SINING ZHU 

  The Long Dream continues my long-term observation and research on Chinatowns across the United States. These spaces—interwoven with geopolitics, historical memory, and immigrant narratives—serve as sites of cultural hybridity and identity anxiety, as well as microcosms of capital and demographic flows.

This work focuses on Dynasty Plaza in Los Angeles Chinatown—one of the last traditional Asian shopping centers, composed of Laotian, Cambodian, Chinese, and Vietnamese immigrant businesses. Since the founding of New Chinatown in 1938, this plaza has carried the living memories of generations of immigrants. In 2020, Dynasty Plaza was acquired by real estate developers and now faces redevelopment into a modern office complex. Under the dual pressures of capital and policy, the original tenants maintain a nearly silent form of resistance. Today, the plaza exists in a liminal state—hovering between disappearance and rebirth, memory and oblivion—undergoing a slow, almost ritualistic transformation.



Long Dream is an installation that continuously evolves with each exhibition space. Drawing from the architectural map and layout of Dynasty Plaza, I construct a spatial field of potentiality and ongoing change. It may resemble a construction site in mid-renovation or a future archaeological ruin. Within the space, unfixed concrete slabs bear imprints of discarded merchandise from the plaza’s shops, their blurred outlines preserving traces of past lives. Overhead, droplets of water slowly fall onto the cement, soaking and weathering the surfaces. Building structures, wooden boards, chalk lines, tools, and debris coexist—merging safety and danger, stasis and flux, permanence and ephemerality, death and life—like a long dream from which one has yet to awaken.

《长梦》延续了我对美国唐人街持续多年的观察与研究。唐人街，这些交织着地缘文化、历史记忆与移民叙事的空间，既是文化融合与身份焦虑的现场，也是资本与人口流动的微观缩影。



本次创作聚焦洛杉矶唐人街的朝代广场（Dynasty Plaza）——一个由老挝、柬埔寨、中国与越南移民构成的最后一个传统亚洲商场。自1938年新唐人街建立以来，这里承载了数代移民的生活记忆。2020年，王朝广场被地产开发商收购，面临改建为现代办公综合体的命运。面对资本与政策的双重挤压，原住商户以近乎静默的方式进行着最后的抵抗。广场的存在状态愈发暧昧——正游移于消逝与重生、记忆与遗忘的边缘，进行着一场缓慢而近乎仪式化的蜕变。








《长梦》是一件随着展览空间而不断演变的装置作品。装置参考王朝广场的建筑地图与店铺布局，构建了一个潜在发生、持续变化的空间场域。它既像一个改建中的地基与施工现场，又像未来的遗迹与考古遗址。空间中，未干的混凝土板上拓印着来自商户废弃商品的模糊轮廓，天花板上的水滴缓缓滴落，浸润并风化着水泥表面。建筑结构、木板材料、基准线、工具与废弃物并置其中，交织着安全与危险、停滞与流动、永恒与瞬间、死亡与生命——如同一场未醒的长梦。