The Story of Laozi: A Thousand Years on the Back of a Green Ox

A plum tree on Zhongnan Mountain that has transmigrated across 8,100 years becomes a vessel for the codes of civilization: from the first stirrings of the word “hidden” when Laozi rode an ox and expounded the Dao, to quantum scientists deciphering the Dao De Jing within the genetic code; from the brushstrokes of “integration” as Beihong painted horses in Southeast Asia, to virtual roots growing in the metaverse.

With “the grain of the tree is the trace of the Dao” as its central image, the work weaves together art, science, and philosophy. Through the restoration of Dunhuang murals and the spacetime fold of the interstellar spacecraft Green Ox, it explores the Eastern philosophical questions of “hidden and manifest,” “change and constancy,” and “the unreal and the real.” When the plum tree’s aerial roots write the character “continuity” in the desert, and the moss tracing the character “natural simplicity” on its bark speaks with blockchain code, a profound question about the eternal life of civilization is quietly answered: the true Dao lies not in the manifest grandeur of monumental works, but in the hidden hollow that holds all things.

Minimal yet abundant: the rings of a single tree contain the way of strength and gentleness that has shaped five thousand years of civilization.