A few years ago, I read the late 1930s letter exchange between Virginia Woolf and Ling Shu Hua in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. Ling wrote to Woolf asking for help writing her autobiography in English. Thinking again about these letters after reading Sasha Su-Ling Welland’s book, A Thousand Miles of Dreams, and Patricia Laurence’s Lily Briscoe’s Chinese Eyes—both of which describe this period in Ling’s life—gave me new appreciation for the ambition of Ling’s project: to describe (and examine) Chinese culture, history, and tradition through autobiography—in English. Not only was Ling working in a second language, but by doing so through autobiography she was choosing a form that was not typical at the time in China, particularly for women writers. This made me think deeply about translation—not merely between languages, but also between genres, disciplines and cultures. It has felt important to consider form as an important component of translation. I have collaborated on audio essays with sound artist Diana Chester, for example, and presented the audio essays about Ling Shu Hua at modernist conferences. The work on the documentary stems from this preoccupation of Ling’s—to find the ideal form to tell the story to the widest scope of audience.

The study of the scroll is currently rooted in Singapore, an island city which has long prided itself as a gateway between East and West. This focus on intercultural dialogue forms an apt background to ongoing research, in particular the interrogation of points of dovetail and divergence in art and language between China and England.

Approaching the scroll with a bilingual sensibility deepens our understanding of the tensions and potentials in straddling cultures. Any attempt to articulate a stable selfhood, let alone represent a nation and people is inevitably fraught; it was a problem Ling Shu Hua faced, as a cultural nomad.

Ling Shu Hua’s search for an audience that could fully appreciate her work intersected with a momentous juncture of Singapore’s history. Between 1956 to 1960, she taught at the newly established Nanyang University, the first tertiary institution founded by the local Chinese community. Here, she mentored young writers and encouraged them to cultivate their own literature of diaspora. And after years of writing in English, she returned to publishing works in Chinese.

Uncovering her legacy in Singapore alongside the scroll research, we explore what it means to navigate foreign influences while trying to maintain a strong sense of self; and how it feels to venture far from home while always writing to recall the imprint of what has been lost.

Avenues for further research are as rich and various as the contributions to the scroll. Different projects are underway, including books, a documentary, and an online database of biographical information about the personalities related to the scroll and their works These individual projects address different aspects of Ling Shu Hua’s life and the story of the scroll, while informing, supporting or even sometimes challenging each other. The scroll and the projects that emerge from it will also serve as pedagogical tools, bridging its historical context with the contemporary concerns of students.

The multiple forms and languages involved in the project necessitate a call for collaboration. We welcome collaborators from across the world, such as art historians, scholars of modernism, translators, linguists, calligraphers, traditional painters and experimental artists, to work closely with the team to explore different areas of research into and around the scroll.

As a testament to friendship, it is only appropriate that the scroll engages a wider community. A collaborative art project is in the pipeline, to curate and showcase artistic, analytical or personal responses to the scroll, and thereby extend the story behind each inscription.