# He Fa on the Onion Count

How to Sit Down After All That Wrapping

Canonical: https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/hefa-on/hefa-lun-odd-look-01
Language: en

The images and texts were developed collaboratively by He Fa and AI. The first-person voice belongs to an experiment in character; costume, posture and props are used to develop creative arguments, not as quotations from or summaries of the thought of the figures referenced.

![He Fa on the Onion Count: the Onion Count, generated character image](https://hefa.p4theater.cn/hefa-on/media/78551b72961da1b52a36.webp)

The segmented aubergine-purple top swells the upper body into an onion, a black belt cinches sharply below it, and the narrow, vertically striped trouser legs look like two supports. The shoe tips curl upward, as though a jaunty ending has already been prepared for me. My first thought, though, is a less dignified question: how does this count intend to sit down?

A spherical upper body readily provides a complete outline, but sitting will bend it. To keep every segment beautiful, the body may have to stay well away from the chair back, while the arms must move around the bulging edges. The clothes begin to charge everyday life a maintenance fee: before each rest, I must attend to how they wish to be seen. Respectability thus becomes a job with no time off.

The onion metaphor brings another difficulty. People may suppose that peeling away the purple velvet will reveal the true face hidden inside, yet He Fa's face has plainly been visible all along. The wrapping has concealed no secret; it has simply enlarged the body's footprint. Instead of rushing to peel back the layers, I would rather try to let someone sit down in shared life with their surplus parts intact, without first slimming them to a size that is convenient to arrange.

Of course, others need chairs and space as well. If everyone demands accommodation for an extravagant silhouette, the room will soon be full. Inclusion cannot be achieved through one person endlessly giving way; the count must also accept the loss of folding one of his own segments. If the clothes cannot adjust at all, what is called individuality may push the whole cost of living together onto others.

So I want to find a way for this spherical formal outfit to deflate for a while. The curled shoe tips can remain, the purple can still be recognizable, and a few creases from sitting will do no harm. It is more cheering that a character can continue to exist after resting than that it never wrinkles itself.