Land of Shuāngbāotāi — 双胞胎之乡

© Sanne De Wilde

This collaborative photographic project by Sanne De Wilde and Bénédicte Kurzen explores the mythology of twinhood in China. It forms the second chapter of an ongoing body of work that investigates twinhood as a powerful metaphor for shared human experience, intercultural dialogue and collaboration.

The first chapter, set in Nigeria, titled Land of Ibeji, focused on the spiritual and cultural significance of twins in Yoruba society. Southwestern Nigeria has one of the highest twinning rates in the world, particularly among the Yoruba population. The term “Ibeji” — from the Yoruba language — means “double birth” and refers to the sacred, inseparable bond between twins. Ibeji figures are venerated as spiritual beings symbolising balance, protection, and prosperity.

In China, twins are referred to as “Shuang Bao Tai” (双胞胎), literally meaning “double embryo.” This chapter centres on Mojiang in Yunnan Province, a town internationally known for its high twinning rate and its annual Twin Festival. While the global average twinning rate is approximately 12–15 per 1,000 births (with identical twins occurring at roughly 3–4 per 1,000 births worldwide), Mojiang reports a significantly higher-than-average rate, though exact figures remain debated and scientifically unverified.

Local folklore attributes the phenomenon to the so-called “Twin Wells” located in the nearby village of Hexi (河西村), where the well water is believed to enhance fertility and increase the likelihood of twin births. The wells have become a cultural and tourist landmark. Newlyweds and hopeful parents visit the site seeking blessings for fertility and prosperity. During the era of the One-child policy, twins were legally exempt from the single-child restriction if born in the same pregnancy, which further fueled local fascination and pilgrimage to the wells.

Mojiang also hosts the annual Mojiang International Twins Festival, established in 2005, attracting twins from across China and abroad. The festival has positioned the town as a symbolic site of twin identity and cultural tourism.

To evoke the “magical” dimension embedded in local narratives, two colour filters are used in selected images. Purple references mythology, storytelling, and local associations with fertility — including Mojiang’s well-known purple rice and its geographic position near the Tropic of Cancer, often linked in local discourse to notions of special geomantic balance (feng shui). Blue refers to water as origin and life force, echoing the symbolic ‘Twin Wells’.

By weaving together folklore, demographics, tourism, reproductive politics, genetics, and identity, the mythology of twinhood becomes a lens through which broader themes emerge: state control versus personal freedom, science versus belief, cultural branding, and the economics of fertility. Duality operates on multiple levels: visible/invisible, material/spiritual, myth/science, individuality/collectivity.

Ultimately, this chapter — like the Nigerian one — asks what twins reveal about how societies project meaning onto biology, and how the figure of the double can become a site for reflection on coexistence and shared humanity.

The project approaches twinhood as a mythological and philosophical figure: a metaphor for duality within the self and in the world. The twin evokes the “other,” the mirror image, the shadow self — echoing archetypes that recur across cultures. Divine siblings such as Artemis and Apollo introduce a powerful feminine counterpart within twin cosmology. In Chinese mythology, the creator goddess Nüwa is often depicted intertwined with her counterpart Fuxi, their serpentine bodies forming a visual symbol of cosmic balance. In ancient Egypt, the enduring bond between Isis and Osiris embodies devotion, resurrection, and relational duality — a form of mirrored existence that extends beyond literal twinhood into metaphysical partnership.

Across cultures, twin figures embody balance and tension, fertility and fate, protection and rivalry. They become vessels through which societies project ideas about gender, lineage, cosmology, and identity.

Through symmetry, reflection, double exposure, portraiture, landscape, and still life, the work moves between documentary observation and a heightened visual language — with all effects created in-camera and on location. The process relies on optical interventions and lived encounters, allowing mythology and contemporary reality to coexist within the frame.

click to view the complete set of images in the archive