Project 05

The Way We Played

A return to Huizhou through children, streets, and the uneasy afterlife of personal memory.

Year
2024
Medium
Photography series
Theme
Childhood, migration, innocent corruption

Artist Statement

I was ten when I left China for Canada, but my childhood still lingers in the streets, schoolyards, and parks of Huizhou. The Way We Played is my attempt to revisit that time, through nostalgia, fragments, flashes of memory, and the lives of children who move through the same spaces I once did.
The images are candid, unposed, unstructured, just as memory itself. I photograph the parks where I spent entire afternoons, the school where I lined up each morning, the streets where we invented games. Some moments feel unchanged: the joy of play, the small rebellions, the quiet gestures of care between friends. But others feel more complicated. A child grips a toy gun with practiced confidence. Another plays a game using cigarette pack cards, mirroring a habit he doesn’t fully understand. These moments are what I call innocent corruption: the way children unknowingly engage with symbols of adulthood, eager to grow up before they realize what that means.
At the time, I never questioned these things. It was just play. But looking back, I see the complexity: how culture, media, and generational habits subtly shaped the way we played. In China, these influences felt distinct, embedded in everyday life in ways that now stand out starkly against my later experiences in Canada. The contrast is striking, and it makes me reflect on how much of childhood is shaped by the world around us, often without us realizing it.
The Way We Played sits in between innocence and influence, personal memory and collective experience. It’s an excavation of my past, but one that leaves space for the audience to find their own connection. Maybe in these images, they will see echoes of their own childhood. Or maybe they will see something unfamiliar, something distant.

Media

The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.
The Way We Played — Photography series — Photograph from The Way We Played, made in Huizhou and centered on children, play, and unstable memory after migration.

Overview

What this work is

A photography series made in Huizhou after MT's migration from China to Canada, using children at play as a way to revisit personal memory without turning memory into nostalgia.

What it examines

The project studies how childhood rehearses social norms through games, imitation, and objects such as toy guns and cigarette cards. It treats memory as unstable and collective, shaped as much by public culture as by private recollection.

Medium and production

Documentary-style photography built from observation in parks, schoolyards, and streets. The sequence order matters because the work operates as a memory structure rather than just an image set.

Reference

Year

2024

Medium

Photography series

Focus

Childhood, migration, innocent corruption

Questions readers ask

What kind of work is this?

The Way We Played is a photography series by Mingde “MT” Zeng that returns to Huizhou through children, streets, and the unstable afterlife of personal memory.

What does 'innocent corruption' mean here?

It refers to the way children begin rehearsing adult systems before they fully understand them. Play becomes a space where violence, desire, status, and imitation appear in early form.

How does this relate to MT's larger practice?

The series establishes memory as a social and unstable structure, which later becomes central to MT's writing on retrieval, archives, and machine memory.

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