In line with the "anticultural" process already experimented by Huang Yongping, the artistic activity of Xu Bing and Gu Wenda focuses on the function of writing by working on its deconstruction, to invest artistic practice with new meanings. Both authors personally experienced (both were Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution) how the monothematic propaganda of the Communist Party had impoverished the sense of written language. In reworking Chinese writing, in Xu Bing's case, deliberately inventing characters devoid of meaning, they revolutionize a communication system that has been in place since the 13th century BC, as well as one of the fundamental pillars of Chinese cultural and social unity. Therefore, it should not be surprising if both, criticized by the authorities for their work, eventually decided to leave China.

Both authors seem to find in the period of the Cultural Revolution the moment when, on the one hand, written communication is greatly simplified, and on the other hand, there is a significant impoverishment of millennia-old Chinese traditions. Gu Wenda himself sees in the Dazibao (大字报, large-character posters) an early form of individual expression by the often less affluent classes, peasants, and workers who, lacking the formal education imparted in schools, increase their creative capacity. In the field of calligraphy, for Gu, the rigid imposed education consisting of faithfully copying the models of past masters only reduced calligraphy to mere stereotype, ultimately nullifying the creativity of the student.

"Farmers and workers involved in the Revolution did not consider what they were doing as art, but if you look back, their words had their own identity and creativity."

Xu Bing and the "Book of Heaven"

The work that perhaps more than any other during this period left the public and critics completely bewildered was the installation Xi shi jian – Shijimo juan (An Analytical Reflection of the World – Fin de Siècle Book) in October 1988.

After more than a year of work confined to the dormitory of his university, Xu Bing, the author of this incredible work, produced about twelve hundred characters. The technique used to carve this figure into wood is reminiscent of that used in the Song period around the 11th century. With the molds he produced, he began to produce a series of books in the traditional format, namely scrolls of paper that were used in the 1988 installation hanging from the gallery ceiling.

The highly impactful work left everyone breathless, both for its majesty and grandeur, and for the total confusion and estrangement it produced in observers.

Xu's idea was to create a temple in which to celebrate writing, classical literary culture through fundamental elements such as paper, ink, and of course characters.

None of those more than a thousand signs had any meaning, none could be read, yet all led to a form well known to observers, namely traditional Chinese characters. Although none could be traced back to any meaning, they were meticulously composed of parts actually existing in Chinese writing.

The work became a symbol of nonsense, an exaltation of the graphic sign over meaning, which even though it appears familiar, is incapable of producing sense. And here is the common thread that brings it back to the years of the Cultural Revolution: the hundreds of thousands of words of propaganda, which for decades were distributed every day by loudspeakers or posters, by those slogans repeated endlessly, had impoverished if not rendered meaningless the Chinese language; the installation thus became a denunciation.

The work was harshly criticized, perhaps also because it managed to get to the heart of another fundamental issue that has always involved Chinese society: how can modernity and cultural identity be linked and continued together?

Xu Bing also refers to another event that links the theme of modernization and writing; namely the simplification of characters, a reform aimed at making Chinese writing more easily accessible. In this sense, the work takes on a dual interpretation, not only as a criticism and denunciation of the error of the Cultural Revolution. The author himself speaks of it like this:

"The transformation of new characters and their eventual demise, the revival of old characters, shadowed my earliest education and left me confused about the fundamental conception of culture."