May 24-25, Beijing, China
I arrived back in Beijing on May 24th. This time instead of traveling with a tour group, I would either be on my own or with my friends Julia and Ludovic. They had booked a room for me at LuSong Yuan Hotel which is a charming hotel in the old hutong area with narrow alleys and courtyard houses formerly belonging to Ming dynasty courtiers. My room had traditional Ming furnishings – the chairs look lovely but are rather uncomfortable. A lovely alternative to the 500 room tour hotels which dominate the city. I ventured out for dinner and chose a restaurant which was full of locals. No one spoke English and there was only a Chinese menu. Using a phrase book and sign language, I ordered a mystery meal which turned out to be absolutely delicious and which only cost $3.
In the morning, Julia and Ludovic arrived. They are friends from London who have an art gallery specializing in contemporary art from mainland China. It was fabulous to see familiar faces after traveling alone for so long. They have a wonderful gallery next to the Anthony d’Offay Gallery where they show a mix of the most famous Chinese artists as well as some of the up and coming young ones. Thanks to their efforts, a number of artists have gained an international reputation as well as becoming quite wealthy by Chinese standards. They are passionate about the art they sell and dedicated to their artists. More often than not when you visit their home or gallery, you find they are hosting an artist in their home who they have sponsored for visas and for whom they are cooking special food which will agree with stomachs used to eating only Asian food.
Our first artist visit was to see 2 photographers who will share the next exhibition opening in June. One generally takes photos of various objects (from old coins to the Great Wall) touching the tip of his tongue. The other takes photos of traditional landscapes painted on body parts or bones.
In the evening, we had dinner with their Beijing representative, Sabine and Liu Ye. Liu Ye is one of their most popular and famous artists. He has an angelic round face and an impish sense of humour. His paintings are bright and colorful, often with a darker image such as a plane falling out of the sky in the background. Sometimes he paints wings on little soldiers or businessmen marching across the canvas. And sometimes he pays homage to his favorite artists Mondrian or Vermeer by putting a mini painting somewhere in his painting.
May 25-29, Shanghai
We visited the abstract artist Qin LiFeng in his apartment and met his wife and teenage daughter as well. He is an antique furniture collector and proudly showed off his latest acquisitions. At dinner I was impressed by their daughter who seemed so different from 15 year olds in the West- confident, mature, but socially innocent. It was a real treat to meet such a lovely family.
On Qin LiFeng’s recommendation we visited the “antique market” spread over 4 stories near the famous YuYuan Garden. It was a wonderful mixture of junk, real and fake antiques of all sorts. There were Mao watches, old communist posters, ceramics, fabrics etc
In the evening, I was delighted to meet Shen Fan. I fell in love with and purchased a Shen Fan painting about 2 years ago when I first met Julia and Ludovic. He is an intense, intellectual man who paints variations on an abstract style of seemingly random lines on rice paper.
He used to paint in colors but found that the purity of monotone black, red or white works better for him. Through his latest work you can see how he thinks about ways to develop his work. He has taken his very individual style and applied it in different medium – this time using paint enclosed in Perspex which when lit properly throws a series of shadows on the wall. He also has a completely different work which is a tongue-in-cheek photo installation. He took photos of the sky in 8 different European cities as well as Shanghai. Each photo is blue and has a date in the bottom corner. When you hear what it is, you just have to laugh.
The next day, we wandered around the new area called Pudong checking out some of the galleries in Shanghai. This has the newest skyscrapers. The Hyatt Hotel is the tallest in Asia with its reception halfway up on the 54th floor.
Pudong skyline.
Julia and Ludovic were eager to meet some of the new young artists and 7 of them were waiting to meet us in an apartment. The guys sported trendy long hair while the girls were shy and modest. Most were photographers and some also had videos. The biggest impression was made by a twisted guy who made a video of himself with a dead cat that he smashed to bloody bits in a 1 hour long video. We declined to watch the whole thing. The irony was a little kitten sleeping peacefully on my lap while we watched. Poor little mite. They seem to be trying hard to copy some of the Western avant-garde artists and shock the viewer. There was also a video of an EKG reading of a man masturbating. The graph was then overlaid on a staff of music and the soundtrack was based on this meandering line.
Another of their best selling artists is Xue Song. He uses mixed media to create art with a message. Sometimes it’s a silhouette of Mao’s head made of cuttings from communist youth pictures with burnt and torn edges or Coca Cola bottle silhouettes representing capitalism and consumerism. His work is still too controversial for the Shanghai Art Museum which has recently put together a collection of 20th century Chinese art including just about all of the artists Julia and Ludovic show.
Tuesday, May 30, Suzhou
We split up for the next 3 days. Julia and Ludovic went to visit the famous artist Guo Jin in Chongqing while I made a side trip by train to visit the classical gardens of Suzhou.
There is very little time or space for beauty in the daily life of China now. However, these gardens are under the protection and sponsorship of UNESCO. They were created at a time when poets and intellectuals needed a place to meet, think and create. They work wonders with space, creating the illusion of endless views. They use walls, rockeries, water lily pools and pavilions to do this.
And they have wonderful names like Humble Administrator’s Garden or Master of the Nets Garden.
Unfortunately the one day I had allocated to visit all these gardens it poured rain all day. It was the kind of day when you feel like curling up with a good book and not going outside at all. But when you’re in town for only 1 day, you have to get out there. So I trudged around soaking wet and told myself that I was lucky it wasn’t 90 degrees and boiling hot.
Wed-Thurs, May 31-June 1, Hangzhou
The next morning, I traveled to Hangzhou which is known for its large lake in the middle of town peppered with islands and temples and hills in the background.
It’s a peaceful place to stroll around and enjoy the views. There are mostly Chinese tourists here although I did meet an American couple whose son, a derivatives trader, had left Credit Suisse in London to go fishing in Florida at the age of 35. Atta boy!
There’s a park in Hangzhou where there is a “heartlock”. You’re supposed to go there with a loved one and write a wish on a little piece of paper which you place inside a lock. Years later, you can go back and open the lock to see if your wish came true.
Traveling in China without speaking Chinese is very difficult. Hangzhou and Suzhou are easy train rides from Shanghai. At the train station, you are herded into rows to wait for your train. Somehow I got into the wrong row so when everyone in the next row started to file out to get on the train I wanted, I climbed over the seats to join them. At that point, all hell broke loose. An official by the gate started yelling at me and waving her arms madly. Everyone was staring and I just wanted to sink through the floor. After about 5 minutes of ranting and raving and a complete lack of comprehension from both sides, I figured out that if I handed over 20 Yuan, she would let me through. For the next hour I sat on the train and steamed over my treatment and wondered what terrible deed I had committed. I presume I was fined for stepping over the seats but I’ll never know for sure!
June1-11, Back in Beijing
I flew back to Beijing from Hangzhou and checked into the LuSong Yuan hotel again. It was like coming back to an old friend. The staff smiled at me (which is very rare in China) and told me that Julia and Ludovic were also back. This was my 4-poster bed in room 502.
And this is the courtyard.
We were joined by Celia, a trendy Spanish woman who is the curator for an avant-garde museum in Sweden. She was particularly interested in the performance artist Ma LiuMing. The next evening, we went to visit Ma LiuMing at his studio. At his recent performances, he has been sitting naked in front of a camera and inviting the audience to have their photos taken with him. In different countries, he gets different reactions. The Swiss stripped off to join him. There is a photo from the London performance at Chinese Contemporary Art Gallery of a naked Ma LiuMing, Howard and me with my motorcycle helmet on which has apparently been used as part of the catalogue for the Korean biennale. Ah, fame!
There is a graffiti artist in Beijing named Zhang Dali. He used to spray his signature silhouette indiscriminately around Beijing walls calling the work “Dialogue” which represented his anger at the old culture being torn down and faceless concrete blocks replacing it. This is me, Julia, Sabine, their agent and Celia the curator with one of Zhang Dali’s heads.
One of the first things I saw when I arrived in Beijing in March was one of Zhang Dali’s heads outside my hotel. It seems he has now come to an understanding with the authorities and restricts his art to walls or buildings which will be demolished anyway. Although he continues to get regular visits from the thought police, they allow him a certain amount of freedom. From photos I had seen, he appeared a tough hooligan type but he turned out to be the most gentle, conservative, clean cut man you’ve ever met! He lives in a courtyard house in the hutongs with his Italian wife and 2 gorgeous little daughters. He has featured on the front of Newsweek and his photos sell for thousands of dollars.
There is a farming village about 40 minutes outside of Beijing where a number of the more established artists have set up residence. With their international financial successes, they have built themselves enormous studios and indulged in fancy Range Rovers and VWs – a most incongruous sight in a country where most people don’t know how to drive – the majority of cars are taxis or government cars. Here we met Yue MinJun, whose work I had first encountered at an exhibition in Vienna many years ago, Fang LiJun who is the best known of all contemporary Chinese artists and a 3rd artist who was formerly a policeman whose work is dark and who says he wants you to feel pain when you look at it. I was amused to see that each of them has a girlfriend and dog to match their personalities. Yue MinJun paints raucously laughing faces with rows of sparkling white teeth.
He has a very nice, intelligent girlfriend and a rather cuddly furry dog which he actually pets (unusual treatment in China!). His 5 statue sets sell for $35,000!
Fang LiJun is a charming flirt and is apparently just coming out of a period of licking his wounds after a failed marriage with a European woman. He has a big German Shepherd type dog who was reasonably friendly while the last artist had snarling mean dogs and a dolly-bird girlfriend who was studying herself intently in the mirror when we arrived. When I looked around his homes, I only saw a few possessions – mainly a computer, TV and fancy stereo equipment. What does dolly-bird do all day?
Coming back from the town there were no taxis so we hopped on the local transport to get to the buses on the main road.
Another artist who will feature in the gallery this year is Ji DaChun. He has chubby cheeks and a bubbly personality. His paintings are actually pencil on canvas with tea stains. He takes his inspiration from such varied sources as bible stories and Chinese history.
The most unusual thing about all these avant-garde artists is that they seem so mainstream. Most smoked and had either very long hair or shaved heads but were not wild or drug addicts. None of them were gay. They were obviously the intelligensia of today’s China. They were polite, well groomed and very thoughtful about their work. This is quite a contrast to English avant-garde artists who create installations from rubbish (this year’s Turner Prize finalists) and dirty bedsheets (Tracy Emin, last year’s Turner Prize finalist) or childish imbeciles like Jake and Dinos Chapman.
Perhaps the artists were rebels in the sense that they were not like the people you encountered on the street. After a total of almost 6 weeks in China, I do not grow used to some of the customs but instead become more annoyed with them. You are constantly accosted by sounds of bodily functions – slurping food, snorting, spitting, grunting. It always makes me jump because I’m not sure if the spit is going to land on ME. So many Chinese in China have had all courtesy and manners beaten out of them by the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Politeness was considered elitist and therefore anti-communist. The men strut around with their shirts tucked under their armpits exposing their bellies and trousers bunched around their knees. They snort and spit everywhere – usually outdoors but I even saw a man spit on the beautiful carpet of the 5 star Kunlun Hotel. Few people smile at you and service is practically non-existent. Even staff at the most expensive hotels are generally indifferent. The magnificent ancient culture has been beaten into communist bureaucratic rudeness.
I now truly understand and appreciate the concept of the American melting pot. In Asian countries, everyone looks at you and judges what race you are from. There are many minorities in each of the countries but they are pigeonholed by their features. For instance you are only considered truly Chinese if you are of the Han Chinese race. In America, you are “American” if you are a citizen. You may be a minority and a different color or religion but you are first and foremost an American.