That summer after the college entrance exams, my friends and I went to Hangzhou for our graduation trip. We went to see the sunrise, setting out at five in the morning. The sky was still dark then, and the air by West Lake felt like a film yet to be developed moist and quiet. As dawn slowly came, the distant hills faded from gray into blue, and a thin mist rose over the water, as if time itself were breathing. I lifted my camera and captured the first light, feeling a sudden sense of reunion after a long separation.

I had been to Hangzhou many times as a child. My parents often traveled for work, and they always took me along. They saw the business of cities; I saw the world passing by the car window. Back then, I didn’t know what it meant to see, I was only tagging along. But this time was different. This time, I was no longer the child who followed; I was someone holding a camera. To revisit a familiar place, yet see it truly for the first time that itself is a metaphor for growing up: a glance backward toward childhood, and an awakening of one’s own gaze.

What I captured was not just the scenery of Hangzhou, but the long and quiet history between the city and me. The camera became a way of remembering—and also, a way of saying goodbye. The morning light fell on the lake and on our faces. We laughed as we took pictures, trying to keep that moment, though we knew no photograph could ever hold it. Even now, when I look back at those images on the screen, I realize they all whisper the same thing: remember it well.

Where My Gaze Once Rested

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目光停留过的地方