Day 3 Beijing - 798 Arts District - Oct 15, 2009

Dear all

Well day three has been a treat. Fantastic. We went down to 798, the contemporary arts district. A huge old factory district that has been converted to maybe 50 or so art galleries, lovely cafes and restaurants, trees, no - or few - cars, quiet and great interest to be had.

What an interesting period for an artist to explore with China moving out of one period of history into another, and it becoming such a different society in the way people live and its values. Many artists explore this transition in one way or another. Some are interested in what the recent past has meant - the establishment of the Republic, the romantasisation of the worker and soldier revolution. There were others who were just intersting young artists - dynamic. Every gallery has something quite different. Two brilliant Korean artists. We ended up spending the day there and are back resting before tackling the night market for food.

Today for lunch we had the most delicious stuffed bean curd in a light chickeny, milky broth and a plate full of some unidentified greeens.

I forgot to report on another amazing meal we had in hutong restaurant not far from here. Amazing oily, spicy and scrumptious egg plant dish, and other things i can't remember.

I will soon work out how to upload photos so this journal doesn't have to rely on my descriptions.

Well off to the night markets (i think)

Update on Day 3

Some of the interesting artists we saw:

Lee Jung Woong (Korean) - interesting mixture of inkbrush style canvases using modernist sweeps of paint with photorealist caligraphy brushes

Lee Doo-Shik (Korean) - vibrant colour

Hoa Li- delightful figurative

Liu Wei (Pious) - uses revolutionary images in powerful way

A very interesting artist whose name I don't have who had an exhibition of the Founding of the PRC - repeats of the same canvas with Mao addressing the crowd at the forebidden city each with a different date and with slight difference. Imperial references easy to see! Sort of surprising he could get away with it.

Night market was a treat. Star fish, scorpians, beatles, silk worms, sea horses, all for one's delectation. A small glazed terracotta pot of soup was the highlight. I think it might have been a version of what Qiuran's mum made for Christmas dinner a couple of years back. It was really there for the tourists but fun and some good food to be had and the purveyors at each stall a hoot. Rude remarks by sign language about the virility that would be imparted if John bought the lamb's testicals on a skewer.

John's second entry

Hello everyone.

Do you ever feel as if the world is leaving you behind? One young American bloke in his early to mid twenties, is standing in the street near here talking with an elderly Chinese woman. He's six foot seven at least and she's well under five foot. His Chinese is fluent and they are both laughing - the main thing you do in Beijing is laugh. We go into the little cafe next to this excellent hostel and see a western woman sitting in the corner with her laptop chatting rapidly, lots of laughs of course, with the woman behind the counter. She turns out to be Australian, rents half a courtyard from some elderly ladies in a hutong (alleyway) neaby when she visits as she's been coming to China for 30 years. It's Linda Jaivin, who has been a sort of expert advisor to us each morning since on where to go and what to do. Later a young Australian girl is chatting with a chinese friend, I walk past a group of American backpackers who are bargaining with a shopkeeper in rapid jokey chinese. I feel like such an ignorant fool.

We had an awful day at the Forbidden city on Wednesday, but it also had some brilliant moments. The queue for the women's toilets was about 100 metres long. Needless to say there was no queue for the men's, so I waltzed past the hundreds of women, trying to look repentant, but then headed towards the wrong door. There was sudden shouting and gesticulating and cries of 'li', 'li' (there, there) so I turned to walk back past about 30 women who all roared with laughter. A guard came running down shouting at me and the women all roared even louder. When I came out there was a sort of waiting room adjacent, full of men waiting for women. I joined them. This was hugely entertaining. Women would emerge into the room full of men and make deadpan remarks to be met of course with gales of laughter. After a long time Joan joined me and we sat resting our tired legs.

One bloke who sat down next to us was one of the clowns of the room. After a while he turned and started talking to us. All we could manage was 'duibuqi, women bu mingbai' (sorry we don't understand). He ignored this as if it was an incomprehensible idea and continued to rattle on - others joined in, apparently asking questions. We must have looked so thick. After a while it seemed to dawn on the bloke that we actually didn't understand and the expression on his face was priceless. Utter astonishment. It must have been the first time in his life he'd met people so completely stupid that they couldn't understand anything that was said to them and could only manage to make strange barbaric sounds. He was so dumbfounded that, after being the life of the party, he was completely silent after that, as if awed by a truly astonishing experience, as if he'd met people brought up by wolves. I'm sure he's telling someone about it right now. He's probably telling a whole streetful.

This sense of public life is one of the remarkable things here - the shared jokes across a crowd, the good humour of crowds and people in general. The building worker the other day who practised some English on me and then said 'you chinese good' when I'd managed to get something out, the rubbish collector on his little bicycle ute who was drifting past while I was watching a photo shoot of a model - he caught my eye and laughed - we were both laughing at the same thing - the odd posturing and strutting of the model. Then there were the blokes at the night market joking about their food (snake, scorpions, bugs, bee pollen etc on skewers) and poking a snake at you or saying in English 'lamb testicles!' and roaring with laughter as they grabbed their crotches and made loud gutteral sounds. The bloke who waved skewers of seahorses at me saying 'it make penis big' , laughing of course.

The Forbidden City is extraodinary but there's something unpleasant about it. There is a massive moat, then walls within walls. Red walls, stone pavements, a multitude of courtyards. It is a metaphor of enclosure, of a time when the emperor and his court were oblivious to the world. It is oppressive and in spite of the colour and the technical sophistication of the craftsmanship, cold. Although it's nothing like it I kept thinking of Versailles, a place I truly loathe. Like Versailles its preoccupation is power and money. It is much more tasteful than Versailles (the most tasteless place on the planet outside a Jeff Koons studio) and not gaudy in that way, but both are an image of a ruling court that treated the people with contempt and lived in their own enclosed dreary world.

We dropped the great wall yesterday, both feeling worn out after Wednesday and I had a bad headache all day so it took the gloss off things. Still, we had a lovely day at the art area, an odd area out of the centre where an old industrial site has been turned over to artists and galleries and bookshops and (of course) restaurants. It's meant to be cutting edge but as (our personal consultant) Linda pointed out it is hardly that, but a lot of good interesting work anyway. The art scene in China is quite fascinating and there's a lot to be said about it but will say more on that in the future.

Zaijian,

John

Well off to start day four.

Love to you all

Joan