Between music and film, Chinese actor and singer Zhang Zhehan is on a creative journey shaped by undeniable drive and the need to stay close to what feels real.

“Music is a language. It allows your thoughts to travel to places you can’t physically reach. Thanks to the internet, it can now cross cultures and borders,” says Zhang Zhehan when asked how he sees music. “When I perform live and see audiences in different countries responding, it feels like recognition but also motivation. It pushes me to explore more, maybe to create more English songs or to share Chinese culture with a wider audience.”&nbsp;
For Zhang, boundaries per se are more than what they seem. Some are etched by history, others drawn by the self. As the actor and singer puts it, “If you think about national borders, they’ve constantly shifted over time, often shaped by mountains and rivers.” Lately, he has been engrossed in Shi Zhan’s The Rivers and Mountains (河山), a book that traces how human civilisation has evolved in tandem with geological change. It has refined a conception he has long held: landscapes may define regions, but it is culture that provides those definitions significance. When he travels, that is when he becomes deeply aware that the boundary is both a physical fact and a collective human invention.

The border that preoccupies him most, however, is far more intimate: the one between the outer world and the inner self. “There are moments when the line between the external and the internal begins to blur,” he says. This is especially the case in an age of the internet and AI, where reality arrives in more complicated forms. When a video appears online, viewers are left wondering where it came from until it is labelled by AI. Even real events now require scrutiny. “That kind of uncertainty inevitably seeps into your inner world as well,” he says.

This question of reality lies at the heart of August, the documentary Zhang made as a reminder – to others as much as to himself – to stay present in a world they can actually touch, see, and feel. “We rely so heavily on our phones and computers now that we risk losing touch with what’s tangible,” he says – and you could almost sense his mind drifting back to childhood, before smartphones and computers became fixtures of daily life. “Play” then meant marbles, sandbags, and tearing through the neighbourhood. “There was a mountain behind our residential compound, and we would dig up sweet potatoes and roast them ourselves,” he shares.

Those memories carry much significance because so many children today grow up with a different relationship to experience, one moulded by iPads, phones, and online conversations. They may never know what the person on the other side looks like, or whether the voice is theirs at all. In retrospect, the pandemic has made face-to-face connection feel essential again. “Being able to meet people offline and feel that direct exchange of energy is incredibly meaningful,” Zhang says.

<div>Read the full interview in our "Eyes on the Prize" issue, available at selected major bookstores in Malaysia, as well as online at <a href="https://www.magzter.com/SG/AMTD-Digital-Media-Solutions/L%27OFFICIEL-Malaysia/Fashion/">www.magzter.com</a>.</div>
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COVER CREDITS:
Words John Ng &amp; Joshua Pang Creative Direction &amp; Styling Colin Sim Photography Nam Jiang Hair &amp; Make-up Rich

Cover: Zhang Zhehan on mapping a creative journey in reality

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