DD-002 | LOST SIGHTS (SITES) REVISIONED – Project Skeleton

1. Intent

To reconstruct the vanished childhood worlds of first-generation migrants whose stories were born in places like Guangzhou, Xiamen and the wider Pearl River Delta, but retold for decades at Hong Kong dinner tables. The project uses layered memory, AI reconstruction and contemporary visual work to re-see moments that were never photographed.

2. Context

• Many Hong Kong families carry childhood memories that did not happen in Hong Kong at all, but in pre-migration Guangzhou, Xiamen, Shunde, Zhongshan and neighbouring towns.
• These stories — of streets, courtyards, markets, “little suns” in village squares — were retold around food and family, forming the emotional backdrop of my own childhood as I listened quietly at the table.
• Very few images exist of those formative years; as this generation reaches old age, both the memories and the unrecorded urban landscapes risk disappearing completely.
• Hong Kong is now the gathering point where these dispersed childhood worlds can be recalled, compared and carefully reconstructed.

3. Proposed Structure

Childhood Geographies — mapping remembered homes, streets and public spaces in Guangzhou, Xiamen and the wider delta as described by first-generation migrants.
Layered Listening — collecting multiple versions of the same places and moments from siblings, cousins and friendship circles.
Oral Histories → Spatial Narratives — translating spoken anecdotes into spatial drawings, visual studies and scene descriptions.
AI Memory Reconstruction — using AI as a drafting tool to iteratively visualise scenes that were never photographed, refined together with the storytellers.
Visual-Ethnographic Capture — contemporary photography and video of the present-day sites and of the Hong Kong living rooms where these stories are retold.
Public-Facing Outcome — book, postcards, short films and exhibition that hold these cross-border memories in accessible form.

4. Method

• Work with small family and friendship groups whose childhood memories are rooted in pre-migration cities such as Guangzhou and Xiamen but who now live in Hong Kong.
• Record conversation-based sessions where stories are triggered collectively rather than as formal interviews.
• Develop first-pass visualisations (AI-assisted images, sketches, spatial studies) and bring them back to the groups for correction and argument.
• Pair reconstructed scenes with present-day photographic and video documentation of both the original sites (where possible) and the Hong Kong spaces where remembering happens.
• Iterate until the images feel emotionally “true” to the people who lived them, privileging their sense of accuracy over photographic realism.

5. Why It Matters

This project safeguards a rapidly vanishing stratum of cross-border memory, treating migrant childhood stories as cultural knowledge rather than private nostalgia. By re-materialising unphotographed moments and placing them in dialogue with present-day Hong Kong and Greater Bay geographies, it offers a design-led archive for understanding how personal histories shape regional identity.

6. Note to Collaborators

Early thinking in progress — structure and methods will continue to evolve with families, friends and collaborators as the research unfolds. The core anchor is clear: it does not stop with me.