When Roland Barthes visited China in 1973, he jotted down some notes that would become part of his Travels in China (Carnets du voyage en Chine), an underplot of desire in his imagination of the country. Barthes did not publish these writings during his lifetime. His unsettling judgments about China are refracted in Peng Zuqiang‘s work Sight Leak, as fragments of dialogues on class and looking. The local tourist in the film travels through different spaces and gatherings, seemingly never looking at anyone, yet silently looking at someone, turning towards a certain collectivity in spite of a foreign homoerotic gaze.

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