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A photograph of TCHEN
Gi-Vane during her early childhood shows how much revolutionary China was already
occidentalized. Held upright by her father hidden behind an armchair, from head to foot
nothing is Chinese, even not the armchair.
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Another photograph where TCHEN
Gi-Vane is hugged in her mother's arms, seated beside her father, both dressed in
the Chinese Tching (mandchu) fashion, but neither Tang, nor Han, nor TAO nor ZEN. This
last precious photograph , a reproduction, was offered by TCHEN Gi-Vane
to the 5th daughter of her father, CHENG Lucie, during her stay in Rambouillet.
Unfortunately, through a breach of trust this photograph was brazenly slashed by this 5th
daughter born of the 2d wife of her father, who shattered this happy family a few years
after these photographs were taken.
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When their dailies in Beijing and
Nanjing had become prosperous and popular, her father had pushed her mother aside to marry
a second, younger, woman. TCHEN Gi-Vane, exactly as in the slashed
photograph, no longer had a father and was brought up entirely by her mother, YANG Fan, to
whom the Compact-Disc by TCHEN Gi-Vane entitled
"Song of UNE NOYADE et LE Shadow" is dedicated. In the partially
destroyed photograph, only her father remains. Alone, with neither TCHEN Gi-Vane
nor his first wife, YANG Fan. Mysterious reiteration 56 years after. TCHEN Gi-Vane's
father had destroyed all photographs of his youth to lie to the children of his 2d wife,
so as to lead them to believe that he had never been married before. TCHEN Gi-Vane
alone possessed these ancient and precious photographs. The 5th girl, CHENG Lucie needed a
photograph of her father's youth to distribute to the press and to those who had attended
his funeral; this is why she had cut up the photograph.
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After the death of her father,
the 1st April 1991, TCHEN Gi-Vane was on the list of heirs, but at the
end her name disappeared from the list on the pretext that TCHEN Gi-Vane
was of French nationality and that diplomatic relations did not exist between Taiwan and
France.The certificate of kinship was not recognized by the law of Taiwan, thus the
inheritance would remain to the profit of a 3d wife and the two daughters of the 2d
wife,the 2d wife having died in Taiwan. It would have been better if TCHEN Gi-Vane's
father had obtained a double nationality for her (see comments in the handbook of 32 pages
accompanying the CD "Song of UNE NOYADE et LE
Shadow").
TCHEN Gi-Vane, since her arrival in the West has never ceased, in a
paradoxical way, to endeavour to recover her origins.
The name of family TCHEN is not T, C, H, E, N,
but an ideogram composed of
several elementary ideograms as follows:
 habitation in a troglodyte cavern
 protected by a halberd at the door
 a nail or hook found in the house,
meaning perseverance; under the nail the number ten, itself composed of a horizontal
discontinuous line YIN and a vertical continuous line YANG
crossing the YIN, meaning
mobile,changing;
the nail and the ten were then transformed into this ideogram :
 the whole idéogram means success,
good, completion, to succeed, to accomplish, peace.
This name comes from the prince TCHEN BE son of the founder of the CHOU dynasty.
Seeking to find TAO
and ZEN is the natural return to roots. It is said in the TAO TE
KING: "Great means to leave. To leave means to disappear. To disappear means
to return..." then "the great square with no angles". In Chinese this word
"great" is not a single word, but a new designation, "Great square",
which is why it is no longer a square, but rather an energy making it possible to go to
"the underground" where invisible roots are hidden. In Chinese the two words
together "great square" (tafang  ) mean generous, natural and on the
contrary the two words "small air" (xiao qi  ) mean narrow spirit, bad quality,
stingy, shabby.
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