Art Gallery

This weekend included a trip to a modern art gallery, called 798, in Northeast Beijing. The site was an old factory area that got bought/reclaimed/traded with political favors/or some other sort of crazy Chinese economic mumbo-jumbo to a coalition of art dealers that kept part of the factory's name (it was, of course, Factory 798 back in the day). The coolest part was probably actually seeing all of the old factory stuff, including an abandoned train-fueling station with a coal-burning engine sitting idle on the tracks.

I picked a wonderful day to forget my camera, but Zephyr's phone (Zephyr is a coworker of mine) got a few noteworthy shots:

The first is one of a few slogans painted on the factory walls during either the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. Workers actually probably painted them voluntarily, in their fervor of the moment.
"Long live the great Chinese Communist Party!"

A picture of me, about 20 feet up on a tracked crane, looking down. Also, for some reason, black and white. Who knows.


This sculpture is modern, made in 2007 by one of the modern artists, but in the style of a Culutral Revolution poster. The worker (with his eight-inch-thick forearms, a trademark of the time) is holding a brush, showing that anyone can be an artist if endowed with formiddable forearms and Chairman Maozedong thought. The interesting thing bout this sculpture was the quality of the medium--the iron-based metal used to make it was not only rusted, but it was of an inconsistent grade, and cracked in certain parts where the alloy had not settled, bubbled a bit, and generally looked bad. I realised with perfect clarity after a few moments of thinking--this abandoned factory, I am sure, at some point had vast wasteful expanses of pig iron or half-attempts at steel made in the backyard furnaces of peasants during the Great Leap Forward, shipped in on those coal trains, and then rejected in disgust by the marginally-more-qualified engineers of the factory. The artist almost certainly got his sculpting materials from such an industrial graveyard, and not simply because they were free, but because they represented the result of the thought of the time.


Some of the paintings were strange, some were beautiful, but some actually got to make powerful statements about China's past--the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the general behavior of great leaders like Mao Zedong. Some of the political satires were a bit chilling, especially those of the Cultural Revolution. Zephyr and I had a brief discussion on the different realms in which one can discuss Chinese history and policy, and apparently some history is open to China's very small ivory tower. But there was no word of the Tiananmen Square incident.

When I mentioned that, Zephyr said "nobody worries about it anymore, it's history!" I got a bit confused, and said "well, why do you worry about the Japanese so much? That's 65-year-old history." Which got me a jumbled response about Japanese attitudes about it today, but I got a small mark of admission when I asked "if nobody worries about it, why aren't you allowed to talk about it?"

I then told her why China's banned art was so popular in the US. If a single piece of art is so powerful as to threaten the security of the largest authoritarian government in the world, then it must really have something to say.

Titans of Architecture: The Central Business District

Today I left work and ventured down to China's Central Business District--south of me in Chaoyang--for a gander at some of the richest and tallest buildings in Beijing. The CBD is somewhat like a Special Development Zone, but more spontaneous. I got a lot of shots in, some of which were pretty exciting. I don't know the names of any but one of the buildings, and am too lazy right now to look them up. Sorry!

The buildings, in my opinion, are placed in descending order of interest.













I thought this one stuck out for me some, especially the picture with the reflection of all the other buildings. My impression is that this was intentional, and it is well-done indeed.



This building was quite intriguing. As you can see, it angles inward and then straight up; the front side is relatively flat black glass. In the back, the glass is jagged, different panes are placed at random angles to each other. On the west side, a short part extends outward, sloping up and then down and away.

To get some of the better shots of both this and the now-famous CCTV tower, I had to sneak into the construction site. I waited until a guard was distracted, and then walked in like I knew what I was doing. Nobody gave me too hard a time, and I got some good shots in. This was important because both buildings had lots of large panels at the edge of their property, obstructing view (and probably preventing junk from flying out too easily). Either way, I was just lining up to take a picture of a foreman who was adjusting his collar and posing in front of the CCTV tower, very proud of his work (and why shouldn't he be?), when 2 guards showed up and put their hands in front of the camera, and started asking me to produce my CCTV card. I told them I didn't have it (which was technically true), and was very sorry, and could find my way out. I don't know most of what they said after that, but it included being escorted out by 2 guards with a bunch of workers looking on in confusion. Luckily, the No Beating Up Foreigners Rule is in full effect, so I was fine.








The CCTV Tower, of course, is my favorite. The engineering success of its preposterous shape stands in defiance against gravity and those who said it couldn't be done. Its mere existence stands in rebellion against bureaucracy and government offices that tried to withhold the license to build it. The architect of this tower triumphed over nature, chaos, and human inertia to exert his will over matter and space. This building will serve as a reminder of the triumph of the potential of mankind, the greatness of our minds, and the exaltation of the human spirit.
















On a final, awesome note, I finally got the opportunity to take a photo of a cool scene I described earlier: cash pickups at banks. These guys are the private security team there to protect the transfer of big bags of cash, and they mean business. But I feel safer in Beijing than I have ever, in any big city, so they may be growing superfluous at this point. At least, having so many of them (there were 2 more on the other side of the van).

Weekend Notes

The subway started checking luggage on Sunday, with metal detectors. They also made me take a swig of my water before letting me walk in with it (apparently to make sure it wasn't toxic).

Dinner Saturday was amazing--it was Korean Barbecue, and the best darn food I've had in Beijing by a longshot (sad, isn't it?). I'll have to go back.

Noticed a small company dancing to really bad techno-pop outside in Wudaokou in the morning, as an early workout. They did not look happy:
"Yeah, yeah, we're dancing."

Cranes remain everywhere:


Sunday night (after museum) included a trip to a Chinese flying acrobatics show, which was certainly interesting, and a lot of fun, save the drunken Western college students around me (way to lack any grace at all, guys). There were some certainly impressive displays of human strength and flexibility, but I liked the action-packed stuff better. Lots of high jumping, leaping, people-stacking, coordinated ring-diving. The beset part were these guys in a large mechanical apparatus that hung by a single axle and spun free. At the end of each of the two arms were a circles where one man stood each. They ran around the small circles and made the entire apparatus spin--an awesome display of how angular momentum works. They did some rather absurd and dangerous things while on it, and managed to get an otherwise quite clueless audience to play along for a bit. All in all, not a bad time. Though dinner that night was some bread.

Line 10 is still not open, as the government promised it would be (by "Late June"), so I have been stymied in my plans to actually get where I want to go in a reasonable amount of time. We'll see.

Temple of Heaven and Some Architecture

Sunday was a trip to the Temple of Heaven with Candy, a coworker from Horizon. I got a bit lost and arrived late, but found her, and we went in. Like other parks on weekends, especially in the mornings, lots of folks were out in the park, practicing what outdoor activities they liked. Lots of singing, dancing, etc:
Some Dancing...
Singing...
Some Strange and Elegant Sport

We went by all the major sites, though with a strange sense of blazing speed:
The Temple of Heaven
Proving to Myself I Was There
The Temple's Plaque

The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest is an ancient part of the Temple in which the Emporer had the obligation of performing a wacky and complicated ritual, full of animal sacrifice and fire:
The Temple's Most Popular Part

Heading south, we got some good views of some excellent gates:
Gates to What? I don't Know.


This altar-looking platform, with 9 steps, is apparently quite significant. I didn't remember why:
A Very Expensive Plaza

We then went and got lunch at one of Beijing's xiaochidian, or snack shops. She decided to order some famous Beijing dishes for me to try, despite the fact that outsiders almost never like them. Why are they famous?

This terrifying mess was literally a soup of many pig organs, including stomach, heart, tongue, liver, intestine. The liver was by far the worst part. Tasted like toxic chalk. Behind it, sweets that seemed to be more Candy's realm than mine (she did not want to try the soup, she'd already tried):
Delicacy, baby.

These next two dishes were not quite as offensive, but were offensive nonetheless. The bowl of white stuff is some sort of soy concoction (it's not like soy milk, it's more like rancid tofu) that is supposed to be healthy for you. The further bowl was either some terrible seafood or some more intestine. One dipped it in sesame sauce, almost as an apology to its own taste.


These two dishes were decent; the rings (which I hoped would be a bit like onion rings) had no taste and the chicken had this strange sourness that gold old pretty quickly. But it was at least edible.


so that was an adventure. Here is my torturer, my lunchtime inquisitor:
"You Like It?"

The walk home was a victory in architechture. Some good stuff:
Beijing Normal University
An Apartment Complex
Something Under Construction