Why did that child, waiting in line, patiently, reading a book (made of paper!) strike me so much? A subtle perception: the ordinary transcended into the exceptional, as sometimes often happens without realizing it. But photography is a stubborn witness of our visual sequences, often fleeting and soon declassified. I looked around and took photographs, and in fact normality was something else. A virtual social alienation that permeates every aspect of daily life: communication, sociality, public health, faith according to the widespread principles of Confucianism and Taoism.

Masks on the face; the compulsive obsessive obstinacy attracted to individual electronic devices; the pretence inside the temples and in front of the altars wedged in the most hidden corners of the streets asking for indulgences. A general conduct of people that soon convinced me to think about a kind of collective “anesthesia“. No verbal relationship: no one used their cell phone to talk to someone. On the underground, curious, I craned my neck to find out what they were doing glued to those phones: they chatted, played games, watched TV series and sporting events. Resembling real-life relationships moved to the intangible “clouds” of the web.

When I took these photographs, the thirtieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square events was a month and a half away. I remember well the images that the media spread around at the time of the events: of a proud population, who expressed with all their strength an inalienable desire for freedom and self-determination. Well, the people I was meeting and observing now was not the same people as back then, I told myself. And the concern was confirmed when our tour guide in Beijing, to get to the “Forbidden City“, bypassed Tiananmen Square; instilling the perception that, after thirty years, it was a taboo place.