A Farewell Revisited — Reimagine Zhangyuan

“A Farewell Revisited” is an augmented reality experience that resurrects a forgotten event at Zhangyuan, Shanghai, discussing the preservation and erasure of memory at heritage sites. Based on archival research and interactive media, the project invites players to step into a lost moment in Shanghai’s past at a 1896 banquet, and carry its story forward.

Project Video

Abstract

What remains of a place when its walls are rebuilt and its stories forgotten?

A Farewell Revisited — Reimagine Zhangyuan is an augmented reality (AR) storytelling experience that reconstructs a nearly lost historical moment: a farewell banquet held in 1896 for Qing official Li Hongzhang in Shanghai’s Zhangyuan, just before his unprecedented diplomatic mission to the Russian Empire and eight European nations. More than a historical reenactment, the project asks a deeper question: Can immersive media revive the emotional weight of erased spaces—and if so, what does that mean for how we remember?

Once a vibrant public garden and political meeting ground, Zhangyuan has since undergone demolition, commercial redevelopment, and a gradual erasure of public memory. This project reimagines Zhangyuan not just as an architectural site, but as a vessel of cultural and political memory, exploring how diplomacy, personal connection, and material culture intersect in the making and unmaking of place.

The farewell dinner of a high official, the person who was portrayed as a “hated-traitor” in Chinese history, Li Hongzhang, is surprisingly overlooked in the broader narrative of late-Qing history. By focusing on this event, this project takes the microhistory approach – the method of focusing on one site, specific events, and personal experiences in revealing a broader narrative – to depict a more complete image of Zhangyuan.

The installation combines Vuforia-based AR on an iPad with historically inspired physical props—including wooden table, printed scrolls, and period-style dining objects—to create a hybrid physical-digital environment. Visitors use the tablet to activate three narrative scenes, which blend voiceovers, 3D models, and interactive spatial storytelling. The experience moves from a tense geopolitical dialogue between Li and a diplomat, to a symbolic farewell dinner shared with a close colleague, and ends in a moment of reflection, where the player is asked to consider: What do you choose to remember?

This project contributes to ongoing conversations in immersive heritage, memory studies, and urban transformation. It challenges how we engage with history in public spaces, especially those overwritten by commerce or urban renewal. By inviting visitors to not only witness but interact with a reconstructed past, A Farewell Revisited positions memory not as static documentation, but as a living, participatory act.

In a city where change is constant, this AR intervention gently asserts that some stories—if retold with care—can still be felt, even after the walls are gone.

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