In the mid-1990s, I was living in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, at that time a relatively remote part of China. The old city, a reasonably sized quarter of this provincial capital, was however already being encroached on almost daily by new blocks of flats and offices with retail space in their basements.
The Qing-era temple at the heart of this quarter was one building I will always remember. It had striking ceramic portraits on its outer walls of the various levels of existence, from heaven to the depths of hell. There were figures in each small portrait in this tableau, some basking in sun rays, others being tortured by perpetual fire. In terms of what awaits in the afterlife, this Buddhist vision did not look so different to the Christian one.
There was one image in particular that has remained with me: the outer fringes of hell, before the fires started. In this picture, an icy blue empty space was populated by shuddering, isolated figures, almost turned in upon their misery. It was a powerful portrayal of alienation. The blue was inscribed with diamond-like shapes. I remembered, when I looked at it, the lines from TS Eliot: "I can connect / Nothing with nothing." These figures, frozen in a hell of isolation, symbolised just that.
