To me, Beijing is a labyrinth where multiple space-times violently collide. Two places may be 100 meters apart physically, yet separated by 50 years in time.
After my class at Alliance Française, I went to Xiaopaifang Hutong to capture this exact moment: Overhead, the futuristic, spaceship-like curves of Galaxy SOHO. In the shadows, a tangled mess of wires from a bygone era.
And that sign, "No Passage to Galaxy SOHO," states it plainly to everyone: The future is within reach, yet there is no path leading to it from here.
In that moment, I felt trapped inside the five-dimensional tesseract from Interstellar. Time and space layer upon each other; the past and the future are separated by a single wall.
As an observer caught in the fissure, watching two worlds wrestle, I am told, "Dead End." Standing amidst it all, seeing everything, yet unable to cross to either shore.