Tianyi is always in either a second-hand shop or on second-hand sale apps where she encounters found objects, images and footage (and she never feels bored). Her love for used/ collected/ found objects originates from, instead of nostalgia, a haunted feeling experienced in contemporary days as the past has not been shed away while our world keeps moving, or in fact it can never be...
Where Comes Mulan
2023-2025
Mid-length creative documentary
60’56”
Where Comes Mulan follows artist and filmmaker Tianyi Zheng as she returns to her ancestral village in Huangpi, Wuhan, where the legendary figure of Mulan is said to have originated. Beginning with intimate conversations with relatives and local residents, the film traces how Mulan has been remembered or forgotten in everyday life, only to collide with how local authorities have transformed her image into a powerful tourism brand. Through walks across tourist sites and abandoned ruins, Zheng questions the gap between lived memory and official narrative.
The film takes a radical turn when performance artist Qiaochu arrives, embodying Mulan through a queer lens. Their presence in Huangpi feels like a haunting—an “arrival” of Mulan as spirit, destabilising the binaries of gender, history, and nationhood. At once documentary and performative, the film intertwines the spectral with the personal: Qiaochu and Tianyi’s own struggles with gender fluidity and family pressures resonate with the story of Mulan, leading to a climax that re-enacts the Huangpi version of Mulan’s tragic end, where she cuts open her chest to prove her innocence.
Through this layered storytelling, Where Comes Mulan becomes both an excavation of cultural mythology and a deeply personal reflection on displacement, queerness, and identity.
Director/ Producer Tianyi Zheng
Cinematography Samson Pak Hang Wong Tianyi Zheng Ailsa Nga Shan Wong Anrou Guan
Editing Tianyi Zheng Panida Te Petchara
Cast Qiaochu Guo Tianyue Zheng Xianchang Zheng Zheng Yang Xiao Wan Na Liu Yunzhen Zheng Xiaozhen Zheng Fuzhen Zheng Chongjie Wang
Music Alan Ahued Naime
Sound Mengyun Zhang
Production RACCOONS Studio
Supported by Creative Industries Fund NL Hong Kong Arts Development Council Mondriaan Fund
