Shan Hai Jing : the accounts of four races

• Main Author: Tai, Xueyi
• Other Authors: Ng Woon Lam
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Drawing, design and illustration
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52431
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

After much consideration, I have chosen to work with fantasy genre. Fantasy offers great freedom to the designer, and posses great attraction to audience. Being China born, I would like to contribute in broadcasting the charm of Chinese culture. There are countless myths and folk stories related to fantasy of China. With an undeniably long history, various racial groups and vast land, stories exist in numerous versions all over China. Quite a number of similar stories are passed down in different regions. It was hard to determine which is the most representative. Besides, due to the rule of atheist communism and massive cultural destruction during Cultural Revolution, many tales were lost in parts or in full. So I decided to give up on tales passed down till today, and work on the origin of all Chinese myths and folk tales, the Shan Hai Jing. Shan Hai Jing was written in classical Chinese, which is quite different from modern Chinese in both grammar and vocabulary. Therefore even though I had known the text and had interest in it since young, I did not have enough motivation to explore its content. The Final Year Project offered me a perfect chance to understand this ancient text. Shan Hai Jing, The Account of Four Races is an experimental project aimed to reconstruct the fantasy world recorded in the Chinese classical text Shan Hai Jing, or Classics of The Mountains and Seas. The project studies the information regarding the four races recorded in Shan Hai Jing, together with the monster, immortals and natural environment around it. The project aims to illustrate the possible connections between the civilizations and nature, which is the link missing in the text.