Shanghai Waves - Washbasin

WASHBASIN

After putting the book out a few years ago, here's a digital version!

“Washbasin” was written by Kenny ONG, my cousin, and illustrated by me. It is part of a book of 3 stories, Shanghai Waves, that features illustrators from Shaving in the Dark Comics Collective and writers from the Shanghai Literary Review. The whole concept and idea was also supported by Shanghai Unravel, a storytelling platform with whom we  launched the book in Shanghai.

Kenny's father and my dad both grew up in Cambodia from a Chinese uproot, but my father's destiny took him to France, and my uncle went to the U.S.A, so Kenny and me weren't close growing up. Only when Kenny decided to go to China, where I'd been living for a few years already, did we actually get to hangout and know each other. We first lived in a tiny apartment in Jiading, in the outskirts of Shanghai, which inspired the beginning of this story.

Norknan's story depicts how the city can swallow you up whole but also throw you out the next day. Living in Shanghai is both a sensory and emotional experience. It's a race by the inch, and also a nonsensical danceat the same time. I had a lot of fun illustrating this futuristic, dystopian tale, telling my own entanglement with the city through it. It was a great cousinal collaboration!