments of crisis in a social context. To relate this to the stone formation process, the processes of stone forming and transforming involve a range of responsive actions to the environment and conditions such as temperature, pressure, chemically active materials, weight and stress. With variations in weather, pressure and direct stress, new possibilities emerge for the stone’s quality, texture and shape (Raymond, 2002). Through experiencing conflicts with the environment and other stones in the vicinity, the stone changes and transforms. Similarly, the identity formation process is guided by social influences to find the balance between the conflicts of positive and negative for each stage of identity development (Batra, 2013). The impending crisis of each stage manifests “adaptive strength” to realise a “vigorous unfolding” of a new stage based on the strengths obtained (Batra, 2013, p. 256). My identity formation process as an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist contains inner forces and outer forces. For my identity formation development, my inner forces, referring to Erikson’s concept, include instinct, emotion, interests and emerging maturity; my outer forces refer to my family, profession, community, history, culture and socio-historical context (Batra, 2013, p. 256). Through the interaction with and direct stress from the conflicts and tensions between my inner force and outer force, my identity formation process, like the stone formation process, enters its next manifestation. From a traditional Chinese philosophical perspective regarding the formation process of stone, the stone changes continuously and endlessly. The three types of stone seem solid and stable as an object in a moment, but they are not fixed properties in a holistic sense. One stone type may gradually transform into another. Sedimentary rocks can be metamorphosed over time, and metamorphic stone can be melted to form magma in certain conditions; and all three stone types can be weathered and eroded into fragments for forming new stones. This cycle is called

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the rock cycle (Raymond, 2002, p. 3). It is like the yin/yang cycle, the opposite sides continuously conflict, cooperate, transform and renew. The progression of the yin/yang cycle is as a spiral rather than cycling in one fixed direction. This ever-renewing process is through constant conflict, cooperation, transformation and renewal. Erikson claims a similar transforming and renewing process occurs within identity development and he thinks identity can never be a fixed or unchangeable achievement but a continually revised self within social reality (Erikson, 1968, p. 211). Relating the rock cycle to identity theory and Erikson’s identity development theory, I argue that the identity formation process is a spiral movement process too. Through bonding and mixing all the elements from the personal, relational and collective levels for identity formation, my identity as immigrant artist/researcher/therapist is a constantly transforming and renewing living entity in the process of moving between my cultures. Through an arts-based journey to China, I found an empty space between my two cultures to house the living stone. Through a reflective and responsive arts-based inquiry into my intra-action with stone, I have found the meaning and matter of the living stone. Engaging and entangling with my embodied experiences and memories through arts-making provides me an opportunity to experience and enact the process of my identity formation from different perspectives. The process of seeking a stone in my homeland and having conversations with stones in my adopted land through an arts-making process has allowed me to see the emptiness I need to fill, and to have deeper insights to explore movement between my two cultures. My next question is: how can I find a stone of harmonic solidness/stability for my heart as an immigrant artist/ researcher/therapist in the next step of this arts-based research journey?

References Barad, K. M. (2003). Posthuman performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831. https://doi.org/10.1086/345321 Barad, K. M. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Barad, K. M. (2014). Diffracting diffraction: Cutting together-apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2014.927623

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Batra, S. (2013). The psychosocial development of children: Implications for education and society—Erik Erikson in context. Contemporary Education Dialogue, 10(2), 249–278. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973184913485014 Bernecker, S. (2009). Memory: A philosophical study. Oxford University Press. Cooperman, H. (2018). Listening through performance: Identity, embodiment, and arts-based research. In M. Capous-Desyllas & K. Morgaine (Eds.), Creating social change through creativity: Anti-oppressive arts-based research methodologies (pp. 19–36). Springer Nature. Eagleton, T. (2004). After theory. Basic Books. Erikson, E. H. (1959). Identity and the life cycle. International Universities Press. Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society. Norton. Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. Norton. Garrido, E. F., & Acitelli, L. K. (1999). Relational identity and the division of household labor. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 16(5), 619–637. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407599165004 Hickey-Moody, A. C. (2020). New materialism, ethnography, and socially engaged practice: Space-time folds and the agency of matter. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(7), 724–732. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418810728 Holman Jones, S. (2016). Living bodies of thought: The ‘critical’ in critical autoethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 22(4), 228–237. https://doi.org/10. 1177/1077800415622509 Ingold, T. (2011). Against space: Place, movement, knowledge. In P. W. Kirby (Ed.), Boundless worlds: An anthropological approach to movement (pp. 29– 44). Berghahn Books. Irwin, R. L. (2014). Turning to a/r/tography. KOSEA Journal of Research in Art Education, 15(1), 1–40. Johnson, M. (2013). Identity, bodily meaning and art. In T. Roald & J. Lang (Eds.), Art and identity: Essay on the aesthetic creation of mind (pp. 15–38). Rodopi. Jones, A., & Hoskins, T. (2016). A mark on paper: The matter of indigenoussettler history. In C. Taylor & C. Hughes (Eds.), Posthuman research practices in Education (pp. 75–92). Palgrave Macmillan. La Jevic, L., & Springgay, S. (2008). A/r/tography as an ethis of embodiement: Visual journals in perservice education. Qualitative Inquiry, 14(1), 67–89. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800407304509 Lasczik Cutcher, A. J. (2018). Moving-with & moving-through homelands, languages & memory. Koninklijke Brill NV. LeBlanc, N., & Irwin, R. L. (2019). A/r/tography. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.393 Marková, I. (1987). Knowledge of the self through interaction. In K. Yardley & T. Honess (Eds.), Self and identity: Psychosocial perspectives (pp. 65–80). Wiley. Melucci, A. (1989). Nomad of the present. Temple University Press.

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CHAPTER 5

Identity Making Through Guqin-Making

Abstract This chapter delves into the concept of in-betweenness through an explorable site—guqin-making. I focus on the guqin-making process which helps me to understand the in-betweenness concept of harmony, as drawn from traditional Chinese philosophy, for this identity study. Guqinmaking as arts-based inquiry helps me as an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist to intra-act with, reflect on and explore my personal and professional experiences of being in the in-between place between my homeland and adopted land, my old and my new, and between my two cultures. Through guqin-making as inquiry, I discover different harmonic relationships between my two cultures which allows me to understand my identity formation process through this Chinese philosophical perspective. Keywords Arts-based inquiry · In-betweenness · Harmonic relationships · Root culture · Adopted culture

In this chapter, I continue my journey of moving between my two cultures through the making of a guqin. Guqin-making as arts-based inquiry in this research is not only about learning traditional Chinese art, it is also an explorational site which helps me as an immigrant artist/ researcher/therapist to intra-act with, reflect on and explore my personal © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. Wang, Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32527-4_5

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and professional experiences of being in the in-between place between my homeland and adopted land, my old and my new, and between my two cultures. The intra-action with the guqin-making process is not the knowledge itself, but the making process generates the realities within me, within the guqin, and within the relationship between me and the guqin (LeBlanc & Irwin, 2019). Irwin (2003) renames insight during the arts-making process as “in/sight” because “it (delves) into the inner structure of things, beings, and ideas (to) perceive and apprehend knowledge” (Irwin, 2003, p. 24). I aim to focus on my “in/sight” from my embodied experiences through/with/in the guqin-making process which helps me to understand the in-betweenness concept of harmony for this identity study. I am interested in how guqin-making as inquiry enables me to enter the in-betweenness and connects me with embodied experiences and memories which arise through the making of this ancient Chinese artefact. I hope through the guqin-making process that the guqin and my narrative of the guqin-making process become “an active space, echoing and reverberating in communion” (Springgay et al., 2005, p. 906). I use the present tense throughout the narratives of the guqin-making in order to invite my readers into the present moments of the making process. In this book’s Prologue, my narrative captures the moment when I meet the old and dusty timber in the guqin-making workshop. In this chapter, I continue the conversation with this old and dusty timber at the beginning of this guqin-making journey. Specific timber is required for the construction of a guqin. For the guqin’s body, there are two different types of timber. The top part of the guqin is traditionally constructed from soft wood such as Chinese paulownia 桐木 or Chinese fir 杉木. The bottom part of the guqin is traditionally constructed from hard wood such as Chinese catalpa 梓木. Soft wood on the top belongs to the concept of yang, and its less dense material is conducive to vocalisation; hard wood on the bottom belongs to the concept of yin, and its denser material is for the reflection of the sound (Qing, 2015). Choosing a type of timber depends on experience, feeling and sometimes fate. Meeting this old and dusty timber is my fate.

Coming to the Foreign Land Back in Auckland, New Zealand, at my first guqin-making class, I walk down to the basement with excitement and a degree of trepidation. Here in the dark basement of the guqin-making workshop—in the only guqinmaking class that is taught in New Zealand—I can smell the dustiness and dampness in the air. Several piles of timber sit a few metres from me,

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laying in the dim light. One particular piece of timber draws my attention. On it I can make out several Chinese characters written in ink. I run my fingers over it and feel that it is slightly cold. The moment I touch it, in my heart I know: this is the one. This is the piece of timber I want to have a conversation with. This timber’s life began centuries before my time. It was part of a tree in a forest in my home country; then it was part of a house for many long years, still in my homeland. But the moment I touch it, I feel its confusion and fear of being in this dark and damp basement in this adopted land. I hear its anguished question: why am I here? (Image 5.1). Why am I here? I have asked myself this question many times during my years living in this adopted country, especially at times when I was confused, conflicted and afraid during my immigration journey. I have also heard this question many times from my clients in my years of practice as a creative arts therapist. As an immigrant, I am separated from my homeland. The process of “separation from home” has a longlasting impact on immigrants as someone coming from “there” to “here” (Albert-Proos, 2015, p. 131). Since I left my homeland, although I have been living in my adopted land for almost two decades, I feel that I have not fully departed from my homeland and have not yet fully arrived. When I feel I am lost and confused in the journey of being in-between departing and arriving, in-between past and future, in-between the old me and new me, in-between here and there, I often ask myself—with mixed emotions of regret and hope—why am I here?

Image 5.1 Details of old and dusty timber

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In the dark, damp basement of the guqin-making workshop, I hear this question again from this timber—why am I here? I take this piece of timber outside to have a look at it under better light. This timber is full of insect holes and covered in dust. Holding this piece of wood, I try to imagine: Where was the tree it comes from once planted? Where is the forest that was this tree’s first home? Is that forest still there? Who lived under the roof that this wooden beam once supported? This piece of wood is silent now. It does not want to say anything more. Like some of my immigrant clients in their early therapy sessions, they do not want to talk much about their loss and grief from leaving their homeland. Holding this silent timber, I invite it to talk to me. I understand our shared pain from the loss and grief of having left our homeland. I have empathy for this lost, old and dusty timber, it is a feeling I have had many times in sessions with my immigrant clients. I open up about my experiences and challenges of leaving my homeland in order to create the space for my clients to open up about their own experiences and challenges. With this timber, I want to do the same. Holding this old and dusty timber, I hear our voices in my heart. This silent lost tree I can understand your pain We left so many happy stories in that old and damp wooden house With the laughter of kind-hearted grandparents This silent lost tree I can feel your sadness We left the familiar smells in that crowded but warm forest With the gentleness from the comfortable breeze This silent lost tree I can imagine your loneliness We left the heartening sound of mother-tongue With the comforting voice from mother’s gentle singing This silent lost tree I can sense your anxiety We have to trust each other on this journey with our quest, and desire, for finding home Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2019

Separation from home is not only about being distant from a physical location. Separation from home also includes separation from unreplaceable memories, comforting feelings, and heart-gladdening emotions. From my trip to China, when I realised that I had to leave many parts

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of my ‘stone’ in my homeland, I understood that separation from home indicates the sacrifice which immigrants have to make in order to come to their adopted land. With this piece of old timber, I sense, feel and imagine. My embodied memories arise within the entanglement with this timber. My poetic exploration has showed me that after many years in my adopted land, the fragments of my past experiences within my root culture have not fully “lost their grip” in-between “here” and “there” (AlbertProos, 2015; Turner, 1992). Through having the conversation with the timber in my heart, fragments of my embodied memories—the smell of a damp house, the sound of my mother-tongue, and the singing of my grandmother—are awoken. The intra-action with this timber brings me from the present to the past, brings the past to the present me. I enter the in-between space between my homeland and my adopted land, “there” and “here”, the old me and the new me. The writing on this piece of timber is still readable after many years, but this timber has lost its old identity in this adopted land. Holding this timber is like meeting an old friend in this confused in-between of “there” and “here”. In my heart, I feel a desire to let this timber ‘speak’ again, to share its “there” story from the hundreds of years it has already known, as well as the journey to its new identity of becoming a guqin “here”. In this poetic conversation with this timber, I also feel a desire for myself. I want to share my “there” story with this timber too, as well as my journey of becoming the new me “here”.

Hsi 兮 Why am I here? When I had just arrived in this adopted land, I did not fully yet realise what I had to depart from. I had to bear the pain of leaving behind the comfort of speaking in my mother-tongue. As a new arrival, I had to bear the loneliness of not having my friends and family with me. I remember my first shared flat on a hillside in Wellington, the first city I lived in in New Zealand. That small room was dark and damp, like this dark, damp basement where I met this old and dusty timber. I remember countless sleepless nights in that small room, where I covered my head with my blanket to comfort my lonely self from Wellington’s loud winter wind. On those sleepless nights, I asked myself many times: Why am I here? By hearing this timber’s fear and anxiety in my heart, I hear my fear, regret and anxiety from those countless Wellington nights. Those memories had become buried as I built my personal and professional life

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in New Zealand. With this timber in my hand, those embodied memories in my body are awoken. In this in-betweenness created by the guqin-making process, I need to share my story with this piece of timber too. It is much like the many times, while working with my immigrant clients in my arts therapy room, that I have shared many of my immigration experiences with them in order to make a connection with them, encourage them to speak and to find sources of hope together. I remember many times, when a client was hesitant to tell me their negative stories, my openness about my own immigration experience gave them the courage to take their first steps on their healing journey. My personal experience of being wounded and my healing journey from my own immigration path have enabled the therapy of others suffering from their own displacement issues (Green, 2016; Kitazawa, 2020). My own struggle with the “living in between” experience allows me to “understand and empathise with others’ similar experiences and to contain feelings associated with the trauma of immigration” (Barreto, 2013, p. 348). With this piece of silent timber, in order to let it speak or even sing to me, I have to open up and share my stories too. In this in-between space between cultures, this piece of silent timber and I have to find the courage to have honest conversations about departing and arriving, coming and becoming. From the Chinese philosophical perspective regarding the concept of in-betweenness, without difference or contradictions there is no harmony (Yang, 2008, p. 27). This question, why am I here, reveals the first layer of contradictions I have to face. There were many things and people I had to depart from “there” in order to arrive “here”. In the past, when I attempted to forget “there” in order to fit in “here”, I mistakenly thought that in order to arrive “here”, I have to fully depart “there”. I tried my best to mimic the English accent of my adopted country. I adopted an English name in order to hide my difference in my therapy practice. I suppressed my desire to physically connect with my root culture such as through food and custom. I tried my best to let the ‘old’ in my identity “lose its grip” (Turner, 1992, p. 133), but the ‘new’ did not fully arrive as I hoped. I was once lost in the in-betweenness between the ‘old’ me and the ‘new’ me. Hearing this old and dusty timber’s anxious question, why am I here, I have a desire to protect it from the mistakes I have made in my past displacement experiences. But I have no answer for its question yet. In order to find the answer for us, and to find the harmonic space between “there” and “here”, the past and future, the old me and new

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me, I have to continue this journey of moving between my cultures with my guqin.

Making the Shape There are many different shapes for the different styles of guqin. The most common ones include fuxi 伏羲, shennong 神農, zhongni 仲尼, lianzhu 連珠, luoxia 落霞, jiaoye 蕉葉 and lingji 靈機. Some of the styles were titled after the name of the person who created them, some others were named according to their shapes (Zhao, 2017). Jiaoye 蕉葉 means banana leaf, which has a significance in Chinese literature1 . The jiaoye guqin is not only inspired by the beauty and elegance of the leaf shape, but also by its symbolic emotional meaning. I decide I want to make a jiaoye guqin not only because of its beauty and elegance, but also for how it reflects the meaning and hope of my guqin-making journey. The Chinese saying, luo ye gui gen 落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots), expresses the leaf’s desire to return to its origin. For immigrants, luo ye gui gen落葉歸 根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots) becomes an extravagant hope. When I was doing therapy work with a group of terminally ill immigrant clients at a hospice, many of them expressed their desire to go back to their homeland—luo ye gui gen 落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots). Many of them were unable to return for physical reasons but some of those who had lived in this adopted land for many years had nothing and no one to go back to. When I was working with them, I thought about myself. Will I want to go back to my homeland in my final days? It was scary to think about my own final days and, because of these thoughts, I was quite low for a while during the time I worked at the hospice. This may be the reason I chose the leaf shape for my guqin. In Chinese philosophy, this “returning to roots” can be understood as the action of returning to “the state of stillness” (Li, 2015, p. 106). However, “this stillness is the basis of activity” because “stillness is the ruler of the movement” between conflicts and contradictions (Li, 2015, pp. 109–110). Harmonising the differences and conflicts between my root culture and adopted culture as the way of “returning to roots” and “recreation of home” is not looking for a fixed point or location, it is an ever-ongoing process. My desire for luo ye gui gen 落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots) is not about returning to a physical place or my homeland, but the peaceful harmony of being in my “recreation of home” between my root culture and adopted culture, and my homeland

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and my adopted land. As Li points out, harmony according to Chinese understanding is a qualitative concept involving a focus on “what kind of elements are situated in what kind of relationship” (Li, 2014, p. 31). My desire for luo ye gui gen 落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots) is about seeking balanced relationships between my two cultures, my homeland and my adopted land, and the old me and new me (Image 5.2).

Image 5.2 The outline of the guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

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With this desire of luo ye gui gen 落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots), I draw the outline of the leaf shape on the timber. Once I have the outline, I start sawing. I can smell the wood when I am sawing. Most of the insect marks are no deeper than the surface of the timber because insects dislike the aroma of Chinese fir. The aroma of my timber is so pleasant. With the wood dust covering me from my head to my feet and with the pleasant smell from the fresh sawing wafting around me, I begin imagining the forest where this tree germinated from a seed and grew into its mature form. The process of working to shape the wood evokes my emotions and memories; with the dialogue and embodied exchange with the timber, with each step of sawing, grinding and sanding, I naturally become blended with my instrument-to-be. My embodied experiences with this piece of timber seed a new relationship between the artefact and a sense of self; together, the timber and I are making a shared embodied memory (Fitzpatrick, 2016). In the process of cutting out the shape, my timber and I are silently and anxiously bonding together. However, this bonding together or uniformity is not the purpose of harmony. Through 和 harmonisation, reaching temporary 合 uniformity is a transitional connection towards further differentiations and harmonisation (Li, 2014, p. 12). By bonding with my guqin, I am merging my past experiences into a shared embodied experience with my guqin (Image 5.3).

Image 5.3 The basic shape (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

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The steps of making the shape of my guqin are repetitive and tiring. I have to grind and sand all of the edge details to mimic the natural shape of a leaf. This long, repetitive process reminds me of my own repetitive and tiring experience of reshaping my identity throughout my immigrant journey. As my identity formation process has continued through all these years in this foreign land, I have continually attempted to follow my heart and destiny in order to find my most suitable ‘shape’. Many years ago, when I arrived in New Zealand as an international student, I carried my parents’ hope—to become more qualified in order to find a better job in my profession as a designer, and earn a higher income. The first aspect of reshaping myself stems from an issue that began soon after I arrived—the issue of confidence in my language competence. As the only Asian student in my first Master’s design degree cohort, my confidence was hurt badly in the first few weeks when I realised that, although I was an experienced designer in my hometown, I could not understand my lecturer’s requirements for the assignments. Even if I translated them word by word, I still could not understand the concept of the tasks. I was afraid to ask anyone else in my class because my accent created insecurity in me. Just like the grinding and sanding process of guqin-making, I had to spend more time and effort to build up my language competence to enable me to live and grow in this adopted land. While I can now see that my language competence is improving and I have no problem using English to communicate both in writing and speaking, this language issue has continually arisen through my practice as an immigrant creative arts therapist working in my adopted country. Therefore, this aspect of reshaping myself is ongoing. The second aspect of reshaping myself comes from my beliefs. For many years, I thought career and social status were the central pillars of my life. Driven by this belief, I worked very hard to excel in an idealised profession, aiming high within a desirable organisation, but I could not find much enjoyment or sense of achievement in that ‘respectable’ job. By going through some mental health struggles myself, I discovered my strength and joy through arts-making, and consequentially I became interested in studying creative arts therapy. As the only Chinese student in my arts therapy programme, with little knowledge of and no background in psychology, through more intense ‘grinding and sanding’ during the three years of my Master in Arts Therapy, I not only gained a new qualification and new professional identity, but I also gained a new belief about what is important and central in my life. This aspect of reshaping

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myself continues through my creative arts therapy practice and arts-based research. The third aspect of reshaping myself comes from within my professional identity. From a person who is shy and not confident about speaking English with people, becoming an immigrant creative arts therapist working with clients from diverse cultural backgrounds has been a big challenge for me. Working in the mental health sector, I have to be capable and competent in my professional skills, knowledge of other cultures, and most importantly be confident about being an immigrant creative arts therapist. I see every moment of working with my clients and reflecting on my practice as the process of ‘grinding and sanding’ away at my new shape as an immigrant creative arts therapist. In this aspect of reshaping myself, I continue the ‘grinding and sanding’ process to overcome my insecurity as an immigrant and early career academic, in order to find my uniqueness in my arts-based research career. My most recent discovery among the aspects of reshaping myself is that I have been reshaping the old values instilled in me during my early education in my root culture. Being educated in my adopted culture and living in my adopted land, I have come to a realisation that many of the old values from my root culture have been embedded in my mind, body and blood. In my therapy practice, when I work with clients from my culture and see how many of the values from our root culture bring struggles and issues into their immigrant life, I reflect on my own struggles arising from these old values. When I was a child, I was educated to follow superiors such as parents, teachers and leaders with respect and obedience. I was also educated to treat my home country and the ruling communist party as my own parents, without any doubt or question. I see that many of my clients are impacted by these beliefs which create many inter-generational issues and identity issues. For me, this reshaping process is accompanied by a painful realisation—many elements from my root culture have constricted and damaged me. This aspect of reshaping myself has a long way to go—like the process of ‘grinding and sanding’ my guqin, to reshape my identity requires resolute determination. With the sanding block in my hand, I want to find this resolute determination and gentle patience. I hope the effort I put into guqin-making will make this piece of wood proud. This timber is in my hands, and its fate is in my hands. It is like my identity formation—its fate lies within my endless efforts driven by my resolute determination.

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What do you want to be, my qin? With the grinding and sanding tool in hand I am listening And I heard you speaking You say: “I want to become… The shape that can comfort lonely souls The texture that can connect lost memories The temperature that can warm cold tears The voice that can melt people’s hearts The desire that can motivate hurt bodies The freedom that can accommodate creative minds” With the grinding and sanding tool in hand I am repeating Your words and my determination Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2020

Through arts-based inquiry, I find my determination from my guqin’s speaking. From touching, sensing and feeling the guqin, I connect my desire for the guqin’s outcome to my motivation for the immigrant artist/ researcher/therapist I want to become. My guqin is the mirror for me to reflect on my desires and hopes. This poetic exploration helps me to discover the qualities I desire to have as an immigrant artist/researcher/ therapist. Similarly, in my therapy practice, as a creative arts therapist, I am like my guqin and I let my clients reflect on themselves through me. In the therapeutic space, I share my reshaping stories with others. My life and my reshaping stories are my clients’ mirror to see their own hope and determination. My immigrant clients learn to be patient and determined in their reshaping journey such as with language, belief, values and expectations. A client of mine from a M¯aori cultural background had empathy with my reshaping story and reflected on her own stories of the impact of colonisation from her family history. My P¯ akeh¯ a clients learned to be open-minded and considerate from my reshaping stories and design their own goals for reshaping their life. My Chinese immigrant clients learned to question their old values in order to forgive their doubts and rebellious feelings, and to find the freedom in their hearts. Through sharing my reshaping stories, I create a therapeutic space for my clients to prepare

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Image 5.4 My guqin head details (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

to do their own ‘grinding and sanding’ for their own transformation journeys (Image 5.4).

Hsi 兮 The shape of the jiaoye guqin mimics the natural shape of the leaf, therefore, each jiaoye guqin does not have exactly the same forms and dimensions in its wave-like shapes. During the trip to my hometown, I

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sketched and studied the movement and shape of real banana leaves at the temple I visited. Now, in the guqin workshop, I have to recreate the beauty and movement of those real leaves in the sculptural shape of my instrument. Only two tools can be used in this process, sandpaper and files. Timber is hard to work with, especially for me as someone who has had little woodworking experience. Every wave form takes me days to sand and shape. However, with the image of a banana leaf moving gently under the temple roof in my imagination and the pleasant memory of that peaceful moment in my mind, I enjoy the slow, soothing process. As I am smelling the wood, touching the texture, and listening to the sound of the sanding, my instrument is forming and growing with me. I am shaping my instrument, but shaping myself as an immigrant artist/ researcher/therapist. Reshaping takes time and effort. Through the poetic conversation with my guqin, I realise my motivations behind the resolute determination with which I push forward along the formation journey of my identity. Through my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, I desire the competence to comfort, warm and motivate my clients and people in my community, wish to gain the compassion for hurt bodies and hearts, and am motivated to create the freedom for creative minds. These fragments of my desired future identity have “not yet taken definite shape”, and they may require a long time to form. However, having these fragments motivating my resolute determination helps me to overcome the “dark” moments and to focus more on the “fruitful” moments in the “betwixt and between” state of my identity formation process (Turner, 1969, p. 95). In this moment, I reshape with my guqin and with my two cultures. In my desired future, my clients and my community will reshape with me in the “betwixt and between”, through experiencing the power of creativity within my therapy practice and my arts-based research journey (Image 5.5).

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Image 5.5 The undulating shape (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

Hsi 兮 Every detail of my guqin requires time, patience and effort. With the chaos happening in the outside world, going to the workshop to make my guqin becomes my shelter where I can have a peaceful moment with myself. During the stressful time surrounding the horrifying attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March, 2019, making a guqin not only gave me a peaceful space to calm my anxiety from the social trauma, but also gave me an opportunity to reflect on my understanding of being an immigrant therapist during this extraordinary time. On 15 March, 2019, I was on the way to pick up my children from school, when I heard the news. My husband called me from work and told me there had been a shooting in Christchurch with multiple casualties. I did not know how to tell my children what had just happened. Soon after, I began receiving messages from my relatives and friends in China. They had heard the news and were worried about my safety. Within a short time, Facebook, Twitter and WeChat2 were full of the sad news and horrifying images. I found myself following news, blogs and social media commentary for answers, but also for hope. If there had been no darkest Friday, I possibly would still be wondering: where is my home? But when New Zealand’s peace was being trampled and abused, I deeply felt that it was my home which had been invaded.

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The Sunday after that darkest Friday is my guqin-making workshop day. As my guqin has a leaf-style design, I need to add a leaf stalk at the back of the guqin, and I need to spend the whole afternoon just on this small detail. This step requires wood-carving skills. Holding the sharp knife, looking at the blade, my mind is full of dying people. I know I am still affected by the Friday incident. My guqin-making teacher comes over and tells me that I am holding the carving knife incorrectly. He asks me to hold the knife steadily using my strength. Strength! Yes, the leaf stalk gives the leaf strength. I need to use my strength to give my guqin strength. I hold my carving knife steadily and carve into the wood. The wood is hard to carve. My hands, arms and shoulders are soon sore. However, these aches cannot stop my determination. I need to find the strength in myself first, then transfer my strength into my guqin. My qin, Can you see my effort? Holding the carving knife With all my fear and anxiety With the blood dripping from my broken heart I am trying to stand strong still In front of many dead bodies My qin, You did not answer me But just being there with me In this in-between space With no gunshot noise With no white supremacy My qin, I feel my strength flowing through your body And mine Through my back, my shoulders and hands You let me carve my strength into your flesh To feel, to gain and to grow The seed of compassion and courage Into the soil of this in-between land Shared by you and me Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2019

Knives are not weapons. The hateful thoughts, the unacceptable and hidden racism in a person’s mind, the fear which divides us are the weapons. I have no fear of knives, but I do fear the invisible weapons in

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people’s minds. If New Zealand can be healed from this deep wound by love and compassion, I can heal my traumas by the same methods. Only love and compassion can give us the strength we need. I have to gain the strength from my past wounds because as an immigrant creative arts therapist, I need to have the strength, the love and the compassion within myself to support, to encourage and to heal the immigrant community. Through the afternoon, with the slow and repetitive process of carving and sanding, my strong and perfect leaf stalk slowly appears on my guqin. I touch it—it is smooth but strong—like me. For the whole afternoon, I am fully immersed in the quiet and peaceful making process. This peaceful moment transports me to a poetic and pastoral paradise where there are no conflicts and struggles but only peace. As I carve my strength into my guqin, my heart settles down. Wherever I am, in my homeland or my adopted homeland, arts-making helps me to settle into a sense of home (Image 5.6).

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Image 5.6 The leaf stalk on guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

As an immigrant, I face continuous struggles and challenges from encounters with racism and discrimination. However, as an immigrant creative arts therapist, I need to gain strength from my displacement experiences instead of being afraid of being different and burying myself in fear of conflicts. Li (2014) suggests three levels of relationship between contradictory elements: difference, tension and conflict (p. 12). Li (2014) illustrates that harmony starts with the acceptance of different co-existing parties, and these different parties raise tensions which may result in

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conflicts as well as coordination (p. 9). My poetic exploration captures the moment during the social trauma in Christchurch when my identity as an immigrant escalated from being different to being in tension. Being an immigrant creative arts therapist, my own identity issues potentially can trigger countertransference in my practice with my immigrant clients (Yedidia, 2005). Realising my fear and anxiety from being an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist through poetic conversation with my guqin, I have become aware that these tensions can potentially become conflict elements in my identity formation process. Through poetic exploration, I imagine my pain as shared pain in the guqin’s body; I imagine my strength flows into the guqin’s flesh. Through entering the in-between space between myself and my guqin, I feel I am not alone in facing the social trauma, the tension and conflict. By intra-acting with the making of the guqin, I find the determination for summoning the strength to face these conflicts in order to enter the next step of harmonisation in the in-betweenness.

Gaining the Voice After the basic shaping and detailing process comes the most important step—carving the resonance cavity inside the guqin body. The guqin is not only an art form with beautiful sculptural details but also, most importantly, it is a musical instrument. The technique of carving the resonance cavity inside the guqin is like a family’s secret recipe—different guqin makers have their own techniques and theories. However, it is also important to understand my timber: how the variance within its natural grain might influence the sound. The timber of the top piece of my guqin has dense and less dense aspects which perfectly meet the needs of treble and bass vibration. As I am new to guqin-making, I follow my guqin-making teacher’s technique for this step. There is no absolute rule or set dimensions for carving the cavity, but through the process, I can listen to the sound by putting on test strings and adapting my carving accordingly (Image 5.7).

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Image 5.7 Carving voice (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

I cannot imagine how my guqin will sound but I am full of excitement. I have to hold my excitement in check and stay calm, because it would be an irreversible disaster if I carve too deeply into the timber. I have been developing a comfortable relationship with the traditional wood-carving knives that I am using. In the carving process, I hold my knife with care and strength instead of fear and tension. Every time I carve into the grain of my timber, I am talking to it in my mind (Image 5.8).

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Image 5.8 My guqin inside details (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

My qin, I know this hurts you But it is necessary pain Please believe me This carving pain through your flesh Is much more bearable Than not being able to have your own voice My qin I share my painful experience with you From being unable to have my own voice for a long time If you can hear the stories from my scars You would desire to sing In your voice As much as I do My qin Let’s endure the pain in your flesh Just imagining When you can sing in your own voice I will sing along with you With my own newly found voice So let’s cling together to endure this pain Of transformation Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2020

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Facing tension and conflict is not comfortable, but it is the first challenging step in harmonising the in-betweenness of my identity formation process. Within traditional Chinese philosophy, there are different views about how to deal with tension and conflict to encourage harmonisation. In the Daoist concept of harmony, there is a passive way to face tension and conflict through accommodating the natural world (Li, 2014, p. 36). Daoists call this action—as a natural state of doing nothing for the sake of doing it—wu wei 無為 (Laozi, 1972, Ch. 37). However, in Confucianism, achieving harmony is more proactive. Confucianists actively harmonise the tensions and conflicts (Li, 2014, p. 36). Therefore, while Daoism promotes harmonisation within the natural world, Confucianism emphasises harmonisation within human society (Li, 2014, p. 38). When I face tensions and conflicts arising from moving between my root culture and adopted culture, I am not sure how to deal with them. Should I be more passive or proactive? As an arts-based researcher, I am drawn to the possibility of artistic knowing. Arts-based research through guqin-making does not produce a neatly presented argument, but a/r/tographic inquiry allows the multiple and sometimes contradictory perspectives of my questioning/questing within this identity study to emerge (Schultz & Legg, 2020). I see some of my arts-making process as an action of “doing nothing for the sake of doing it” to express my feelings and emotions without a clear purpose but with “a willingness to let something be” (Levine, 2015, p. 17). Through arts-based research, I allow these tensions and conflicts to appear in my artwork without determined effort in order to discover the unknown within my unconsciousness through “letting-go of goaldirected behaviour” (Levine, 2015, p. 19). I think of this kind of “letting go” and purposefulness as the Daoist way of harmonising tensions and conflicts. On the other hand, I also use arts-making as inquiry. I use images to visualise “the sound and light” of certain issues to “become available to consciousness” (Greene, 1980, p. 316). I use poetic inquiry to realise the moment of “consciousness of enlargement” (Bachelard, 1969, p. 184). In my view, this kind of creative action is more in line with Confucianist harmonisation. In my guqin-making, there are both passive and proactive ways to find the harmonic in-betweenness (Image 5.9).

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Image 5.9 Testing strings on my guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

Hsi 兮 After close to a whole day of working on carving the cavity inside my guqin, it is time to hear its voice for the very first time. Full of nervous excitement, I pluck the test strings on my guqin. The first pluck of the bass string produces a deep but steady sound. I feel my body and heart are resonating with the vibration of the string. Then, I thrum all the other strings one by one, from low to high. The voice of my guqin is beautiful but it has a hint of immatureness. After thoroughly testing the sound, I have to resume carving the cavity of the body in order to obtain my desired tone. Through this repetitive testing and carving process, I am inviting my guqin to include me into its voice, or to unite with me in our shared voice. While my guqin is slowly finding its voice, how can I find my own voice in this adopted land as an immigrant as well as a creative arts therapist? This tension and conflict between my mothertongue and the formation of my identity as an immigrant creative arts therapist has become a long-time challenge. I remember many times, on

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phoning a newly referred client, as soon as some of them heard my accent or heard my Chinese last name, they became disengaged and requested to be referred to another therapist. I have to say, I was hurt at the beginning, but I became used to it. I tried to avoid making phone calls to referrals and instead emailed them, signing off with my full official titles and registration numbers. Through my own arts-making process, I have tried to deal with the issue of having an accent as an immigrant, but this experience of being rejected has continuously been part of my daily life and practice. My identity as an immigrant creative arts therapist was shaken by the loss of cultural reference from “feeling vulnerability, confusion, frustration while attempting to establish new relationships” in my profession (Barreto, 2013, p. 343). Through repeated testing and carving, I invite my guqin to sing with me, mingling its accent and my accent. After several rounds of testing, I am finally happy with the sound of my guqin. I test all three tones to find the balance of these three tones. The balance of these three tones—Fanyin 泛音, Saiyin 散音 and Anyin 按音—represents the harmonious relationship between heaven, earth and people (Chen, 2017). When I hear my guqin’s balanced voice, I reflect on my feelings towards my own voice. My guqin has its own unique ‘accent’ as no other guqin would sound exactly the same. Through the process of shaping its voice, we produce a shared voice, with the vibration of the guqin strings and body. I have to be comfortable with my own voice. Having an accent does not indicate my English language competence, but indicates my life experience as an immigrant. My unique voice is possibly not a comfortable one for every one of my clients, but its uniqueness has become a therapeutic tool in my creative arts therapy practice. Some of my language/accent disadvantages can become therapeutic advantages when working with clients who share similar culture, language and life experience (Mittal & Wieling, 2006; Tang & Gardner, 1999). As an immigrant creative arts therapist, my cultural/linguistic limitations and my own immigration experience can be used as a therapeutic instrument in therapy settings and as an opportunity in intercultural competence development (Barreto, 2013). I often have referrals of people who are struggling with drug-use issues, alcohol-abuse issues and problem gambling issues. Many of them had a troubled upbringing and they usually have low self-esteem and trust issues. Being an immigrant creative arts therapist with my unique accent,

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I share a vulnerability with them. I often invite them to correct my English pronunciation, or ask them to teach me something from their cultures such as a piece of music or folk tale. Through opening up about my feelings of vulnerability about having an accent, I provide a space or opportunity for these vulnerable clients to gain confidence and selfrespect through helping their therapist. I use my unique accent to build rapport and a trustful therapeutic relationship. Through the process of harmonising my guqin’s voice, I am harmonising the tension and anxiety of having my accent. By shaping, discovering and sharing the uniqueness of my guqin’s voice, I realise the uniqueness of my accent for my creative arts therapy practice. By intra-acting with my guqin’s voice, I discover a cooperation in the tensions and conflicts between my root culture and adopted culture, and find the complementary elements of the old me and new me.

Hsi 兮 Adding the New Layers After finishing carving the cavity of the guqin top, the next process is bonding the top and bottom pieces of the guqin together. It is a tradition for the guqin maker to write the guqin’s name inside of the guqin body before the two pieces of timber are glued together. These steps are part of a special ceremony called heqin 合琴, meaning ‘putting the qin together’. This ceremony is a celebration of the guqin gaining its voice and shape. For me, it is a celebration of finding the next step of harmonic in-betweenness in my identity formation process. It is also the time to give my guqin a name. I spend about a whole week deciding on the name of my guqin and it is almost as difficult as naming my own children. For my Chinese ancestors, they had to learn mingxin jianxing 明心見性 (cleaning the heart-mind and seeing the inner self) in order to connect to the inner self (Tan & Lu, 2018, p. 142). I need to clean my mind and my heart to connect to my inner self. I imagine that after a busy day of my practice, I am sitting in front of my guqin and playing a piece of music on it to cleanse the negative energy out of my heart. From this imagined moment, I decide on qingxin 清心 (purifying heart) as my guqin’s name. With Chinese ink and a calligraphy brush, I write my Chinese name and my guqin’s name together inside of the guqin’s body. Before putting the top piece and bottom piece together, I write a note with Chinese ink on

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a sheet of rice paper. It is also a tradition to write a note to hide inside of the guqin’s body as a communication with future generations. I do not know who might open my guqin’s body one day to discover my words to them, but I want this message to my future generations to remain a secret. I carefully fold the note into a small strip and hide it under the guqin’s end where the abdominal cavity will be completely closed. This little secret is buried and planted into my guqin’s body (Image 5.10). After putting the top piece and bottom piece together, I have to wait patiently for two weeks because the lacquer used for the bonding takes a

Image 5.10 Putting my name inside my guqin (Source 2019. Photograph)

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long time to dry completely. When I finally hold my guqin again after the two weeks, I notice the weight of my guqin is much lighter than before. It is because the lacquer absorbs the moisture in the wood during the drying process. The raw lacquer liquid is from China too. Raw lacquer is a natural liquid material cut from lacquer trees. The use of lacquer in making a guqin has thousands of years of history. I need to use this material in every step from now until the guqin is finished. Lacquer is not a fun material to work with. It is sticky, and if it touches the skin will most likely cause lacquer allergy. However, because lacquer can produce a hard and durable surface layer, it is the ideal material for the protection of the instrument (Image 5.11).

Image 5.11 Wrapping with linen cloth (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

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The purpose of the next step, wrapping the guqin with linen cloth, is to fuse the top piece and bottom piece of my guqin into one body in order to increase the unity of the guqin and prevent cracking. Only natural materials are used in my guqin-making. For this step, I mix glutinous rice powder and raw lacquer together, and soak my piece of linen cloth in the mixture. This piece of natural linen, also known as xiabu 夏布, is also from my homeland. It has a coarse texture and is quite hard to the touch. I pick up the cloth to smell it. It has a natural straw smell. Before soaking the linen in the mixed materials, it needs to be boiled in water for a few minutes. The smell of the linen boiling reminds me of the smell of my grandmother’s zongzi 粽子 (traditional rice cake wrapped in leaves), my favourite food from my childhood. In this workshop in an Auckland suburb, I am surrounded by materials from my homeland. As an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, guqin-making with the materials from my homeland provokes me to “think differently about materials and materiality, movement and responsibility (LeBlanc & Irwin, 2019, P. 2). Putting my hands on these materials, smelling them and mixing them, I find I am missing my homeland. I miss the physical contact with my people, my home and my homeland. Touching and smelling the materials from my homeland, I have this sadness in my heart. Immigrants’ desire for emotional belonging in their adopted land is reflected in their home-making process in their home environment. Driven by nostalgic memories and feelings, immigrants actively adhere to consumption patterns, food, natural surroundings, languages and religious rituals in the host country in order to find an emotional balance in the home-making process (Kreuzer et al., 2018). The process of wrapping my guqin in linen reminds me that there are many physical and emotional attachments with my homeland I have had to leave behind. I have started, in recent years, to create an environment with some ‘hometown elements’ in my Auckland home to deal with my own feelings of grief and loss over no longer having these kinds of physical contact with my homeland. I have planted fairy bamboo and some hometown vegetables in my garden. I make a cup of tea with the tea leaves from my hometown plants before starting my work. I cook more with my hometown flavours, especially during our special festivals. I make little crafts from my hometown to connect with my childhood memories. I have established a little tea house in my garden studio as somewhere for me to relax and to feel the invisible connection between myself and my homeland. Through homemaking with elements from my homeland, I am attempting to find the

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emotional balance in the physical environment of my adopted land as well as in my heart. Creating emotional balance through home-making with elements from my root culture is how I endeavour to reach harmony. Harmony cultivates a respect for differences in order to maximise the benefits from different parts, and this kind of relationship between different elements can be understood through the concept of yin-yang as huhan 互含 (mutual inclusion) (Wang, 2005, p. 215). Through intra-acting with the materials of the guqin-making process, I realise the importance of balancing my sadness from losing physical contact with my homeland by connecting with physical elements of my root culture and accumulating physical homeland elements to create a sense of home in my adopted land. The harmonic relationship of huhan 互含 (mutual inclusion) helps me to seek opportunities for physical contact with my root culture elements in my home environment and my profession. These root culture elements interact with my daily life and my practice in order to help balance my emotional needs, and in turn my clients’ emotional needs, regarding loss and grief. When I work with my immigrant clients, they often share this kind of sadness from the grief and loss of not being able to physically connect with people, food, plants, soil, water and land from their home countries. My immigrant clients and I often use the internet to search for our favourite things from our hometowns to share with each other. Through this kind of sharing, my immigrant clients and I are salving each other’s feelings of grief and sadness. In one of my arts therapy sessions, one immigrant client shared that her favourite flower in her home country India was the dog-flower3 . This immigrant client shared photos of dog-flowers with me, and expressed her longing to touch and smell her favourite flower again. The following weekend, I went to the Winter Garden in Auckland. By chance, it was the blooming season for dog-flower, and the greenhouse of the Winter Garden was full of different-colour dog-flowers. I took some photos of those beautiful flowers and shared my photos in the next session with this client. When this client learnt these flowers were blooming in this adopted land, she was full of joy, and wanted to get out of her house to be with nature for the first time in years. While helping my clients to create a sense of home through finding physical connection with their root culture, I model my own attempts at creating emotional connections with this adopted land. I also share my experience of creating a sense of my homeland in my adopted land with my immigrant clients

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and encourage them to use this process to treat their sadness and grief at what they have lost. I sometimes give my immigrant clients my self-made hometown crafts as gifts but also more importantly as a transitional object to help them to continue their own recovery journey after the termination of our therapeutic relationship. Through sharing my culture and modelling how to find emotional connections with this adopted land, I encourage my immigrant clients to use their own way “through time and space providing grafts between the past, present and future” (Li et al., 2010, p. 789).

Sanding Away the Unwanted After waiting another few weeks for my wrapped guqin to dry, I prepare for the long and tiring layering and sanding process. The next layer after the linen wrapping is cuhui 粗灰 (rough layer). In the traditional guqinmaking process, this layer is made of deer horn powder and raw lacquer. The purpose of applying layers of deer horn powder and lacquer is to control the sound of the guqin by modifying the weight and density of each layer. In other words, the sound from the cavity of the guqin body will be more balanced by the different thickness and density of each layer (Image 5.12).

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Image 5.12 Guqin with rough layer (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

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Each layer of cuhui 粗灰takes about four weeks to dry. With several weeks to wait while the next rough layer dried, I went back to China for a trip which I documented in Chapter two, A journey in-between. By coincidence, I arrived on the eve of the 70th anniversary of my home country’s National Day. This is also a public holiday in my homeland. I visited many old friends and relatives who I had not seen for many years. Eating together, catching up, rushing around popular sites, experiencing the various modern conveniences and bureaucratic inconveniences in the contemporary life of my hometown made me exhausted. I was also upset when I realised that I did not feel a sense of being home when I was back in my homeland. The first week after I returned to New Zealand, I felt a lot of inexplicable emotions. Looking at the familiar blue sky and white clouds from my bedroom window in Auckland, I thought back over the last few weeks of travelling in the reinforced concrete forest of that surging, fast-paced modern environment that my hometown has become and I started to realise that the trip back there not only caused jet lag for my biological clock, but also within my psychological clock. Walking in my homeland after having lived in my adopted land for many years made me realise that I do not fit into my hometown anymore. With my inexplicable unsettled feelings coursing through me, I hold my guqin again after more than a month apart, but I am surprised. With the rough layer completely dried, my beautiful banana leaf guqin is now fully covered with a coarse, grey, coal-like surface. I need to sand this rough, tough layer to get the elegant curved lines back. Because power tools cannot be used for sanding it as this might create cracks on the guqin’ s body, it must be done by hand. Sanding this deer horn powder and lacquer layer is much harder than sanding the wood. It feels like I’m sanding a dried cement block. I grip the sanding block and sand one stroke after another, feeling all my frustration and emotion coming out as I do so. Every time I sand, I tell myself to continue to grind away the things I have attempted to sand off from myself for decades—the social expectations, the materialist values, the narrow view of the world and the misguided purpose for living life. Those elements in my old identity have been replaced with other expectations and values arising from my immigration journey and my practice as an immigrant creative arts therapist because I have been reshaped again and again throughout my identity formation process. However, this trip to my homeland has brought these unwanted expectations and values welling up into my life again. I take a deep breath and continue my sanding. It is slow and hard. Every time I

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become impatient with my sanding, I take another deep breath and have a conversation with my guqin. My qin, Can you see my disappointment? Going back to my hometown did not bring me the happy memories Which I hoped for and desired In our homeland I cannot find the familiar forest Where you and I were seeded and grew My qin Can you see my uneasiness? Going back to my hometown did not bring me the proud feeling Which I hoped for and desired In our homeland I see selfish and ugly hearts Which you and I were once craving to be close with My qin I wanted to go back Back to my pleasant memories Instead, I brought back gloomy new memories with me My qin There are things I wanted to bring back Really, my treasured things Instead, I brought back regrets and doubts My qin I am sanding away the unwanted parts of my identity To let go the undesirable parts of me To face the sorrow, regrets and doubts It is difficult to admit Not all of the old me is a treasure for me I am sanding your unwanted layers Please, my qin Help me grind away some parts of my old identity To find the harmony Between the old and new me Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2019

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With the conversations with my guqin in my mind and with the slow and tough sanding, I feel that my anxious heart is slowly finding its ground again, and has landed in this in-between space, created by guqinmaking, between my homeland and my adopted land. I can feel the calmness again. With this reconnected calmness in my heart, I reflect on the process of ‘sanding away’ as I have come across it in my professional practice. In my creative arts therapy practice, I often encounter some immigrant clients who carry regrets. Some of them regret their decision to immigrate because they could have had better jobs or businesses in their hometown if they did not leave. Some of them regret bringing their children to the adopted country because their children have become more connected to the adopted culture than they are, which creates a cultural gap between the generations of their family. When I hear their thoughts about their decisions to move to the adopted land, I ask myself: do I have these regrets? Do I have this ‘what if’ question in my mind? When I was struggling to fit in to my adopted culture, I thought about ‘what if’. When I was upset about being rejected by referred clients from an array of cultural backgrounds, I thought about ‘what if’. When I saw my former schoolmates showing off their luxury cars and apartments, I thought about ‘what if’. Because of this ‘what if’, some immigrants cannot see the positive sides of their immigration journey but only focus on what they cannot have. As an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, I have to contend with my sadness, regrets and doubts arising from the struggle around the conflicts between my old and new identity. The harmony between grieving the losses and embracing the gains needs to be established through the identity formation process. In my professional practice as an immigrant creative arts therapist, I need to learn to grind away the unwanted layers in my own identity formation process, in order to understand my immigrant clients’ struggles and to provide the space for them to realise their own harmony between letting go their old selves and gaining their new selves. Balancing the old and new identity through harmonisation makes space allowing for each to exist but more importantly preserves the merits of each in order that the person may draw strength from the favourable parts of both (Li, 2008). The imagined conversation with my guqin evokes my negative emotions of grief and loss, but it also helps me to realise the parts of the old me I want to preserve and also the parts that have lost their grip on my

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identity formation process. Within harmonic relationships, the contradictory elements influence and impact each other (Wang, 2015, p. 24). I am sanding away the undesirable elements from my root culture to increase the space for the desirable elements from my adopted culture to come into the in-between place between my two cultures. By sanding away the unwanted layers of my old identity, I gain potentiality for my new identity to be. Sanding away the unwanted elements in my old identity is “a way of achieving balance” between my two cultures (Wang, 2015, pp. 24– 25). Through intra-acting with the sanding process of guqin-making, through feeling tiredness from the physical work as well as its psychologically soothing effect, I comprehend this ‘sanding away’ as a necessary step of harmonisation.

Hsi 兮 I spend a few months on the task of sanding and re-applying the rough layers. Through this long and tiring process, my guqin regains its elegant leaf shape again, and I finally return to a place of peace and calmness again. After this layering and sanding process, I try my guqin once again with test strings. With these new layers on, my guqin’s voice has changed. I can still hear its unique guqin accent but with its newly developed matureness, it is somehow more calm and pure. I hoped my guqin would sing to calm my anxiety from moving between my root culture and adopted culture. I hoped my guqin would sing to purify my heart in this moving-between-cultures journey. For me, its voice sounds as I hoped it would. The singing voice from my guqin cleanses all the negativity from my heart and replaces it with solidness/stability, energy, compassion and enlightenment for me and which, through benefiting me, will also benefit my clients. My guqin has transformed from a dusty old piece of timber into an instrument-to-be. But when can I meet the transformation within myself on this arts-based journey of harmonisation within in-betweenness? (Image 5.13).

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Image 5.13 Guqin after layering and sanding (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

Notes 1. In Chinese history, the banana leaf 蕉葉 has significant symbolic meaning in art and literature where it expresses the emotions of sadness and nostalgia related to missing people or places. 2. WeChat is a Chinese social media platform which is popular among the Chinese community. 3. The plant known as dog-flower in India is called a snapdragon in some other cultures.

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References Albert-Proos, D. (2015). Separation from and reconstruction of home: A study of immigrant expressive therapists (Publication No. 10036170) [Doctoral thesis, Lesley University]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. Bachelard, G. (1969). The poetics of space. Beacon Press. Barreto, Y. K. (2013). The experience of becoming a therapist in a foreign culture. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 53(3), 336–361. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0022167812471076 Chen, G. (2017, October). The influence of ancient Chinese literati on the artistic development of Guqin [Paper presentation]. The 4th International Conference on Education, Language, Art and Inter-cultural Communication, Moscow, Russia. http://www.icelaic.org/2017// Fitzpatrick, E. (2016). The art of letting the ghost come back: A serendipitous tale of exploring the complex issue of becoming a p¯ akeh¯ a educator [Doctoral dissertation, The University of Auckland]. E-theses University of Auckland. http:// hdl.handle.net/2292/30913 Green, D. (2016). Quake destruction/arts creation: Arts therapy & the Canterbury earthquakes [Doctoral dissertation, The University of Auckland]. Etheses University of Auckland. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/28871 Greene, M. (1980). Aesthetics and the experience of the arts: Towards transformations. The High School Journal, 63(8), 316–322. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/40365004 Irwin, R. L. (2003). Towards an aesthetic of unfolding in/sights through curriculum. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 1(2), 63–78. Kitazawa, M. (2020). Asian art therapists: Navigating art, diversity and culture. Routledge. Kreuzer, M., Mühlbacher, H., & von Wallpach, S. (2018). Home in the remaking: Immigrants’ transcultural experiencing of home. Journal of Business Research, 91(October), 334–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017. 10.047 Laozi. (1972). Tao Te Ching. Vintage Books. LeBlanc, N., & Irwin, R. L. (2019). A/r/tography. Oxford Researc Encyclopedia of Education. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.393 Levine, S. K. (2015). The Tao of Poiesis: Expressive arts therapy and taoist philosophy. Creative Arts in Education and Therapy, 1(1), 15–25. https:// doi.org/10.15534/CAET/2015/1/4 Li, C. (2008). The ideal of harmony in ancient Chinese and Greek philosophy. Dao, 7 (1), 81–98. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-008-9043-3 Li, W. W., Hodgetts, D., & Ho, E. (2010). Gardens, transitions and identity reconstruction among older Chinese immigrants to New Zealand. Journal

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of Health Psychology, 15(5), 786–796. https://doi.org/10.1177/135910531 0368179 Li, C. (2014). The Confucian philosophy of harmony. Routledge. Li, C. (2015). An outline of Chinese traditional philosophy. Paths International Ltd. Mittal, M., & Wieling, E. (2006). Training experiences of international doctoral students in marriage and family therapy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 32(3), 369–383. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0606.2006.tb0 1613.x Qing, Z. (2015). Guqin’s yin yang balance 古琴中的阴阳平衡. Yangshen Yuekan 养生月刊, 8, 759. Schultz, C. Z., & Legg, E. (2020). A/r/tography: At the intersection of art, leisure and science. Leisure Sciences, 42(2), 243–2522. https://doi.org/10. 1080/01490400.2018.1553123 Springgay, S., Irwin, R. L., & Kind, S. W. (2005). A/r/tography as living inquiry through art and text. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(6), 897–912. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1077800405280696 Tan, L., & Lu, M. (2018). I wish to be wordless: Philosophizing through the Chinese Guqin. Philosophy of Music Education Review, 26(2), 139–154. https://doi.org/10.2979/philmusieducrevi.26.2.03 Tang, N. M., & Gardner, J. (1999). Race, culture and psychotherapy: Transference to minority therapists. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 68, 1–20. https://doi. org/10.1002/j.2167-4086.1999.tb00634.x Turner, V. W. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and antistructure. Aldine Pub. Co. Turner, V. W. (1992). Blazing the trail: Way marks in the exploration of symbols. The University of Arizona Press. Wang, R. R. (2005). Dong Zhongshu’s transformation of yin-yang theory and contesting of gender identity. Philosophy East and West, 55(2), 209–232. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4487951 Wang, R. R. (2015). Yinyang narrative of reality: Chinese metaphysical thinking. In C. Y. Li & F. Perkins (Eds.), Chinese metaphysics and its problems (pp. 16– 32). Cambridge University Press. Yang, Q. (2008). Possible inspiration offered by the yin-yang theory of the book of changes regarding the course of human culture in the twenty-first century. Contemporary Chinese Thought, 39(3), 23–38. https://doi.org/10. 2753/CSP1097-1467390302 Yedidia, T. (2005). Immigrant therapists’ unresolved identity problems and countertransference. Clinical Social Work Journal, 33(2), 159–171. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10615-005-3530-3 Zhao, L. (2017). Research on the modelling and style of the Guqin 古琴式样的造 型研究 [Masters dissertation, Qingdao University of Science and Technology 青岛科技大学]

CHAPTER 6

Making Identity Through Crisis

Abstract In this chapter, I explore how the concept of harmony and identity development theory help me deepen my understanding of the in-betweenness within my identity formation process during the Covid19 crisis. Through arts-based inquiry, I discover more layers of harmonic relationships between my two cultures and explore how the suppressed elements of the in-betweenness in my immigrant therapist identity arise at a critical turning point in my identity development. I then emphasise how arts-based inquiry allows me to gain balance and harmony between my two cultures in this unexpected crisis. At the end of this chapter, I conclude that harmony, as it occurs in the harmonisation process, is not a fixed point between my two cultures, but it is an ever-changing and ever-renewing process. Keywords Crisis · Identity development · In-betweenness · Harmonisation · Transformation

My arts-based research through my guqin-making is interrupted by the sudden eruption of the Covid-19 crisis, taking my arts-based research journey to a situation I was not prepared for. The Covid-19 crisis removes me from my planned or expected research journey, and opens © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. Wang, Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32527-4_6

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a transitional-liminal space for my research on in-betweenness (Green et al., 2022, p. 63). Critical autoethnography and a/r/tographic inquiry allows me as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist to learn from the complex process of practicing arts therapy and reflecting on my practice through arts in this challenging time. Arts-based research is not “fixed or static” but rather changeable lived experiences through space and time, “producing multiple un/expected spaces of learning” (LeBlanc & Irwin, 2019, p. 5). The Covid-19 crisis is the unexpected learning space for this research. I challenge myself as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist to rethink “how ‘knowing’ is construed and performed” in this unexpected crisis (Green et al., 2022, p. 63). The pandemic creates challenges but also presents an opportunity for me to alchemise my ‘knowing’ between problems and solutions, discomfort and comfort, loss and gain in the process of research (Kara & Khoo, 2022, p. 1). In this chapter, I cherish the challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic and continuously immerse myself in arts-making throughout a time of global crisis. I embrace the opportunity to understand how the concept of harmonisation impacts on my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist growing through a crisis.

Encountering Crisis On 20th January 2020, two months after my trip back to China, I received upsetting news from my hometown: my dearest grandmother had passed away at age 93. At the last dinner gathering with my grandmother during that trip, she sang a song which she had sung many times to settle me to sleep when I was little. I filmed her singing, and did not realise it would be the last image I would have of her. I was greatly saddened by my grandmother’s passing and I wanted to make the trip to attend her funeral. When I was preparing to book flight tickets, I learnt from the internet that the news about the deadly Covid-19 virus outbreak had been officially announced by the Chinese authorities that same day, the 20th of January. Because of this announcement of the outbreak, my relatives decided to hold a small funeral and advised all relatives who lived in different cities not to attend the funeral in person. The crisis unfolded quickly in my hometown. The day after my grandmother’s funeral, my hometown entered a full lockdown. Lockdown was a new concept for me at that time, as well as for my friends and relatives who were in the centre of the storm. I heard there were shortages of

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food during the lockdown, and my friends and relatives only had limited opportunities to leave their homes to find food and supplies. I could do almost nothing for them in New Zealand. I tried to find some surgical masks to send to my friends and relatives in China so I went to all the shops I could think of. To my surprise, all surgical masks were already completely sold out. Other cities in China had gone into full lockdown before my hometown. Many Chinese immigrants in New Zealand were buying all the surgical masks they could find to send to China for their relatives and to donate to frontline health workers. In the shops, standing in front of the empty shelves, I could sense the tension in the people passing around me. The mood of the people in my adopted land slowly changed as the chaotic situation unfolded, rapidly and silently, like an invisible monster wreaking havoc on the whole world. Although New Zealand is an island country far away from most nations, the convenience of modern air and sea travel meant this idyllic Middle-earth was not insulated against the danger. After the first confirmed Covid-19 case in New Zealand was reported, the entire nation started feeling the pressure and fear. In my own life, Covid-19 reached crisis status unexpectedly quickly. By early March 2020, the number of Covid infection cases in New Zealand was doubling or tripling every day. In order to deal with my own anxiety and fear about the outbreak, I spent some time making masks from old bedsheets for my family. For the first time, I went to a supermarket with my DIY mask on. I did not know how effective my DIY mask might be in terms of keeping me safe from the risk of infection, but it was the only way to keep me feeling safer psychologically. The supermarket was crowded. In New Zealand, I had never seen a supermarket that intensely busy before. There were long queues everywhere and almost everyone was shopping or waiting in silence. Then a p¯ akeh¯ a1 lady beside me started staring at me with an unfriendly gaze. She was possibly in her 60s and was tidily dressed. I moved away from her to continue my shopping at a vegetable stand. Then, she moved in front of the vegetable box, continuing to stare at me with anger and cruelty in her eyes. I do not know how long this lasted, but it felt like a long time. I did not say anything or do anything, but I looked back at her. Her facial expression was full of disgust and revulsion. This look saddened my heart. I walked as far away from her as I could. A few minutes later, when I was on the other side of the supermarket, an older p¯ akeh¯ a man, probably in his 70s, looked at me, also with an expression of anger and cruelty. This time, he uttered some nasty words to me, shaking his head with disgust.

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I asked him: “What’s your problem with me?” He did not answer, but repeated the nasty words. There were people passing between us, but no one seemed to notice our exchange. I finished my shopping as quickly as I could and fled from the unpleasant moments I had just encountered. I had never experienced that kind of disgusted and revolted look in almost twenty years of living in my adopted land. I had endured racist attitudes on rare occasions in the past, but that day I encountered them twice in a short space of time. As a Chinese immigrant, I had just experienced first-hand the rapid elevation in racist attitudes in the community which was being fuelled by the stress of the unfolding pandemic. I understood those vulnerable older people were also anxious, scared, even angry about this unpredictable situation. I knew this age group of people needed support and help the most, especially those living by themselves. With my therapist hat on, I had the impulse and desire to help these people. With my immigrant hat on, I had a sense of grievance, sadness and anger, but also anxiety and fear. Crisis is a disruption which affects and threatens “basic assumptions” “subjective sense of self” and “existential core” (Pauchant & Mitroff, 1992, p. 15). Identity is about sameness and continuity with social roles (Erikson, 1963, p. 261). During this Covid-19 epidemic, my identity was not only that of creative arts therapist, supporting other people’s psychological needs, but it was the same as any other person who was fearful of this unknown virus. I did not have an in-between space for this sense of self who was facing this new and unexpected reality like everyone else. From the online conversations and shared moments in WeChat,2 I saw I was not alone in feeling that kind of anxiety and fear. In the first twenty-four hours after the New Zealand Government’s national lockdown announcement on the 23rd of March 2020, many Chinese immigrants clearly became very fearful and anxious about their safety. Several people from my own community went to gun shops to buy guns so that they felt able to protect themselves. Many of them had never touched a gun before. In this unexpected crisis, tensions and contradictions had been intensified into conflicts. Li (2014) indicates that harmony starts off recognising co-existing parties with various differences and various levels of tension arise from these differences; consequently, these tensions result in conflicts (p. 9). The unexpected and uncontrollable crisis was like the activator that intensifies the differences into tensions, and amplifies the tensions into conflicts. The Covid-19 crisis made the

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whole New Zealand community anxious and fearful about the situation; as a result, otherwise-hidden racism bubbled to the surface. Tensions between different communities become conflicts. As a minority, my identity as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist gives me the opportunity to confront the intensification of contradictions.

Hsi兮 Creating Space Coming back from the shopping, my mind was preoccupied by the disgusted stares and nasty words, but also full of sadness and grievance. I went to my tea house to have a cup of tea to calm myself. My little tea house in my garden had become my place to escape and relax. The tea house was a physical in-between space I created after my trip to China and I had redecorated this space with many Chinese elements. Some of them I brought from my homeland, and some of them I found and modified in my adopted land. I had my lotus painting on the wall. The lotus flower was a supportive and symbolic metaphor for myself which I discovered during the arts-based research journey of my Master in Arts Therapy (Wang, 2017). I also had a portrait painting on a round wood panel on the wall, which I created when I was exploring the M¯aori culture in my adopted land through arts-making methods from my root culture. A corner shelf was full of Chinese philosophy books and guqin books. The tea table was made by my husband, and there was a Chinese tea set on it which was also from him. Another item on the table was my little Bonsai, which was in a pot with two stones from my childhood playground. This space was my attempt to find an emotional balance in the home-making process through introducing physical elements to connect to my root culture (Kreuzer et al., 2018). In this place, I felt calmness and safety. With a warm cup of tea in my hand, I realised my mind was still busy. I thought about the p¯ akeh¯ a man and woman I encountered in the supermarket. I thought about their unfriendly gaze and words, but also their anxiety and fear. I thought about my Chinese immigrant community, and our shared anxiety and fear. In my garden tea house, I had the impulse and desire to share with them my emotional balance gained from my home-making efforts in this little physical in-between space (Image 6.1).

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Image 6.1 My garden tea house (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2019. Photograph)

With the fast-developing pandemic crisis situation in New Zealand, I needed to be prepared to be able to work from home for my creative arts therapy practice. Working from home changed the dynamic of my professional therapeutic space. I was working from my private home environment with my clients who were also in their private home environments. Sitting in my newly decorated tea room, and sensing the peacefulness it provided me, I wanted to share my physical in-between space, and to share this sense of calmness and safety with my clients. Therefore, I decided to set up an online session room inside my tea house. I tried several positions for my desk in order to get the computer camera facing the most relaxing view of my tea house. I left my meditation cushion in the room and opened the blinds to let the sun shine in. I left all my Chinese elements, objects and gifts on the shelf and tea table. I made sure that, through the computer camera’s view, my clients would be able to see my lotus flower painting. When I sat in front of my work desk, I felt the strength from all of these objects supporting my back: the stones from my hometown, the symbol from my research journey, the books full of Chinese wisdom and objects from my beloved people. In this in-between space Far away from my homeland

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But so near my heartland The tea on the table Taking me back to the tea field The lotus in the painting Letting me sit in front of my lake The stones in the Bonsai pot Allowing me to be that fearless child The books in the corner Talking to me in comforting language In this in-between space I invite you People in my adopted land To smell my tea To see my lake To hear the comforting voice To settle with me In my heartland Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2020

With these comforting poetic words in my heart, despite the chaotic situation outside, in this in-between space, the angry gazes faded, the nasty words lost their sting, the anxiety and fear slowly left my mind. Whenever I remembered encountering those crisis-intensified conflicts as an immigrant, I reminded myself to focus on the physical elements in my home to realise an emotional balance in the home-making process (Kreuzer et al., 2018). However, this home-making process was not only for myself to feel comfortable as an immigrant; by sharing my in-between physical space, I enlarged and extended my emotional belonging and emotional balance to my community as an immigrant creative arts therapist. I shared the in-between space which nurtured self-care and calmed my heart with the hope that the space would care for and calm other people’s hearts during that extraordinary time. The intensified tensions around the kind of racism I experienced placed constraints on interactions about differences and generated the drive to advance coordination (Li, 2014, p. 9). By sharing my physical in-between space with my clients from diverse cultures, I attempted to create interaction and coordination between my root culture and adopted culture. In the ensuing online sessions in my newly organised session room/ tea house, which took place before New Zealand entered its first full lockdown, I proudly introduced my home elements to my clients and

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introduced my root culture and wisdom to them. By sharing my experience of being comforted by my home elements, I encouraged my clients to find their own comfort and strength to deal with that time of crisis. In those online sessions, my clients showed me their spaces and their home elements too. There were children’s drawings on their walls, gifts from their friends and plants that they cared for. Through the sharing of each other’s home elements, I extended the conversations into how to help my clients set up support systems for themselves and their loved ones. Through sharing my home elements with my clients and letting my clients share their home elements with me, I felt I was moving freely between my root culture and adopted culture. By inviting my clients into these inbetween physical spaces with me, I eased the tensions and conflicts I was experiencing during the crisis, and transformed the tensions and conflicts between my two cultures into coordination and cooperation.

Hsi兮 Finding a Voice My guqin-making teacher called me to inform me that guqin-making class was cancelled due to the pandemic situation. I really missed my guqin. I missed its texture and warmth, and I missed its voice. My guqin-making process was near its end, but I could not finish it as planned. The crisis interrupted many people’s lives, and it interrupted my arts-based research through guqin-making. It started raining hard in Auckland after several months of dry days. Under the gloomy sky, everything became grey, including my mood. Without finishing my guqin, I did not know how to finish my arts-based research journey. In my arts-based research, I had not allowed for that kind of disruption. I knew the identity formation process was not something that can be planned, and there would always be unknown elements in the process, for example, that unexpected crisis. The number of confirmed Covid-19 patients had been increasing at an alarming speed. With so much uncertainty around, many people were scared and panicking. There were long lines in the supermarket and there were tensions between some shoppers about food. In the unexpected crisis, people were trying in their own ways to survive. Looking at video footage of some panic-shoppers, I did not know how to respond. I worried about my family. During the nationwide full lockdown, would my family have enough food to get through? Then, I thought about an

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old lady who I saw during my most recent grocery shopping trip. She was moving very slowly with her walking frame piled up with groceries. She could not manage a shopping trolley while using her walking frame. Looking at her slow, careful movement, I felt sad. Who would accompany and support her during the lockdown? Also, I thought about my clients. With a newly set-up session room in my tea house, I had already had a few online sessions with them. In those sessions, many of them shared their anxiety about the lockdown. There were people with couple-relationship issues who needed to confine themselves together with their tensions during the lockdown. There were people with anxiety and depression issues. Some of them had the risk of suicidal ideation. As an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, what was my identity in the crisis? I was unsettled throughout the last 24 hours before the first national lockdown in New Zealand, with my worries as well as the desire to do something for my community going around and around in my mind. I remembered a specialist health reporter from the New Zealand Herald. I had read some of her articles in the past. I thought about contacting her to see if she would be interested in what I hoped to share from my therapy knowledge about how to look after personal wellbeing through the lockdown. But, was I qualified enough and brave enough to offer such a voice? Who are you? You are not the top expert in the field And no one would be interested to know you Just like the old times You will always be invisible in this adopted land I am a therapist With compassion, empathy and aroha in my heart I want to offer my voice with all these from my heart To care and support my people My people in this adopted land

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Who are you? You cannot even speak in perfect English And someone might laugh at you Just like the old times You will always be suppressed in this adopted land I am an immigrant With trauma, pain but also courage in my heart I want to offer my voice with all these from my heart To show and to make a loud statement To people in this adopted land Who are you? With naïve and immature speech Your voice is worthless and pointless Just like the old times Your voice would be heard by no one I am an immigrant therapist With an immature voice With my accent and insecurity But it is my voice from my heart It might be worthless and pointless to some But it will be a milestone for me Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2020

Hsi兮 Through poetic exploration, I entered the space in between the old me and new me. I let the old me as a new immigrant speak from my hurt heart but also encouraged the new me as an immigrant creative arts therapist to speak with compassion. In this poetic exploration, I let the new me comfort the old me with embodied strength from this arts-based research journey. After writing this poem, I found the courage to contact the reporter. While writing my letter to the reporter, I thought about the first time I heard my guqin’s voice, the moment when my heart was resonating with the vibration of our shared immature voice. I thought about the unfriendly gazes and nasty words from the supermarket visit. I thought about the old lady’s laboured progress with a pile of groceries on her walking frame. I thought about the anxious conversations among the Chinese community on social media. I thought about my clients’ anxieties and worries. Through the poetic exploration, all the tensions and conflicts I experienced as an immigrant as well as a therapist came to

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the surface. These imbalanced and suppressed elements in the formation of my identity had reached a critical turning point where my identity development needed to change from one mode to another for transformation and growth (Erikson, 1968). The crisis became the activating agent for me to reach the critical turning point of my identity formation process. The social influences from the Covid-19 crisis guided the formation of my identity as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist to find the balance between tensions and conflicts for my identity development (Batra, 2013). At the end of my letter to the reporter, I wrote: “Although I am an immigrant, New Zealand is my home too. I want to protect New Zealand with aroha for all of our people. Please be kind and supportive to each other, regardless of race and culture. The virus does not care about race”. I did not know how many of my suggestions would be useful during that stressful time and I was not even sure my email would be answered. However, I had to contribute my voice, as an immigrant therapist. To my surprise, the reporter was very interested in my letter. I learned that though she would still come back to me for some clarifications, she had already reserved a space to publish my comments that same afternoon. At the end of our conversation, I requested that she use my Chinese name on the article. About twelve hours before New Zealand went into lockdown, I was reading through my published comment piece online. All my points and opinions were there without much editing. I read the piece carefully, as if I was just a reader from the public. I tried to imagine that the old man who spoke the nasty words to me was reading it; the old lady with the walking frame was reading it; my immigrant community was reading it; my clients were reading it. My eyes became misty when I read the last sentence, “We can go through another great social trauma together again by caring for ourselves and each other” (Russell, 2020). My immature voice made me finally, truly believe that I was part of the ‘we’ of New Zealand. All my immigration experiences and displacement traumas had made me who I was, as an immigrant and as a creative arts therapist. At that moment, when I saw my voice published in the mainstream media as a professional opinion piece, I believed I was strong, brave, knowledgeable and compassionate enough to care for myself and the ‘we’ of all New Zealanders. With my immature voice being heard, I felt the anger, worries, anxiety and uncertainty in my heart because of that unexpected crisis, with all of its tensions and conflicts, fading away.

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This unexpected crisis had manifested my “adaptive strength” within my identity to realise a “vigorous unfolding” of a new stage of the formation of my identity as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist (Batra, 2013, p. 256). However, without my arts-based journey with my guqinmaking, I would not have had the opportunity to meet my “adaptive strength” within my immigration experience, my root culture, and the wisdom from my ancestors. My guqin’s immature voice encouraged me to “vigorously unfold” my own immature voice for my identity development. The guqin-making process cultivated my inner force from my emotions, feelings and emerging maturity, and my outer forces from my profession, community and culture (Batra, 2013, p. 256). The guqinmaking had prepared me for the unexpected crisis. Through direct stress from the Covid crisis and through interaction with my inner force and outer force, my identity development—like the stone formation process I discussed in my previous chapter: A Stone In-between—entered its next manifestation. In that unexpected crisis, I wondered if I really encountered guqinmaking by fate. The guqin-making journey guided me to the spiritual strength and cultural support I really needed to endure the unexpected crisis, as an immigrant, as well as a creative arts therapist. I was grateful for the treasures from my ancestors. I was appreciative of the honest conversation with my guqin. I was honoured by the knowledge and strength I had gained from my ancestors’ wisdom. I was pleased that my guqin and I had finally realised the transformational manifestation of our identity development process together in my arts-based research journey (Image 6.2).

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Image 6.2 Lacquering stage (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2020. Photograph)

Hsi兮 Focusing on the Body On the first day of New Zealand’s first national lockdown, I was calm and relaxed. The sun’s rays were warm and comfortable on my body. Autumn was on its way. I really like autumn because of the red leaves and the abundant seasonal fruit. Autumn does not have the restlessness of summer, the cruelty of winter, nor the impetuousness of spring. Autumn is the season of acquisition. In the Chinese five-element concept, autumn belongs to metal, indicating the golden season (Ross, 2011). Metal/autumn allows

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me to see my immigrant artist/researcher/therapist experience in a purer and clearer light in order to gather from the harvest and sort the good from the bad of my arts-based research journey (Ross, 2011). Lying on the deck of my Auckland home and looking up at the autumn trees, I asked myself: if I was a tree, in this golden season, what kind of fruit would I produce? The first client of the day sang a song with me during our online session. As I listened to her voice, I felt something throughout my body. After the session, as usual, I started my own creative reflection as a way to debrief the session. I wrote a poem to document the embodied sensation I felt when I was listening to her song. I am her tree to provide the resting spot Under my shade she is singing I hear her soft and calming voice From her hurting heart With her hope and determination Her voice is warm and confident Like sunshine behind the dark clouds Trying to penetrate the darkness and touch the top of the tree I am that tree Hearing her soft and calming voice Feeling the warmth through my body and heart Dancing with my soul and mind Singing along with her comforting words Swaying with her heart-melting tune On this cloudy day I am as a tree Needing this warmth and comfort To grow and mature To be able to stand strongly For my people passing by Providing the cover and the resting spot In the unexpected stormy rain Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2020

In this poem, through the metaphor of a transplanted tree, my identity as an immigrant creative arts therapist helped me to seek the warmth of the sun behind the clouds and stand strong for my people in the darkness

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of that unexpected crisis. In this crisis, I saw how my clients supported me to be balanced in the “rain and wind”, to find the harmony within my heart and soul. With a lightness in my heart after my poetic reflection, I picked up my sketchbook and painted a cloud against a background of sky. In this painting, the sun was shining on the cloud with beauty and hope. I wrote “if the cloud knows” in Chinese on my painting. In my adopted land, Aotearoa, “the land of the long white cloud”, my identity as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist brought me the hope and strength I needed for that turbulent time. Under that fragment of light but hopeful cloud, my heart was full of peace and solidness/stability. It was the harmony I had been looking for and hoped to find for my heart and soul, to fill the emptiness that entered me during my trip to China (Image 6.3). My body is full of water With emotions, memories and feelings flowing

Image 6.3 If the cloud knows (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2020. Watercolour on paper)

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It travels through my veins With the yin energy With you, my people We meet by chance In the shared in-between space With my persistence and effort I found the warmest spot Through the darkness Through your struggles With my strength and compassion I found the golden rays Behind your pure heart Behind your beautiful soul The warm golden rays from your heart Are like the sun With the yang energy We meet with our beautiful souls In the space in between Together We become the clouds Floating peacefully and steadily Together We found the harmonic in-between space Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2020

The in-between space created by arts-making had become an explorable site for me to recognise the positive and yang energy from working with my clients. Through intra-acting with my guqin, my images, my music, my poetry and my story, I flowed with my embodied sensations, felt the warmth and calmness and moved with the rhythm. In this in-betweenness between my root culture and adopted culture, I harmonised the conflicts within my negative past experience from being an immigrant as well as a creative arts therapist and discovered the peaceful, stable and harmonic moments in my heart. In that moment, I felt my heart was not empty anymore. My heart was full. It was full of the balanced emotions between the past and present, between my homeland and my adopted land, between old me and new me. According to Li (2014), through coordination, tension between different parts is transformed, and in this process different parties “undergo mutual

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transformation and form harmonious relationships” (p. 9). My poetic exploration and cloud imagery helped me to visualise the natural mutual transformations and to realise the harmony within my identity as an immigrant arts therapist. The stability/solidness of the harmonic cloud indicated that the harmony in my in-betweenness between my homeland and adopted land was reachable and the imbalanced tension and conflict from my displacement experience was balanceable in the in-between space created by the arts-making process.

Hsi兮 Entering In-Betweenness Again The 4th of April 2020, which fell within the second week of the lockdown, was the Ching Ming 清明 Festival. It is a traditional Chinese festival, and this is a day for Chinese people to pay their respects to deceased ancestors and family members, and to remember them. According to my hometown’s tradition, we visit our ancestors’ graves and saomu 扫墓 (sweep the grave). On this day, we often bring food and wine to the graveyard, to ‘feed’ our ancestors and to talk to them about how the past year has been. On this Ching Ming Festival, I had mixed emotions. I was sad, because I could not pay respects in front of my dearest grandmother’s new grave. I was sad, because the number of deaths from the spread of Covid-19 around the world was rising horrifyingly fast. In the past few months, I had not been able to talk to my friends and relatives in China openly about the outbreak, and I could not share what I had seen and heard about the deadly outbreak in the worst areas of my home country. I knew many social media platforms which are popular in the Chinese community were not a place for free speech. As an immigrant, I was angry that many of my friends and relatives were unable to know what was really happening right under their noses. Weighed down by this mixture of sad and angry emotions, the words I could not speak stuck in my throat. I felt the suffocation which had been following me since the trip back to my home country close in on me. I needed to breathe. I needed to express those emotions. I had to find a way to let the heaviness out. I turned to my comforting space where the guqin waited. I played it without any clear intention but was driven by my sadness and anger. The guqin started to sing the words that were stuck

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in my throat. The guqin was singing with me in our shared first language with our deep emotions.3 梨花雨轻下, 堆堆新老坟, 梨花雨飘落, 鬼魅仍肆孽, 梨花雨纷飞, 旧侣阴阳隔, 严父留片语, 梨花雨吹残, 浮生多事秋, 今妻离子散, 梨花雨消散, 谁视而不见, 春寒还料峭, 梨花雨哭尽, 吾思不敢忘, 孤灯悲凄泣,

落地无声息。 可有子孙祭。 魂飞魄未尽。 苟且偷喘息。 尽酒心冤起。 遗子无人惜。 慈母成灰烬。 别难相送易。 无奈留英名。 黄泉汝叹息。 散不尽愤然。 草后墓志铭。 斜阳苍无力。 双烛祭清明。 生死两茫茫。 念亲等黎明。

The pear blossom 4 lightly falling like rain Touching on the ground silently Masses of old and new graves Will the children and grandchildren come to visit? The The there The The

pear blossom gracefully falling like rain yang part of the souls 5 has left but the yin part of the souls is stuck monsters are still wreaking havoc survivors are hiding not daring to breathe

The pear blossom gently falling like rain Finishing the wine in the cup while the feeling of injustice rises from the heart Yin and Yang 6 have separated the loving couple No one would look after this orphan The father was only able to leave a few words The mother has become ash by herself alone The pear blossom sorrowfully falling like rain It is easy to walk along but hard to say goodbye Pity you, living in this troubled time

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Helplessly leaving a hero name Now you are separated from your wife and son Will you sigh on the road of Huang Quan 7 ? The pear blossom miserably disappearing like rain But unable to dissipate the anger Who is pretending not to see? The epitaph behind the newly grown grass It is still shivering in the early spring But the sun’s rays are so pale and weak The pear blossom sadly disappearing like tears The two candles are the memorial ceremony in the Ching Ming 8 I do not dare to forget I am alive but they have died The lonely light is crying desolately Missing the departed dearest and waiting for the dawn Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2020

I wrote this poem in traditional Chinese five-word rhythmic poetry. Five-word rhythm was used in many traditional guqin songs, for example, The moon of Mount Guan 关山月and Zhaojun’s complaint昭君怨. My poetry for the Ching Ming Festival could not completely express my mixed emotions. With the guqin, through my music, sound and rhythm, however, my mixed emotions were emphasised and expressed at a deeper level9 . I could share this voice, laden with my emotions, with my friends and relatives in my homeland without fear, and allow suppressed people to express their own sadness and anger with me by hearing the voice from my guqin and me. The night was so quiet, and the moon was so bright. Listening to the crickets’ singing, I had the illusion that the unexpected crisis had passed. I sang my poem in my heart with my guqin’ s voice to express another moment of conflict of being in between my homeland and adopted land. Immersing myself in the peaceful, quiet night, I understood that the harmonic space I was resting in was temporary. The peaceful night had arrived but another morning was approaching. When the formation of my identity reaches one new stage, the next cycle of differentiation, tension/conflict, interaction/cooperation and transformation starts (Li, 2014, p. 9). Reaching a harmonic state in the formation of my identity was not the final state, but another stage of an ongoing identity

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formation process. Through creating the poetic song on the guqin, I understood that my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/ researcher/therapist would always be swaying between imbalance and harmony because different elements of my two cultures would rise and meet at different times, constantly conflicting, cooperating and transforming. “A harmonious relationship” between my root culture and adopted culture “is maintained through continuous renewal” (Li, 2014, p. 9). Thus, I recognised that my identity formation would never reach a fixed point. The process of moving between my root culture and adopted culture would be constantly renewed and revised in the harmonious relationships between here and there, the past and the future, and the old me and new me. This spiral cycle brings the imbalanced elements in my identity formation process to harmonic relationships which include being different and being in tension or conflict, as well as being cooperative and collaborative, for the next impulse of transformation and growth in the formation of my identity (Image 6.4).

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Image 6.4 Qingxin guqin (Source Ying [Ingrid] Wang 2020. Photograph)

Several months after the first lockdown in New Zealand, I finally finished the nearly two-year guqin-making process. The piece of wood, which immigrated from my homeland to my adopted land, now had a new identity in the shared in-between space with me. I titled my guqin Qingxin 清心 which means purifying heart. Within my arts-based journey, my guqin and I had grown together and helped each other to enter new

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stages of the formation processes of our identities. I was giving the old piece of timber from my homeland a new identity while my guqin was helping me to transform my identity/ies. Along the arts-based research journey, my guqin and I had supported each other to re-member our identities. My leaf-shaped guqin guided me to find the new meaning of luo ye gui gen落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots) and helped me to return to harmony/stability. In the chaotic moments of a time of crisis, it helped me to cleanse my body, mind, heart and soul in order to let me sit in a balanced in-between space. The journey with my guqin rescued me from the fear and anxiety of being between the old me and the new me, between there and here and between departing and arriving. This movement between my root culture and adopted culture would not stop there. A/r/tography allows me to engage with arts and text, to move in and out of my two lands, to move between and within my two cultures; and most importantly, arts-based research enables me to find connections between my past and future, my old and new, my homeland and adopted land, my root culture and adopted culture, my practice and research, and my arts and theory, in a personal and cultural way (Irwin et al., 2006). The movement between my root culture and adopted culture would continue with every encounter with the world around me in my personal and professional life. But on that calm night, singing with my guqin, I rested in that temporary peaceful and balanced in-between space, paused the constant moving between my root culture and adopted culture. In that temporary resting space, my guqin helped me to sink my newly growing roots into that in-between place between my homeland and adopted land. Hsi兮 兮

Notes 1. Non-M¯aori or European. 2. WeChat is a Chinese social media platform which is popular among the Chinese community. 3. Recording for the guqin music-making: https://youtu.be/E9wcJ9ULEDc (Wang, 2020). 4. Pear blossom indicates the Ching Ming Festival season. It is from Song dynasty poet Weixin Wu’s poem about Ching Ming Festival in my hometown Hangzhou: 梨花风起正清明 (When the pear blossom flies, it is the Ching Ming Festival).

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5. According to the traditional Chinese concept, the yang part of the soul hun 魂 represents the spiritual and intellectual aspects of the soul, and the yin part of the soul po 魄 represents the bodily and animated principle (Oldstone-Moore, 2003, p. 87). 6. According to the traditional Chinese concept, yin is the place for the souls of deceased people and yang is the place for the living. 7. Huang Quan 黄泉 in Chinese mythology refers to the way to go to the place for dead souls after death. 8. Ching Ming Festival. 9. Xingyan Shun 孙星衍 (1753–1818) pointed out in his book, Annotations on modern and ancient essays of Shangshu尚书今古文注疏: 诗言志 (The poem is used to express people’s will), 歌咏言 (The song is the language of prolonged poetry), 声依咏 (The level of the sounds is matched to sing the long words to highlight the meaning of poetry) and 律和声 (The rhythms are used to harmonise the singing) (Shun, 2004).

References Alexander, D. (2005). Towards the development of a standard in emergency planning. Disaster Prevention & Management: An International Journal, 14(2), 158–175. https://doi.org/10.1108/09653560510595164 Batra, S. (2013). The psychosocial development of children: Implications for education and society - Erik Erikson in context. Comtemporary Education Dialogue, 10(2), 249–278. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973184913485014 Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society. Norton. Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. Norton. Green, D., Levey, A., Evans, B., Lawson, W., & Marks, K. (2022). The arts of making-sense in uncertain times: Arts-based research and autoethnography. In H. Kara & S. Khoo (Eds.), Qualitative and digital research in times of crisis: Methods, reflexivity and ethics (pp. 59–77). Bristol University Press. Irwin, R. L., Beer, R., Springgay, S., Grauer, K., Xiong, G., & Bickel, B. (2006). The Rhizomatic relations of a/r/tography. Studies in Art Education, 48(1), 70–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2006.11650500 Kara, H., & Khoo, S. (2022). Qualitative and digital research in times of crisis: Methods, reflexivity and ethics. Bristol University Press Kreuzer, M., Mühlbacher, H., & von Wallpach, S. (2018). Home in the remaking: Immigrants’ transcultural experiencing of home. Journal of Business Research, 91(October), 334–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017. 10.047 LeBlanc, N., & Irwin, R. L. (2019). A/r/tography. Oxford Researc Encyclopedia of Education. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.393

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Li, C. (2014). The Confucian philosophy of harmony. Routledge. Oldstone-Moore, J. (2003). Taoism: Origins, beliefs, practices, holy texts, sacred places. Oxford University Press. Pauchant, T. C., & Mitroff, I. I. (1992). Transforming the crisis-prone organization. Jossey-Bass Publishers Ross, M. (2011). Cultivating the arts in education and therapy. Routledge. Russell, E. (2020, March 24). 10 tips to help your wellbeing during lockdown. New Zealand Herald. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_ id=1&objectid=12319480 Shun, X. (2004). Annotations on modern and ancient essays of Shangshu 尚书今 古文注疏. Zhong Hua Shu Ju 中华书局 Wang, Y. (2017). Liminal space: Reverie and matter [Masters dissertation, Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design] Wang, Y. (2020, August 22). Pear blossom – Guqin [Video]. YouTube. https:// youtu.be/E9wcJ9ULEDc

CHAPTER 7

Re-Membering in Harmony

Abstract This chapter focuses on a broader context rather than personal narratives. It summarises the theories articulated in the previous chapters to establish the unique vantage point of the in-betweenness concept of harmony for exploring the immigrant identity formation process. I argue that the attitude of embracing stopping/resting has an important role in arts-based research methods. I reflect on how, by reaching a temporary, balanced resting in-between space, I am able to understand the in-betweenness between my two cultures as an awakening thinker. I also argue the importance of ancestral knowledge and wisdom for this study of the process of immigrant identity formation. This chapter attempts to establish the role of the in-betweenness concept of harmony as a cairn for future study journeys into cultural identity. Keywords Arts-based research · Resting · Awakening · Re-membering · Identity formation

At the end of this research journey, with the newly founded harmonic space between my two cultures in my heart, I am able to gather the ‘fruits’ from this arts-based research and discuss the insights I have gained through this cultural journey. In this final chapter, I am in a temporary © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. Wang, Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32527-4_7

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resting phase, and I have found a harmonic moment to look back at my messy and exhausting but also exciting and surprising arts-based journey of moving between my two cultures.

Resting With a cup of green tea, I rest with the pile of printouts of my writing, poems and paintings from this arts-based research journey. In this moment, it feels comfortable and natural to stop and be still. The place of harmony, the in-between space in my heart, is filled with the solidness and stability I was craving after my research trip to China. This solidness and stability in my heart offers me an anchor to hold my identity formation process in its present place for a while. I can temporarily rest in the peaceful in-betweenness between my homeland and adopted land. Looking back at the artworks and poetic explorations from this artsbased journey, with the stillness that comes from stopping and resting, I become aware of a new “light and sound” becoming available to me (Greene, 1980, p. 316). I sit still in the here and now My hand is full of the dust and sand Which I have gathered along my journey I hear the water flowing beside me The river formed from my ancestors’ blood and soul They are calling me To dip my body, mind, heart and soul into it

“My child, It has been a long and tough journey. You have travelled so far I can see your exhaustion My child Dip in my river which has been flowing for thousands of years To feel the support from me To float and to be still To rest and to fill”

I hear the calling from my river So, I listen

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With the handful of dust and sand I float and am filled I feel the freshness and peace of being still The reflection of the river’s surface is shining into my eyes The water washes off the dust and sand Through the gaps between my fingers Little by little

Little by little I see the shining light The golden reflection has appeared The surprise reward of my journey The gift from the river of my ancestors’ blood and soul Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2020

Through critical autoethnography, a/r/tography and arts-making, this arts-based research reveals that resting is another way to engage and discover “light and sound” in arts-based research. Through stopping and resting with my arts-making process, I realise Maxine Greene’s notion of a “certain attitude” to let “the sound and light” become “available to consciousness” also includes being comfortable with being still (Greene, 1980, p. 316). As an immigrant, I am used to moving between my cultures—moving from my homeland to my adopted land, moving from there to here and moving between old me and new me. The desire to find a sense of home in my adopted culture pushed me into a state of constant motion. This arts-based research allows me to experience the importance of being balanced between my two cultures, my homeland and adopted land, there and here, and old me and new me. The arts-making process helps me realise the solidness of the metaphorical stone residing in my heart between my root culture and adopted culture, and the stability of the metaphorical tree growing in this in-between space. This harmonic in-between space creates the desire, the need and the gravitational pull in me to rest in order to settle in this in-betweenness. With the newly founded solidness/stability in my heart, I find the courage to embrace this “certain attitude” of resting. Like other immigrant therapists, the feelings of vulnerability, frustration and confusion arising from my sense of displacement as a migrant were once disadvantages for me in my professional practice (Barreto, 2013, p. 343). My arts-based research creates a safe and non-threatening

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in-between place for me to reflect on and to understand these feelings without anxiety and fear, but with curiosity and creativity. Through artsmaking as inquiry, I flow, move and pause with the making process. Arts-based inquiry offers me a balanced resting place in the in-between space between my two cultures. In this in-between place, through stopping and resting, I gain strength from the ‘dust’ and ‘sand’ and sift out the ‘gold’ to enhance and enrich my professional practice. Resting with the ‘dust’ of vulnerability, I find the ‘gold’ of the recognition of the important moments of therapeutic connection and healing from being vulnerable. By inviting a client who used to suffer from low self-esteem to correct my English pronunciation, this client starts to recognise her own strength and ability to help other vulnerable people; by sharing the vulnerability I feel around the de-Chinese act of adopting my English name, a M¯aori client opens up about her own struggles with accepting a Europeanised pronunciation of her name; by letting another client lead me in dancing to her culture’s music during movement therapy, she gains a sense of more powerfully connecting to her own culture. My arts-based research recognises the advantages of being vulnerable as an immigrant creative arts therapist with accented English and with displacement traumas. Resting with the ‘dust’ of frustration around my limited cultural competence, I find the ‘gold’ of an open-minded attitude which in turn becomes a powerful tool for building strong therapeutic rapport with my clients from other cultures. When I taste a client’s Kawakawa 1 tea and learn that being gnawed by insects gives a Kawakawa leaf more potent medicinal properties, my client and I both feel inspired by M¯aori cultural healing; when I learn new M¯aori words and their significance within my client’s ancestral history, my client finds fresh motivation to connect to the spirituality within her own culture. When I sit alongside a client and draw the tree from her childhood memories of her homeland, she experiences the comfort of connecting with her root culture. My arts-based research reveals the advantages of feeling frustration as an immigrant creative arts therapist with limited cultural knowledge of other cultures. Resting with the ‘dust’ of confusion, I find the ‘gold’ of knowing to be more tolerant during my arts-based research and when accompanying my clients on their recovery journey. This arts-based research shows me that being confused is a necessary stepping-stone for being awakened through arts-making. Through exploring my own confusion and experiencing realisations and awakening moments within the space created by arts-making,

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I become more hopeful and patient while waiting for my clients’ own realisations and awareness to arise in their therapeutic journey through creativity. This research journey also shows me that confusion is rich soil from which surprising possibilities for arts-based research can germinate. This arts-based research uncovers the advantage of confusion in helping me generate the curiosity and motivation for being an immigrant artist/ researcher/therapist. In this research journey, I discover a new way to find a sense of belonging as an immigrant. This arts-based research endorses a different meaning of luo ye gui gen落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots) for immigrants, where it implies finding a sense of belonging. Through stopping and resting, I realise how this arts-based research encourages me to feel comfortable with “wu wei” 無為 (no-action) or being in stillness. Through the journey of studying my identity formation process, I return to my root/stillness and recognise that “stillness is the ruler of movement” (as cited in Li, 2008, p. 110). Through stopping and resting with my arts-making process, I realise what 落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots) really means for me. For me, 落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots) is not about reverting to my origin but is instead an attempt at finding a stable and balanced place between my root culture and adopted culture. With “wu wei” 無為 (no-action) or being in stillness, as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, I find a way to 落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots) and to find a sense of belonging in between my two cultures. This book argues that this attitude of embracing stopping/resting is an important part of arts-based research methods. In arts-based research, making arts, flowing with arts and immersing in arts allow the artsbased researcher to be a wounded and joyful wanderer in order to discover and gather valuable and insightful research data. However, stopping and resting with arts is also critical for arts-based research since being still enables the arts-based researcher to revisit the arts-making with a refreshed, balanced and harmonic body, mind and heart. I understand that the stillness needs to come after flowing and immersing in the arts-making. By gathering arts-research data as ‘dust’ and ‘sand’, in this stillness I can then pan for the ‘gold’ in my research materials from my arts-making process. Through this arts-based research, I have discovered that when harmony and balance are reached, returning to the root/ stillness between my two cultures becomes realisable and attainable.

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Awakening Through stopping and resting with arts, in the harmonic in-between space, I recognise that I was once a wounded wanderer but now I am an awakening thinker. Awakening leads to the process through which I come to know differently (LeBlanc & Irwin, 2019, p. 14). In this temporary balanced in-between space, as an awakening thinker I am not absolutely inactive but actively being awakened, moving towards the un/knowing. This awakening process within this arts-based research is supported by my ancestors’ knowledge. Into this journey I surrender to my desire For re/finding, re/connecting and re/learning I feel something awakening in my body With the emotions in my ancestors’ music With the wisdoms in my ancestors’ arts

Into this journey I surrender to my curiosity For re/finding, re/connecting and re/learning I feel something awakening in my heart My tongue tangled with my ancestors’ tone My fingers touch my ancestors’ soul

My Chinese body is awakened As well as the imprints That my ancestors left in me. Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2021

This book contributes an alternative ontological perspective for the study of identity through the concept of harmony. Through critical autoethnography, a/r/tography and arts-based inquiry, I surrendered to my desire to connect to my Chinese ancestors’ wisdom and allowed myself to overcome the anxiety of unknowing. I surrendered to my curiosity to immerse in my ancestors’ creation of music and to learn about an artform of my ancestors, the guqin. I surrendered with my braveness but also my trust in the power of arts, and my bravery was rewarded by many surprise encounters within the traditional artform-making process. I surrendered

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to my need to speak and to express through my mother-tongue, and the deeper emotional qualities of my narrative were awakened by connecting with the sound, the beauty and the deep meanings of my first language. This arts-based research shows me the important value of re/finding, re/ connecting and re/learning root culture and ancestral knowledge in the study of identity. Through this arts-based research, I showcase how to invite ancestral knowledge and wisdom into the study of identity. Birthplace and heritage are important and fundamental elements of who I am and am becoming (Cutcher, 2015, p. 133). I surrender passively to my desire and curiosity but actively engage in re/finding, re/connecting and re/learning my ancestral knowledge. By studying and understanding the concept of inbetweenness through the traditional Chinese philological perspective of harmony, I create a new platform for exploring, studying and understanding the immigrant identity formation process. With the knowledge from the traditional Chinese view of harmony, arts-based inquiry helps me to recognise the harmonic relationships of difference, conflict, cooperation, transformation and renewal within my identity formation process as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist. With the arts, I passively surrender in order to discover the hidden tensions of being different and in conflict, but actively make arts in order to meet with the transformation and new understanding. With the arts, I am able to experience and express, and able to understand that being imbalanced and feeling tensions and conflicts is a natural part of the harmonic relationships of in-betweenness. Through this arts-based research, I recognise the unique contribution of my cultural background into the study of identity. In the process of understanding the harmonic concept of inbetweenness, by surprise I find that M¯aori culture’s perspective on being balanced and in harmony has similarities to traditional Chinese philosophy. The M¯aori cultural concept of Rongo¯ a is about maintaining balance in the body, mind and spirituality (Hakaraia, 2019, p. 1). The way to know and sense the imbalance is through rongo (use all senses to hear, feel, smell and taste except sight) (Hakaraia, 2019, p. 1). The M¯aori term mauri expresses the idea of the inner life force and an activity inside of us (Hakaraia, 2019, p. 10; Mead, 2006, p. 81). If the mauri is at balance and peace, it is described as mauri tau; if mauri is still, it is described as mauri oho (Mead, 2006, p. 82). When mauri oho refers to an awakening, proactive state, the potential in M¯aori bodies of knowledge and wisdom can be unleashed (Pohatu, 2011, p. 6).

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To reference the M¯aori cultural concept of being balanced and in harmony, arts-making helps me to reach mauri tau—peace/balance or solidness/stability through exploring my life experience as an immigrant and my professional practice as a creative arts therapist. The embodied intra-action process within arts-making can be compared to rongo (use all senses to hear, feel, smell and taste except sight) (Hakaraia, 2019, p. 1). With embodied experience through arts-making, through entanglement with my images, narratives, poems, music and guqin-making, this study shows how this arts-based research journey helps me to be in the state of mauri oho—awakening in the stillness. In the state of mauri oho, the tension, the anxiety, the fear and the crises from my displacement experience are silenced. I am finally able to discover the knowledge and wisdom within my body as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist. Through arts-making and rongo, and through connecting with the old knowledge, in the state of mauri oho, the new potential in my Chinese body for knowledge and wisdom is unleashed.

Re-Membering Through stopping and resting in the harmonic in-between space, I recognise the important role of arts-making in this identity study. Sitting in this temporary balanced and still in-between space with my art from this arts-based journey, I discover the important fragments and moments in the arts-making process. In the in-between harmonic space created by arts-making, I look back at this arts-based research to reflect on the re-membering journey of my identity formation process. I re-member myself Piece by piece With my flesh, my blood, my skin and my hair With my tears, my scars, my bruises and my pain

I re-member myself Little by little With colour, lines, shapes and marks With sound, rhythm, movement and pause

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I re-member myself Moment by moment With my ancestors, my people and my children With past, present and future

I re-member myself Step by step With my journey from homeland to adopted land Within in-between space

I re-member myself Layer by layer With my body, mind, heart and soul With mauri tau, mauri oho and mauri ora Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2020

This arts-based research journey has showed me a way to study my identity formation process through a fresh lens of creativity. Re-membering my immigrant artist/researcher/therapist identity/ies requires a holistic approach to my embodied experience, memories and senses. Through arts-based inquiry, I creatively intra-act with my embodiment to allow myself to remember and feel my past displacement experience and professional experience in order to reflect on and understand my identity formation process. Exploration through arts-making, a/r/tography and critical autoethnography creates an in-between place between my two cultures, where the holistic approach becomes tangible and explorable. Through paintings, music, poetry and guqin-making/ playing, I have been involved in an embodied engagement and entanglement through all senses—seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. Arts-making, a/r/tography and critical autoethnography allow me to externalise my emotions, struggles and challenges and enable me to discover my growth, rewards and surprises in ‘tears’, ‘scars’, ‘bruises’ and ‘pain’, in a personal and cultural way.

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There are several benefits of exploring the topic of identity through different art forms. Through critical autoethnographic and a/r/tographic narrative in my stories, colours and shapes in my paintings, poetic and metaphorical language in my poems, textures and materials in my guqin-making, and tones and rhythms in my guqin-playing, the various memories and emotions are evoked and accessed through all senses— seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. Different art forms create different bridges for me to connect with the hidden or forgotten stories in my body. In this in-between space created by arts-based inquiry, various forms of arts-making process provide different perspectives for me to express and to feel the emotions associated with my displacement experiences as an immigrant and professional practice as a creative arts therapist. Through a/r/tography, I creatively and culturally inquire into my hyphenated identities as an immigrant/artist/researcher/therapist, lingering in the in-betweenness between an immigrant, an artist, a researcher and a therapist (Springgay et al., 2005, p. 902). A/r/tography allows me to stay in the “process of emergence” that embraces “becoming” an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist (LeBlanc & Irwin, 2019, P. 13), and in this process I meet the moments and fragments of my hyphenated identities in images, materials, poetic words, narratives, tones and rhythms from this cultural study and arts-based journey. This book showcases a/r/tographic inquiry through the lens of an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist. The term a/r/tography derives from the perspective of the artist/researcher/teacher with a variety of reflective practice engagements (Springgay et al., 2005). This study evinces the engagement of the different reflective practice within arts therapy for a/r/tography, and argues that a/r/tography has open-ended possibilities for other professional designations to engage in evocative and provocative research into living experiences. An a/r/tographic approach is not only an invitation for teachers to explore alternative educational opportunities, but also for therapists to quest for alternative therapeutic tools from their reflective practice. This work is an example of how to engage the making and researching process “to bridge rather than divide” the identities of artists, researchers and therapists, “and a way to find more relational potential in everyday practices” (Triggs & Irwin, 2019, p. 1).

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This book proves the significant role that arts play in the study of identity. This arts-based research enables me to connect ‘me’ to time, place and other people through arts-making. Through arts, I re-member my identity/ies as the “me-in-my-world” (Johnson, 2013, p. 36). In the arts-making process, with poetry, painting, music and guqin-making, I re-member my identity by remembering my experiences as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist with my full body, mind, heart,and soul to find a “self-in-process” (Johnson, 2013, p. 35). In this in-between place created by arts, arts-based inquiry allows me to study my identity formation process through immersing in and studying the moments of impact from my connection to time, place and other people in words, colours, lines, shapes, textures and rhythms. Moreover, this book provides authentic insight into how to trust in and navigate the power of arts. At the beginning of this identity research, I was afraid of entering this arts-based journey as arts-based research must not be rigidly structured and planned in order to allow for its fluidity and flow. Through this arts-based journey, I have learned that for me to be able to re-member my identity, I need to believe in the power of arts in order to fully immerse in the process of arts-making. In the process of arts-making, as an immigrant artist/researcher/therapist, I learn how to be a knower in search of the known (knowledge) through the knowing process of artsmaking (Yang, 2005, pp. 58–59). Through this research, I show that the known (knowledge) can only be open to the knower when the knower (arts-based researcher) is ready in the process of arts-making to realise the known (Yang, 2005, pp. 59–60). This readiness comes from the belief in arts, the willingness to immerse in various arts-making processes, the ability to explore research topics during the arts-making process and the application of critical thinking to understand through arts. In this arts-based journey, arts-making creates the in-between space for me to find my transformation, strength, growth and awakening moments by re-membering my body, mind, heart and soul, moment by moment and piece by piece. In this in-between space, I explore the disadvantages and advantages of my root culture and adopted culture, and experience both being wounded and joyful in between my two cultures. Arts-based research allows me to look at my displacement experience and professional experience from a creative perspective in order to recognise my strength, growth and potential and enlarge them into manifestation. I re-member this manifestation piece by piece in arts-making, and let my

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poetry, painting, music and guqin-making catch these positive movements in my identity formation process. Through this research journey, arts-based inquiry allows me to move between my root culture and adopted culture freely. It creates an inbetween space between my two cultures for me to stop moving for a while, to realise the importance of returning to root/stillness between my two cultures. In this in-between place of harmony, I find a place between my homeland and adopted land, and let my hurt roots sink into this nutritious soil. In this balanced in-between place, I stop moving but start growing from the best elements of my two cultures.

Note 1. Kawakawa is a beautiful New Zealand native plant with large, heart-shaped leaves.

References Barreto, Y. K. (2013). The experience of becoming a therapist in a foreign culture. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 53(3), 336–361. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0022167812471076 Cutcher, A. J. (2015). Displacement, dislocation and ethnicities. In A. J. Cutcher (Ed.), Displacement, identity, and belonging: An arts-based, auto/biographical portrayal of ethnicity and experience (pp. 119–134). Sense Publishers. Greene, M. (1980). Aesthetics and the experience of the arts: Towards transformations. The High School Journal, 63(8), 316–322. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/40365004 Hakaraia, J. (2019). Rakau: The sacred flow of light. Te Waka Rakau Johnson, M. (2013). Identity, bodily meaning and art. In T. Roald & J. Lang (Eds.), Art and identity: Essay on the aesthetic creation of mind (pp. 15–38). Rodopi. LeBlanc, N., & Irwin, R. L. (2019). A/r/tography. Oxford Researc Encyclopedia of Education. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.393 Li, C. (2008). The ideal of harmony in ancient Chinese and Greek philosophy. Dao, 7 (1), 81–98. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-008-9043-3 Mead, H. M. (2006). Tikanga m¯ aori: Living by m¯ aori values. Huia (NZ) Ltd. Pohatu, T. W. (2011). Mauri-rethinking human wellbeing. MAI Review, 3, 1–12. http://www.rangahau.co.nz/assets/Pohatu/Pohatu%20T%20Mauri.pdf

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Springgay, S., Irwin, R. L., & Kind, S. W. (2005). A/r/tography as living inquiry through art and text. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(6), 897–912. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1077800405280696 Triggs, V., & Irwin, R. L. (2019). Pedagogy and the A/r/tographic invitation. The International Encyclopedia of Art and Design Education. https://doi. org/10.1002/9781118978061.ead028 Yang, G. (2005). Knowing, being, and wisdom: A comparative study. Dao, 5(1), 57–72. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02857004

Epilogue

One evening near the end of 2022, and three years after my trip to China, I am standing outside a pizza restaurant in the centre of Dominion Road in Auckland city, New Zealand. Dominion Road has the most colourful mix of shops in Auckland, and it is the city’s most multicultural place for food and entertainment. Among all the shop signs there are a multitude of different languages—Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish, French, English and so on. Outside the pizza bar, I am standing in this misty evening on Dominion Road and feeling that I am at a physical in-between place. I have come to the Gorgeous New York Pizza Bar for a poetry night. As I have arrived early, I decide to go inside and order a pizza before the night starts. To be honest, I am not a pizza fan, but one of the items on the menu certainly catches my attention. It is a pizza topped with Peking duck, spring onion, cashews, hoisin sauce and mozzarella. With curiosity, I order this Peking duck pizza. When the hot pizza arrives on my table, the somehow familiar but also slightly foreign smell wafting from it brings a smile to my face. The taste of this culturally mixed pizza is divine. The Peking duck and spring onion evoke pleasant memories in my body, but the combination with mozzarella on the pizza topping creates a new pleasant memory in me. It is like my arts-based research journey which evoked my embodied memories but also added

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. Wang, Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32527-4

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new memories and feelings in my body, mind and soul—resulting in a truly unique experience of moving between my root culture and adopted culture. It is a busy poetry night. People are enjoying this kind of gathering during this new-normal post-Covid-crisis time. The small pizza bar is full of creative poets and poetry enthusiasts. I do not see myself as a poet, but on that misty poetry night, with the lovely after-taste in my mouth from the Peking duck pizza, I decide to share a poem that I wrote in Chinese. I wrote this poem on a sunny day in my garden while watching the clouds floating across the blue sky. Under the comforting sun rays, laying on the grass of my adopted land, I composed this poem expressing my love and longing for my distant homeland. I titled the poem The Love That Leaves No Trace. The blue of the sky In love with the green of the earth She watches from afar Frequently longing For tender shoots of the grass from light green to dark From a bud to a jade tip

The blue of the sky Her longing accumulates Piece by piece Thread by thread Finally, the quilt of tender love Turns into drops of water Drops of water carry All the warmth of the sky’s blue Into the arms of the grass Embracing the green of the earth The bright drops of water Disintegrate into the mist Reluctantly disappearing into the soil Without leaving a single trace

The blue of the sky In love with the green of the earth

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She watches from afar Frequently longing For the tips of the grass from dark green to light From a jade tip to a weathered stem

The blue of the sky watches silently While longing accumulates Waiting to become the next drop of water To sooth the loneliness of the green Once again Leaving not a single trace Ying (Ingrid) Wang, 2021

I wrote this poem after my trip to China. In this poem I compare my short trip to my homeland to becoming drops of water. The trip to my homeland is like the short physical touch of the water drops on the green grass. Back in my adopted land, I felt the physical contact with my homeland had disappeared without trace. But walking in my homeland again had left another permanent mark in my heart, and left me longing and craving for the next opportunity to physically connect with my homeland again. On the little stage in the pizza bar, I read my English translation of my poem slowly and carefully. I can still sense a little glimmer of insecurity in my heart when I speak English in public. I do not know if those listening to me can accept my Chinese accent, but I try my best to minimise it when I speak my adopted language. I am being over-careful with my spoken English, so I am unable to connect to the English words of my poem emotionally. My reading of the English translation of my poem sounds pale. After reading my translation, I want to leave the stage quickly but one of the audience members stops me and asks me to read my Chinese version of the poem. I look around the audience, scanning the attentive faces from a diverse range of cultures. In their eyes, I sense their gentle encouragement and their curiosity about my Chinese culture, so I return to the stage. Under the stage lights, I read my Chinese poem in my Chinese voice. As soon as my Chinese language comes out of my mouth, I feel a surge of emotions arising from my heart. My Chinese voice, my language of comfort, is singing with my emotions. I notice my hands dancing with my Chinese words, and I feel my emotions flowing through my body with the rhythmic sound of my mother-tongue.

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天空的蔚藍 愛上了碧綠的大地 她遠遠觀望著 她頻頻掛念著 草兒的嫩芽從青澀到清澈 從萌萌尖角到玉立亭亭 天空的蔚藍 積攢著她的思念 一絲一絲 一片一片 終於成堆的絨軟思念 變成了透亮見底的水滴 帶著體溫的水滴 天空的蔚藍用盡柔情 撲向草兒的懷裡 緊緊擁抱草兒的碧綠 蔚藍透亮的水滴 破了碎了 觸摸草兒的溫度 不捨地滴入大地 不留一絲痕跡 天空的蔚藍 愛上了碧綠的大地 她遠遠觀望著 草兒的碧綠從清澈到深邃 從亭亭玉立到風霜飽經 天空的蔚藍無聲無息地觀望著 默默地積攢著思念 期待著變成下一滴水滴 去撫慰碧綠的孤寂 即使依然 不留一絲痕跡

After reading my poem in Chinese, I look around my audience again. I know they cannot understand Chinese, but from their eyes, I can sense

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that they understand the emotions in my reading. I walk out of the busy pizza bar and stand in the misty rain outside. I need some space to calm my emotions. Reading the Chinese version of my poem really triggered feelings of longing for my homeland. Several people from the audience come to talk to me and express how much they were touched by my Chinese poem reading. I am overwhelmed by these people’s kind words and acceptance of my culture. On this misty evening, as I stand in my adopted land, I arrive in a true in-between place. I am in my adopted land and surrounded by my adopted culture, but I can always connect my root culture to this land through braveness, authenticity and creativity. These three elements in arts-based inquiry will always help me to fill the gap between my two cultures, to reduce the distance between my two lands, to find my unique way to move in-between. Feeling the acceptance of my root culture and Chinese language, I sense a desire to share this feeling with my qingxin guqin 清心古琴. Maybe on the next poetry night, this once dusty timber will sing with me, in our comforting mother-tongue, about the shared journey of moving in-between our adopted land and homeland.

Index

A Accent, 106, 124, 125, 135, 166, 179 Adopted culture, xiii, xv, 2, 3, 7, 9–13, 15, 16, 18–20, 33 Adopted land, 2, 9, 14, 16, 20, 21, 26, 28, 29, 35, 77–80, 84, 87, 89, 97, 102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 123, 128, 129, 132, 134, 141–143, 153–155, 157, 159, 160, 164, 165, 174, 178, 179, 181 Ancestors, 4, 12–14, 17, 84, 125, 150, 155, 168 Arriving, 2, 3, 15, 20, 25, 34, 36, 84, 87, 103, 106, 160 Artist, xiv, 9, 11 Artistic knowing, 19, 20, 122 A/r/tographic journey. See A/r/ tography A/r/tography, xiv, 9, 10, 78, 85, 86, 160, 165, 168, 172, 173 Arts, xiii, xiv, 1, 9, 11, 20, 31

Arts-based inquiry, xv, 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 78, 80, 84–86, 89, 97, 101, 112, 166, 168, 169, 172–174, 181 Arts-based research. See Arts-based inquiry Arts-making, 8–11, 16, 19–21, 31, 80, 84–86, 97, 102, 110, 117, 122, 124, 140, 165–167, 170, 172–174 Awakening thinker, 168 B Banana leaf, 80, 84, 107, 114, 132, 136 Biological clock, 132 Boundary turbulence, 31 C Cairn, 89, 90, 92, 93 Chineseness, 77 Ching Ming , 80, 155, 157, 160, 161 Collaborative, 158

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. Wang, Moving Between Cultures Through Arts-Based Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32527-4

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Complementary, 125 Conflict, 118, 122, 123, 125, 134, 142, 145, 146, 148, 149, 154, 155, 157, 158, 169 Confucianism, 122 Contradiction, 17, 18, 79, 106, 107, 142, 143 Conversational object, 92 Cooperative, 158 Coordination, 119, 145, 146, 154 Creative arts therapist, xiv, 9–11, 31, 92, 103, 112, 142, 149, 150, 154, 170, 172 immigrant creative arts therapist, 8, 10, 14, 87, 110, 111, 117–119, 123, 124, 132, 134, 145, 148, 152, 166 Creative arts therapy. See Creative arts therapist Crisis, 140, 142, 144, 146, 149, 150, 153, 157, 160 crisis-intensified conflict, 145 Critical autoethnographic research. See Critical autoethnography Critical autoethnography, 9, 10, 30, 31, 89, 140, 165, 168, 172 Cultural competence, 124, 166 D dao 道, 19, 80 Daoism, 122 Departing, 15, 20, 25, 34, 36, 103, 106, 160 Differentiation, 96, 109, 157 Discrimination, 118 Displacement, xiii, xv, 3, 4, 11, 14, 16, 20, 89, 92, 149, 165, 166 E Embodied experiences, 7, 9, 11, 20, 21, 80, 84, 86, 97, 102, 109

Embodied memories, 84, 86 Embodiment, 84, 85, 172 embodied entanglements, 85 Emotional belonging, 128 Entanglement, 11, 84–86, 89, 105 Ethical consideration, 31 Ethnic identity, 26 Ethnicity. See Ethnic identity

F Foreign land. See Adopted Land

G Gold-seekers, 35 Guqin, 2, 3, 9, 13, 14, 154, 155, 157, 158 Guqin-making, 3, 4, 12–14, 20, 21, 26, 29, 35, 102, 104, 106, 107, 110, 111, 116, 119, 122, 128–130, 134, 135, 139, 146, 150, 159, 170, 172–174

H Harmonic relationships, 13, 135, 158, 169 Harmonic space. See Harmony Harmonisation, 17–20, 109, 119, 122, 134, 135, 140 Harmony, 13, 14, 16–18, 20, 21, 78, 79, 102, 106, 108, 109, 118, 122, 129, 134, 142, 153, 155, 158, 160, 164, 167–170, 174 Home is where the heart settles, 77 Homeland, 1–3, 9, 14, 16, 20, 25, 26, 28–30, 32, 35, 40, 77–80, 84, 89, 97, 102–105, 107, 108, 117, 128, 157, 159, 160, 164–166, 174, 178, 179, 181 Homeless, 33 Home-making process, 128, 143, 145

INDEX

Hsi 兮, 8, 22, 78 Hybridity, 16, 22

I Identity, xiv, 3, 9, 21, 78, 86, 89, 93, 94, 97, 111, 134 collective identity, 94, 95 identity crisis, 95, 96 identity development, 21, 95–97, 149, 150 individual identity, 94 professional identity, 110 relational identity, 94 Identity formation process, xv, 4, 9–12, 15, 16, 20, 21, 26, 78, 79, 85, 86, 89, 90, 92, 95–97, 110, 114, 119, 122, 125, 132, 134, 135, 140, 146, 149, 158, 164, 167, 169–174 Identity transformation process, 10, 19 Immigrant, xiii–xv, 1, 2, 4, 7–12, 14–16, 20, 21, 26, 27, 29, 31, 34, 78, 79, 84, 87, 89, 92, 94–97, 101, 103–107, 110–112, 114, 115, 119, 123, 128, 129, 132, 134, 140–143, 145, 147–150, 152–155, 158, 165, 167, 169–173 Immigrant culture, xv Immigration. See Immigrant In-betweenness, xiii, xv, 3, 7, 10–18, 20–22, 25, 26, 77, 78, 80, 84, 85, 102, 106, 119, 122, 125, 140, 154, 155, 164, 165, 169, 172 In-between place. See In-betweenness Intra-action, xv, 21, 84–86, 97, 102, 105, 170

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K Kintsugi, 3, 4

L Letting-go, 122 Liminality, 15, 22 Liminal space. See Liminality luo ye gui gen落葉歸根 (Fallen leaves return to the roots), 79, 107–109, 160, 167

M Migratory, 33 mingxin jianxing 明心見性, 13, 125 Miniculture, 30–32 Mother country. See Homeland Mother-tongue, 2, 105, 123, 169, 179, 181 Multiculturalism, 16, 22 Mutual inclusion, 18, 129

N National identity, 27, 28 Nationality. See National identity

O Overseas Chinese, 27, 28

P P¯ akeh¯ a, 7 Pandemic, 140 Performative understanding, 84 Place-binding, 89 Poetic conversation. See Poetic exploration Poetic exploration, 15, 78, 86, 89, 92, 105, 112, 119, 148, 155, 164 Poetic inquiry. See Poetic exploration

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Political consideration, 31, 33 Psychological clock, 132 R Racism, 77, 116, 118 Re-member, 3, 8, 160, 170, 171, 173 Resolute determination, 111, 114 Root culture, xiii, 3, 7–13, 15, 16, 18–20, 26, 33, 78, 79, 89, 92, 94, 105–108, 111 S Separation, 103, 105 She De 捨得, 78, 79 Social trauma, 115, 119, 149 Sojourners, 35 Stone, 78–80, 84, 86, 87, 89, 92–94, 96, 105, 143, 144, 150, 166 igneous stone, 94 metamorphic stone, 95, 96 metaphorical stone, 86, 165 rock cycle, 97 sedimentary stone, 94, 95 T Tension, 10, 21, 28, 96, 118–120, 122, 123, 125, 141–143, 145,

146, 148, 149, 154, 158, 169, 170 Therapist, xiv Third space, 15, 16 Transformation, xiv, 16, 19, 21, 97, 113, 135, 149, 155, 157, 158, 169, 174 Transformational manifestation, 150 Transplanted tree, 2, 152

V Vulnerability, 125, 165

W wei ji危機, 22, 96 Wounded wanderer, 168 wu wei無為, 13, 18, 122, 167

X xujing wuyu虛靜無慾, 13

Y yin and yang , 17–19, 97, 129 yin-yang thoughts, 13