Thoughts on Lo Ting and fish.

We were asked to bring in an object for storytelling during a workshop a couple of weeks ago, and I brought in this resin cast Lo Ting I received from Claire at her farewell dinner at Asia Art Archive, about a year before I also left.

The resin cast of Keung Chiming’s life-sized sculpture of Lo Ting in 1998.

Lo Ting is a folk creature dug up from obscurity by Yasi and Oscar Ho in preparation for the 1997 exhibition “Hong Kong Reincarnated: New Lo Ting Archeological Find”. The exhibition explored the story of my home city, both its truths and imagined histories. I of course, learnt about Lo Ting through the Oscar Ho Archive and Ha Bik Chuen Archive whilst at AAA (you can browse through the digitised archive yourself, or if you’re inclined, Oscar Ho’s notes on Lo Ting which also accompanied a Facebook thread in 2021 is also a very interesting read)

While there isn’t much information about the not quite fish, not quite human creature, many artists have since reimagined and enriched its mythology. Some of my favourites, include Ant Ngai Wing Lam’s oil painting canvases and wood panels of her fishman and fishwoman; Clara Cheung’s Lo Ting Toy Story; and most recently, Lap-See Lam’s presentation at this year’s Venice Biennale.

I don’t really know why I brought in Lo Ting for the mini show and tell that day at work. The night before I had planned to bring in something else entirely.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve become hyper-aware of my Hong Kong identity upon moving to London, or perhaps it’s a culmination of everything I’ve learnt about Lo Ting, or even perhaps it’s because of how much I like to paint fish in general.

Maybe it was all at once.

Why Lo Ting? Though Hong Kong was once a fishing village and the myth goes that Lo Ting was the ancestor of the Tanka people, many of us are not Tanka, and many of us are also descendants of refugees, of people running from the war and the communists. It almost feels colonial to be claiming an affinity with the amphibious figure.

But I also think of the stories my grandfather told me of coming to Hong Kong by sea in the 1940s, of our distant cousins squashed in little boats, of hiding underwater to not get caught. If Lo Ting, being able to travel between land and water, of being capable to survive no matter what the environment circumstance was, and is a figure of resilience, of adaptability, does that mean we also have a claim to the myth?

I also think of how I keep returning to painting the fish (not Lo Ting necessarily) in my work, either as an anonymous citizen in my worlds, or as a motif for freedom and migration. The easy answer is that I enjoy painting its scales, but there seems to be something more that I have yet to unpack.

And what if the insinuation of cannibalism if we were to eat the flesh of fish, which we are also half of? Or do we continue to follow the evident cannibalism within the seas?

Either way, I felt that I needed to visualise my own version of Lo Ting.