After Hong Kong fell on 25 December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Army allowed its soldiers three days of victory celebration. Thereafter, the military sought to restore discipline and impose martial order, hoping to win the hearts of the people. Yet until the day of liberation, the city remained unsettled. In those years, young women lived under constant peril—hiding deep within their homes, in the mountains, across the wilderness, even on deserted islands, searching for a narrow chance of survival.

She was among them. Before her departure, she cut off her long hair with resolve, and drew in the final breath of a cigarette.

The Smoking Lady is part two of the series The Narrow Road to the Deep Sea.

The Narrow Road to the Deep Sea explores the trauma of displacement under the shadow of persecution during the Second World War, focusing on Hong Kong, mainland China, and Japan.

At its centre is the little-known brutality that happened in Nanshitou, at the outskirts of Canton (now Guangzhou), China. Between 1942 and 1945, under Japanese occupation, around 800,000 Hong Kong residents were deported; many were sent to Canton and detained at the Nanshitou Refugee Camp. There, countless individuals endured forced labour, human experimentation, and bacteriological testing.

The work turns to voices often absent from dominant histories, tracing states of fear, survival, and fragile resilience. The refugee camp emerges as both a detention centre and site of medical exploitation, suspended between life and death.

Through archival research, field study, interviews, and artistic practice, including film, photography, performance, and sculpture, the project re-examines forgotten narratives and unsettles memory.

1941年12月25日香港淪陷後，日本陸軍最初允許士兵慶祝三日。其後，雖然軍方試圖以戒嚴令恢復軍紀與社會秩序，並企圖藉此贏取當地民心，但直至香港重光，局勢依然未見改善。其間，年輕女性的人身安全尤為岌岌可危。她們隱匿於家宅深處、山林、荒野與孤島，以尋求一線生機。

她，則在出發前，俐落剪去長髮，吞吐盡最後一口香煙。

《吸煙的女人》為《通向深海的狹道》系列的第二章。

《通向深海的狹道》探討二次世界大戰期間，香港、中國大陸與日本在戰爭逼迫所引發的流離與創傷。

作品的核心指向一場鮮為人知的殘酷事件——發生於中國廣州郊區南石頭的屠殺。1942 至 1945年間，香港在日佔統治下，約八十萬名居民被各種理由驅逐或遣返至中國。當中不少人被送往廣州南石頭難民收容所。難民飽受強迫勞動、人體實驗與細菌學試驗之苦。

藝術家透過文獻、田野考察與訪談等研究方法重新探尋這段被遮蔽的歷史，並以影像、展演、攝影與雕塑等創作回應，試圖呈現主流敘事之外的聲音，叩問既有的歷史判斷，並挖掘潛藏於人心深處的人性。

在懲罰與暴行的背後，作品編織起那些被遺忘的個體聲音，折射出多樣的人性、心理狀態與掙扎求生的過程。難民收容所既是拘禁之地，也是醫學實驗與數據蒐集的場域，更是一處前途未卜、懸置生死的所在。

Lee Kai Chung performs artistic research on the entanglement of geopolitics, coloniality and their affective fallout. Drawing on his colonial and post-colonial lived experiences, Lee explores how human and more-than-human entities stay with life, death and troubles.

From his early explorations of postcolonial archival systems for historiography, Lee has developed an archival methodology that extends to interdisciplinary research-based creative practices, including moving image, critical fabulation, publishing, archives-making and public engagement.

Lee was awarded the Consortium for the Humanities and was a recipient of the Arts Southeast England (CHASE) doctoral studentship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) (2024). He has received the 18th Busan International Video Art Festival <Selection 2024> prize (2024); Honourable Mention in Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023) and Taoyuan International Art Award (2023); The Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography from Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University (2022), and other accolades.