And We Shall Go Through Their Hills Without Much Delay
Solo exhibition of CHENG Xinhao
Tabula Rasa Gallery, Beijing
9 May – 20 June 2026
Visual Design: CHENG Yinhe

This exhibition follows three journeys into and out of Yunnan.

In 1874, British interpreter Augustus Raymond Margary set out from Shanghai, travelling along the Yangtze River. From there, he joined caravan routes leading into Yunnan and continued toward the China–Burma border. With the aim of establishing a trade route to Dali and further into Southwest China, he waited for the Browne expedition at the frontier. This was a strategic effort to extend British colonial influence in Southwest China. As a seasoned “China hand,” Margary trusted his knowledge of the Qing court and its people, believing that with proper conduct and the display of status, he could move through the territory without resistance. Upon reaching Burma and preparing to re-enter China, he wrote in a letter: “and we shall go through their hills without much delay…” He did not know that only days later he would die in a violent conflict, his journey ending abruptly, in a manner that stood in stark contrast to the ambitions that had brought him there. Nor could Margary have foreseen that this failed mission would contribute to the signing of unequal treaties, effectively opening up Southwest China during the late Qing dynasty.What he left behind, however, were a few snail shells he had unknowingly carried from the shores of Erhai Lake—objects that, over the following century and a half, became entangled with both his name and the history of Yunnan.


In 1937, a young Naxi student named Xueshan (“Snow Mountain”) set out from Lijiang to pursue higher education in Beijing. Travelling by caravan to Kunming, he then boarded the Yunnan–Vietnam Railway to the port of Haiphong, before transferring to a ship bound north. During the train journey, he met fellow Naxi passengers who did not speak Chinese, and naturally took on the role of intermediary, explaining the unfamiliar systems and experiences of modern travel to them.The railway introduced a new temporal order. The opium pipe was no longer a necessity, mornings were no longer attuned to sunrise and the crowing of roosters, and train schedules imposed a rhythm measured in hours, minutes, and seconds. A new way of life arrived quietly but forcefully, gradually imprinting itself on Yunnan for generations to come.

That same year, construction began on a highway extending into western Yunnan. The project, which reached northern Burma, later became a critical supply route during the Second Sino-Japanese War, also known in China as the War of Resistance. The Burma Road replaced earlier caravan routes such as the Western Yunnan Horse Route and the Yongchang Route once travelled by Margary, forming a new connection between Yunnan and Southeast Asia. Over the following decades, new layers of infrastructure spread across this landscape, reshaping it again and again—national highways, expressways, and high-speed railways.
In 2023, I returned to these historically entangled routes, travelling on foot from Kunming toward Burma. Kicking a stone along the way, I spent a year and a half on a journey marked by accidents, injuries, recovery, and the shifting cycles of dry and rainy seasons. Does reaching a destination also mean arriving in the past? Through walking, is it possible to recover the bodily experiences of those who once set foot in Yunnan? And can such retracing truly bring submerged relationships back to the surface?


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Cheng Xinhao (b.1985 Yunnan, China) currently lives and works in Kunming, China. Cheng’s work is usually based on long-term field studies, centering around his hometown in Yunnan Province, China. Through videos, installations, photographs and texts, he personally investigates the polyphonic relationships between logic, discussions, knowledge, and the part that nature, society, and history play within them. In recent years, his long-term projects include "Strange Terrains, 2013-", "To the Ocean, 2018-" and “Tales about the South of Clouds, 2021-” etc.   

His solo exhibitions include: Silver...and Other Elements, Contemporary at Blue Star (San Antonio, 2024) ； Floating Wood & Drowning Stone, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2021); The Fool's Gold, OCAT Shenzhen (Shenzhen, 2019); Three Depictions of a River, 1903 Space (Kunming, 2019). 

Selected group exhibitions include: The Sounding Cast, XZ Space, (Beijing, 2026); A Call of All Beings: See You Tomorrow, Same Time, Same Place, Taichung Art Museum (Taichung, 2025); Louisiana's New Works, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen, 2025); On the Waterfront, Gallery MAERZ (, 2025); 15th Shanghai Biennale “Does the Flowers Hear the Bee?", (Shanghai, 2025); Stay Connected: Art and China Since 2008, Tai Kwun Contemporary, (Hong Kong, 2025) ; Rural Eyes: Chinese Rural Photography Archives 1920s-2020s, Gaofan Photography Museum, Hangzhou, 2025；Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives，EMΣT (Athens，2025); 15th Gwangju Biennale "Pansori, a soundscape of the 21st century" (Gwangju, 2024); STUDY II: Natural History, Alternative Knowledge and Deep Learning, ShanghART (Beijing, 2024); Go With the Flow, Fotografiska Shanghai (Shanghai, 2024); Nomads in the South: Rivers, Tunnels, Dampness and Constellations, Pingshan Art Museum (Shenzhen, 2023); The Open World, The third edition of the Thailand Biennale, Luke Golf Warehouse Huai Kiang (Chiang Rai, 2023); Art SG, Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre (Singapore, 2023); LOOP Fair 2023, Almanac Barcelona (Barcelona, 2023); The River We Share: From Lancang to Mekong, Inside-Out Musuem (Beijing, 2023); Walking China: Stories yet to be told, Institute of Contemporary Arts at NYU (Shanghai, 2023); In Between The Fields, Chun YangTai (Guangzhou, 2023); Living a Performance Artist’s Life, MadeIn Musuem (Shanghai, 2023); River Pulses, Border Flows, Times Museum (Guangzhou, 2022); The Language of Mushrooms: The Interspecies Internet, Contemporary Gallery Kunming (Kunming, 2022); I Recognized the World: Born in the 80s and 90s, MOCA Yinchuan (Yinchuan, 2021); An Archive: Seven Trails, Taikang Space (Beijing, 2020); Air Waste Health Water Energy Soil, Gleis 70 (Zurich, 2021); Re: Everything which exists under the sky, Gasworks (London, 2019). 

Cheng is the recipient of several awards, including CIFRA “Marco Polo (Re)imagined”, “Bridging East and West” section, winner (2024),  Abigail Cohen Fellowship (2017), the 6th Hou Dengke Documentary Photograph Award (2017), Author Book Award Arles (2017, shortlisted), Aperture First Photobook Award (2016), Shiseido Photography Award (2015), Three Shadows Photography Award (2015). 

His works 24 Mails from the Railway (2020), Time from Different Sources: Images from Ciman Village (2017), and The Naming of a River(2016) were published by Jiazazhi Press.  His work is also included in the permanent collection of Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark).   

Website: www.chengxinhao.me