Made in Paradise

The underwater world was what lured me to Bali back in early 2017. During a five months scuba instructor training in Bali, I fell in love with the genuine smiles of the Balinese people, their colorful offerings to the gods, and the food carts strolling down the narrow streets, leaving fragrance of the cloves and lemongrass. At the same time, I was constantly struck by the dramatic difference between the living conditions of travelers and the local communities. Riding on the scooter through villages, the unbearable smells of the plastic wastes burning at river mouths or roadsides made me start to wonder the cause to such an imbalanced power relation. Growing up in China had me witness the environmental cost we had to pay for the rocket-speed economic development, and that sense of irony got magnified when I was Bali - for its romanticized reputation to lure people in, but then for our presence and consumptive demands to become precisely the reason to kill its beauty.

These strangling thoughts made me start to ponder deeply about my role as a tourist. What have I done to a place that I came to fall for, when in reality I was only here to consume energy, pay for services, and leave a bunch a wastes behind? Best solution I figured, was to get closer with the Balinese community, observe, listen, and experience their pride and struggles. Soon, I found myself hanging around a group of artists and activists who initiated community programs, hoping to address and remind others of the fundamental values that makes Bali a spiritual place. In a country infamous for its political corruption and dogmatic public, these people showed me courage and hope. I wanted to capture Bali’s beauty, but also unfold the part of Bali that most tourists would never come in contact with. Revealing plastic pollution was never the purpose, but merely an access point to look into a society’s current condition, as I regard trash a cruel representation of a society’s digestive system.