The Wandering Tent (Chinese: 流浪大篷) is a long-term documentary project by Xiangjie Peng, made from the winter of 1992 through 2003 as he traveled with itinerant circuses and song-and-dance troupes across regions including Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Gansu, photographing their work and daily lives.
The pictures unfold against late twentieth-century China’s recovery from the Cultural Revolution and its accelerating turn toward economic modernization. Because itinerant troupes had been banned during the Cultural Revolution, their reappearance in the 1990s signals shifting state priorities and a loosening of cultural constraints in favor of commerce and mobility. Peng treats the circus as a microcosm: a moving social world where aspiration and hardship coexist.
Visually, the series uses an unvarnished black-and-white palette that holds together scenes made over more than a decade. Peng alternates between performance and aftermath: flying acrobats suspended mid-action, a fire eater lit by flame, and quieter interiors where families share compressed living space under canvas. Wider views place bodies and tents in relation to weather, roads, and open terrain—including moments when the environment asserts itself, such as a tent slumped under snow. Across the series, the images stress texture and proximity, shifting from public spectacle to private endurance without reducing the troupes to symbols.
Peng’s method was shaped by circumstance as much as intention. Early on, he lacked personal equipment and relied on a factory camera from his full-time job producing corporate and propaganda images at an aircraft plant, photographing the troupes on weekends and holidays. Working on analog film, he built the project over time, letting understanding deepen as the negatives accumulated and the troupes’ routines revealed themselves over time.
The series circulated through festivals, magazines, and museums, winning a documentary award at the Yipin International Photography Festival (2001) and appearing at venues including VISA Pour l’Image (2003), Pingyao (solo exhibition, 2005), and later survey exhibitions such as Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing, Chinese Photography: Twentieth Century And Beyond (2015).
