Date or Couple

Preface

I have to write something because I quit my job ten years ago and finally have extremely precious time that I can control and use as I wish. Sleep when you want to sleep, get up when you want to, walk when you want to, and sit when you want to sit.
Later, there was a joint origami studio in the former residence of movie star Ruan Lingyu. It's the same studio where the old movie "Ruan Lingyu" was filmed, a single-family studio on the ground floor.
Then a school girl who was studying abroad opened a cafe called "Folding", using her own work as a tacit understanding to design the store's logo. Folding Coffee is located at the former site of the French Chamber of Commerce in the French Concession, opposite the current office building of the Science and Technology Committee.
I am a frequent visitor to coffee shops, and I always go to this folding coffee shop when I invite friends. Unfortunately, cafes were forced to close in the first year of the epidemic.
Speaking of movies, I have to say that during my four years in college, my favorite places to go were not the classroom, but the library and the cinema. It’s not that I like self-study, but there are literary novels, poetry and other periodicals in the library that you can read. My father is a poet and former editor-in-chief of XX literary magazine.
I can even remember that more than forty years ago, I lay on the beam of the university auditorium and secretly watched a movie. They were all from my class, and there were three activists with me. The class next door seems to have one too. Forget who invented climbing walls to watch movies. Sometimes, I am the only one on the beam, and I wonder, there are more than 10,000 people in South China University of Technology, and I am the only one who likes watching movies as much as I do among college students across the country.
This habit started during the boarding days of middle and high school, when there were no exams, no extracurricular homework, and the joyful youth period. There are free outdoor movies nearby. Remember, sometimes the news is not accurate, and I walk back and forth at night for two or three hours to miss the movie.
There are several purposes for writing this book. The main purpose is to express my creative concept for the "Constellation Blood Type Poker Face" art work that was exhibited and published a year before Shanghai was closed for more than three months in 2022, as well as thirty years of In 1993, the first black-and-white photo of the "love gesture" created by the artist was published in the catalog of his works exhibited and published in Tokyo in 1993. The latter has become popular unknowingly, and there are various versions with different palm orientations.
For beauty and love, everyone will have unforgettable memories in their lifetime. I just want to record that my childhood memories started with black and white movies, black and white photos, vinyl phonographs, tube radios, incandescent lamps, and a two-story European-style house with wooden stairs and tiled floors. I experienced an era of medieval asceticism. Then I learned English and studied abroad, and then came to Japan to study in the late 1980s.
I reached retirement age three years ago. Looking back, why I like watching movies, especially romantic movies, is at least the whole four years of my classmates studying hard to take the postgraduate entrance examination. The feeling of love when you are young is extremely beautiful, worthy of praise, and unforgettable.
When I was young, I had two "star" good friends. One was the top host of a TV program in the provincial capital of my hometown. For at least ten years, he appeared on CCTV's most important local current affairs news broadcast at 8pm every night after the 7pm evening news.
One is the host of a children's TV program in a provincial capital in China, and later the host (foreign language) of an Asian-related program in a large city with a population of nearly 10 million. I once served as a lecturer at a famous university for the heads of two major countries. It's a pity that my two good friends at the time only had coffee and afternoon tea once or twice, and we didn't leave any memories of the good times in coffee shops and afternoon tea rooms, because there were no mobile phones in the late 1980s and 1990s. It is impossible to carry a film camera with you, and it is not as convenient as the digital camera that came later to take pictures.
When I often drink coffee in a folding space in the center of a metropolis with a population of 20 million, I tell the coffee shop owner that he can prepare Spanish cork coffee spacers and mark the shop name logo. When pairs of customers enjoy coffee, they can Give a pen to a couple of guests to sign and date, give it to each other, and commemorate each other. It becomes a souvenir gift that cannot be bought but is extremely valuable. It's a pity that the cafe owner's alumni friend didn't adopt it.
Before the epidemic, I traveled abroad four times a year, twice to Europe, and once or twice a month to my hometown. When I wake up in the morning, it takes a long time to remember where I slept last night. Compared with folding coffee, I often drank coffee alone in Ginza when I was abroad. No one can remember that before. Therefore, only friends of the opposite sex who drank coffee together when they were young cared about it, remembered it very well, and really needed this kind of cork coffee mat worth remembering with each other's signatures.
I am a man from the East. When I first fell in love in my twenties, I had a premonition that true love in a lifetime can only be with two or three people of the opposite sex, and I will never fall in love with more than three people. If there are more than three people, it will be less real and unforgettable. Moreover, you are not qualified to "fall in love again" after marriage, let alone have a lover. You will never like more than ten people of the opposite sex in your life. Maybe it’s because I’ve watched too many romantic movies before, which were too immersive and too beautifying.
Although later I met a well-known violin maker friend who had been married eight times, his eighth wife, and their two children. When I met the violinist who claimed that he had true love eight times, he almost shook his belief that "true love does not exceed three times." Strong stubborn concept. Only ten years after they met, the BBC and other world-famous media reported the news of an ex-wife angrily smashing into her ex-husband's handmade violin shop and damaging a violin worth more than one million U.S. dollars. No need for me to explain more, readers must have guessed who the couple is. I think this incident has verified my "arbitrary" theory that "love cannot be more than three". Because the violin maker's eighth love was "untrue", he could not satisfy his eighth wife.
But as I reach the age of retirement, my belief that "love cannot last more than three years" is no longer so firm. Not because of the story of the violin maker, but because of the opposite-sex partners and friends I met after I fell in love with three people in my twenties. Because of the "love three" hypothesis theory and the self-restriction of my family, I could no longer love without love. No matter how much I give, she, who is single and "difficult to love", treats me much better than I treat her. My hypothesis is that these friends of the opposite sex probably do not have more than "love three". I think I have the limit of "love three". Maybe as an IT engineer for decades before I became an artist, I am still a liberal arts student at heart, but I still have passion. Therefore, the "Love Three" principle should not be so rigid and should be supplemented by the "Love Ten".
In this way, in a person's life, there are only a few friends of the opposite sex who care about and are worth cherishing, and no more than ten. The concept art work of playing cards according to the blood types of zodiac signs is nothing more than a few pairs of playing cards, nothing more. Then I have rejected the concept of lovers all my life and have no lover. Perhaps it is because of this emotional suppression and emotional shackles that I "sublimated" to create this art installation. Maybe I am extremely narcissistic, passive in love, and reluctant to give. Because I have no lover, I put my artistic works in the position of my lover. It is my own narcissism that has squeezed out and replaced my lover. Because I love my own work more than my “lover,” there is no need for a mutually incompatible lover.
It can be derived from this that more than ten years ago, I often hosted salons and parties for foreign students who had returned to China to communicate and make friends. I received a design certificate signed by Philipe Stark. My "strange icebreaker" design is that the business card on everyone's chest might as well be replaced by a playing card corresponding to their zodiac sign and blood type, with signature and date, and given to the person they love. Party Queen, Party Prince. It can also be regarded as the reincarnation of the cork coffee spacer in the cafe. Good things last for a long time, there must be real objects!