Unwritten
by the Wind
Leilani Liu
03/2025
4*7 in
42p
Unwritten by the Wind is a physical and emotional archive of a four-day, 120-kilometer journey across the Gobi Desert—a landscape of brutal stillness, invisible time, and quiet transformation. This book was not designed merely to record distance or document scenery. It was created to express what could not be captured in photos or told in stories: the psychological weight of walking, the shifting relationship between pain and presence, and the fragile, fleeting traces we leave behind in a land that forgets as quickly as we move through it.
To reflect this transient and layered experience, I used 龙鳞装 (dragon-scale binding)—a rare and intricate traditional Chinese bookbinding technique. Like the scales of a dragon, each page overlaps the next, building a tactile rhythm that mimics movement. The reader must peel back layers to move forward, echoing the daily challenge of pushing through exhaustion in a space that offers no clear endpoint. This binding method creates a book that feels alive—unfolding like memory, nonlinear, incomplete, always in motion.
Each page represents a fragment of time and space: 30 minutes of walking, approximately 3 kilometers of ground covered. This structure turns time into a design element. Distance becomes tangible in the physical experience of reading. The pace of the journey is embedded into the very form of the book—measured not in paragraphs or chapters, but in movement, pressure, and repetition.
Inside, the content is as layered as the binding. It combines documentation and design with deeply personal narrative and raw emotional reflection. There are moments of harsh reality: the intensity of UV rays swelling the skin, the sharp pain of blisters rupturing mid-step, the creeping doubt that grows with every hill, every stone, every silent stretch of road. In those moments, the desert feels infinite and indifferent, and I am small, fragile, breakable. I ask myself why I came here. I question whether I can finish. I dream of leaving.
And yet, the story does not stay in that pain. It evolves. As the journey continues, my emotions shift—frustration becomes numbness, numbness becomes clarity, and eventually, clarity becomes connection. Not just with the landscape, but with the people walking beside me. We began as strangers, but the desert broke us open and stitched us back together in silence. With every hour, we learned to carry more than our own weight—we carried each other. That unspoken companionship is one of the most meaningful things I took from this journey.
The visual design of the book reflects these changes too. The rhythm of steps is translated into symbols. The changing intensity of emotion is expressed through transparency, punctuation, and spacing. When spirits were high, the pacing is open and consistent. When pain took over, steps compress, markings distort, and visual noise increases. When we were lost, the design stutters. When we walked in unison, it flows again.
The Gobi Desert, in all its emptiness, became a space of profound presence. A place where every sound was significant, every silence louder than speech. Where the wind could erase your footprints in minutes, but somehow still carry the weight of what you felt.
The title, Unwritten by the Wind, comes from that idea. In the Gobi, nothing stays. You walk, you suffer, you cry, you endure—and the desert forgets you the moment you pass. Your pain leaves no mark on the ground. But something changes inside. Something permanent. This book is not about leaving a mark on the Gobi. It’s about how the Gobi left a mark on me.
In its form, pacing, and narrative voice, this book is designed to make the reader feel not just the story, but the weight of the experience. It asks you to move slowly. To open with care. To feel the exhaustion in repetition. To read and re-read overlapping pages like retraced steps. It invites you to walk with me—through burning light, through silence, through doubt, through surrender, through unexpected joy.
This is a book about walking, pain, and people.
About regret, resilience, and return.
About a desert that gives nothing—yet somehow, gives everything.
This is a book that remembers what the wind has unwritten.
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