最多与最少
从最少的珍稀动物到最多的人类群体Most and Least: from one of the rarest animals to the largest human group.

Not everyone can find a goal in life or experience life's diversity. From the moment I entered that mysterious forest, the indicator of my life truly pointed toward the sun. Only then did I feel that life was far richer and broader than literature, because many things are written with life itself.

These true stories are fragments from the most brilliant six years of my youth. They record the voice of life. These experiences extended the meaning of my life infinitely. Three hundred sixty-five multiplied by six: the most vigorous years of my youth remain forever in that mysterious forest.

I think through photographs. I believe in my work. I do not need to control words; I speak with my heart.

The highest goal of art is to express the landscape of the spirit, a great idea, or the passionate mission of humanity.

The lecture describes On the Same Planet as a meaningful image in which the giant panda stands upon a "planet." From the perspective of natural life and the universe, it carries rich content and broad resonance. The universality of the work's thought and the perfect dream shaped by the artist's imagination form its artistic height.

The Living Conditions of Contemporary Chinese Peasants is Hou Yimin's ten-year, self-funded photographic investigation in poor mountainous areas of Sichuan, Jiangsu, and Chongqing. The project received the 2005 Pingyao International Photography Festival project creation award, and 38 works were collected by the Pingyao International Photography Museum.

The lecture lists multiple collection-level portraits, including Chinese Peasants - Vegetable Income, Chinese Peasants - Mother, Chinese Peasants - Paying Taxes, and Chinese Peasants - Elder Buying Medicine. The stated material is cotton acid-free paper with collection-grade fine-art inkjet printing, at roughly 76 x 90 cm.

Mother: "My husband found work with a construction crew in Beijing, but after a whole year he has not earned a single cent. Instead, he owes the contractor money for food and lodging. He does not even have money to call me. He has fallen ill and wants to come home, but I have no money to send him..."

Elder selling vegetables: One day's income from selling vegetables: RMB 12.5.

Elder buying Chinese medicine: "I have been ill for several years. The year before last, treatment cost RMB 2,000, leaving me deeply in debt. I have no money now and cannot treat the illness. It hurts..."

Child shepherd: Photographer: Why aren't you in school? Child shepherd: Grandfather won't let me go. Photographer: Why not? Child shepherd: I have to herd sheep. Photographer: Do you want to go to school? Child shepherd: Yes.

Migrant worker: "Those young and strong enough to leave have all gone out to find a living. The old, weak, sick, and disabled are left behind, struggling and tearing against the township cadres."

School time: "Six years ago, I wrote an open letter to General Secretary Hu and Premier Wen. Based on what I felt during rural interviews, I proposed nutrition improvement for rural school-age children. Last year, I finally saw the central government begin implementing the Rural Compulsory Education Student Nutrition Improvement Program."

Children's labor: The photographer asked how many hours children under fourteen worked each day. The child answered: "We stop when it gets dark." The photographer asked: "So whatever adults do, they do too. More than eight hours a day?" The child answered: "Yes."

A rural girl's birthday: "There is nothing for my birthday, only work. I only know that I am one year older. That's all."

An eighty-three-year-old elder: "I am 83. My children have all married and separated from the household. I farm three mu alone. Photographer, tell me, how many more years can I live? For decades I have never seen electric light. I have no money to string electric wire. Photographer, don't photograph me; I have no money."

Tax burden: The lecture lists 33 types of taxes and fees borne by peasants, including agricultural tax, village retention fees, cultivated-land occupation fees, land-contract tax, education surcharge, family-planning fees, child immunization fees, school-construction fundraising, cooperative medical fees, forest-cutting approval fees, and livestock epidemic-prevention fees.

If an art product cannot move people, inspire people, or awaken people; if art has no clear point of expression and cannot bring people understanding, but only insists on its own unknowability, then art has no value in existing.

We artists must express clearly. We artists must have a larger human feeling. Our works must allow people to receive information of thought. We need to transmit clearly. We ourselves must first have thought, energy, and expression. We need courage; we need to take responsibility; we must perceive, and we must proclaim.

In humanity's great and ever-changing age, we artists are only transmitters. We are human beings, part of humanity. We have no right to detach ourselves from the cognition of the people, or to place ourselves high above them.

Hou Yimin, Contemporary Art Needs a Larger Human Feeling, Shangyuan Village, Beijing, 2011.