“DIY Gift Fan” is a cheap little novelty item. When the motor spins up, the LED strip on the blades lights up with colorful blessing messages. The faint breeze from the fan brings a small, comforting coolness, while the glowing words that appear as the blades turn offer a quiet pleasure. The design standard is entertainment, portability, and low cost.

“Not only are we good at destroying an old world, we are also good at building a new one”—this was the ruling party’s vision for future social governance on the eve of the socialist revolution’s victory in 1949.

An abandoned surveying tripod holds up this gift. Its base is steadied by a golf ball, surrounded by more golf balls. The LED text is programmed to display the above passage. When the motor starts, what spins with the blades is a colorful declaration.

The golf balls at the base make the originally stable triangular tripod more precarious. The vision for the future on the eve of revolution turns uncanny: the foundation of society shifts from the people to the bourgeoisie, and that passionate, surging declaration arrives through the frail form of a gift fan—a future that has never come. The fan, fastened to the top of the stand with a single-use cable tie, reveals its provisional relationship to the frame, and we have always been at such a tipping point: about to arrive, yet never attained.