He is Not a Monster, He is Xiaohe（2025）
Performance
Dimensions variable
Single-channel video (color, sound), 3:16
2025
At the entrance of the Xiamen Sino-Africa Wildlife Park, two performers in crocodile costumes fight. One falls and does not get up.
On loop, a speaker plays a song called Méi Chūxī — roughly, You're Pathetic. The original recording is real: a Taiwanese legislator, Wang Shih-chien, berating city officials during a hearing, slapping the table. Someone clipped it, auto-tuned it, added a dance beat. It became one of the most-streamed audio memes on the Chinese internet, most popular in mainland China, where people use it as a reaction image with sound. Wang has said he finds this both exhausting and slightly addictive.
Xiaohe was a crocodile. Before he died, his official title was Cross-Strait Exchange Envoy. Crocodiles do not sign contracts. The title was assigned to him. He died from poor husbandry — water temperature, diet, enclosure size. The park has not published the specifics.I do not know how to mourn a reptile who was used as a diplomatic gift.
I do not know how to file a complaint against an administration that writes press releases about animal deaths.
So I did something stupid: I put on a cheap crocodile costume, I went to the place where he died, and I played a recording of a Taiwanese politician yelling.
Stupidity is a form of resistance. Their weapon is gravity.