Deng Ao Bar

Some people say that bars are a refuge in the city and a magnifying glass of human nature. In the summer of 2016, I opened a bar called "Deng'ao" in Xinhang. In the following ten years, it became the most secret observation station in Xinjiang City. I watched how the friends around me were crushed by the giant wheel of the times: how the elites of the past lost everything overnight and even went to jail; how the originally meek women shredded their labels and moved toward spiritual independence; how college students in the ivory towers were looking for new beliefs amid anxiety. From economic surge to rational return, from collective confusion to individual awakening. These ten years have been a spiritual renaissance in the Dragon Kingdom. And I, Bian, with the shadow left by the terrorist attack in Paris, hid behind the bar, watched with cold eyes, and recorded all the truth about desire, destruction and rebirth.