In executing the work, Shao and Mu Chen first had to solve the practical challenge of how to unite all of their family members on both sides of the Shao family, in one collective photographic moment, while avoiding a final product which would be excessively mundane and archive-like. In each case, the subjects would be required to wear a Sun Yat-Sen type jacket in the style of the 60's and 70's above their regular clothing. The deliberately topsy-turvy dress would be one of revolution on top and western style fashion on bottom. Over the course of one year, the artists would make an appointment with each family and shoot in each home, using the same stiff pose, the same plain backdrop, expressionless visage, and flat lighting, with a simple household potted plant placed at the foot of the family as sole sign of individual wealth or decorative preference. Names and in some cases family chops would be carefully recorded alongside portraits, with all standing tall and erect, staring straight ahead, expressionless, and directly into the camera. The final product: A monumental 38 meter long black and white photo work mounted on a traditional Chinese painting hand-scroll of one meter in height, which may overwhelm viewers with the sheer weight of Shao's family ties.

The work also includes the calligraphy of Shao's father, Shao Jia Yu, who inscribed the entire couplet which comprises the Shao register of some 180 plus family names. Shao's father embellishes the original register by adding details related to birth place and education level for those he knows, with the calligraphy portion of the work stretching over ten meters. The final product, "Family Register", is a "classic" family album of contemporary Chinese conceptual photography, which defies categorization. All individual subject traits and expressions are erased and subjugated by the artist in favour of the communal, unifying mood of the work. We, the viewers, will gather little practical information about the individual members of Shao's family from his portraits. Instead, we are left with a profound sense of exploration of contemporary memory and some of the more evocative experiences of the recent past.