In 2014 authorities demolished Sangjiang Church on the outskirts of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, through the “Three Revise and One Demolition” urbanisation campaign. This provincial government campaign scrutinised building codes and zoning laws and was frequently invoked in 2014–15 to see the removal of up to 1,700 crosses and the partial or complete demolition of 64 churches. Officially, 11% of the population of Wenzhou is Christian, giving rise to its nickname of “The Jerusalem of China” as the highest concentration of practitioners per capita in the nation.

Within this entrepreneurial port city, surrounded by the Ou River, lies Qidu, Louise Zhang’s familial home and site of intense business and tourist redevelopment. Subsumed by the expansive Wenzhou, some Qidu residents have incorporated Christianity into their lives, with parishioners congregating in home churches next door to ancestral shrines in religious and cultural harmony.

Against this backdrop of increased religious oppression, Louise Zhang: No dust left in the lilies examines the changing identity of the Chinese Christian diaspora. Using the ubiquitous red cross of Chinese Christianity as a symbolic nexus, Zhang’s politically-charged new work will tell this ongoing story of the suppression of religion alongside the gentrification of Wenzhou and the anti-Western sentiment of the current Chinese government.