Chen Zhen, Fragments of Eternity, Galerie Perrotin, Paris

Chen Zhen, Le Chemin/Le Radeau de l'écriture, 1991

This exhibition is the talk of the town, having attracted rave reviews in all the Parisian cultural magazines that matter. Ever skeptical of the French preference for the affected and vacuous, I was ready to be disappointed. Happily my doubts were unfounded: Chen Zhen’s work and the retrospective exhibition at Galerie Perrotin deserve every bit of praise they have attracted. 

Chen Zhen, Le Chemin/Le Radeau de l'écriture, 1991

I can’t remember the last time I was so seduced by conceptual sculptural installations: I wanted to dive headlong and live inside them. I was touched, mesmerized, challenged and absorbed by all of the installations. I can still feel them, smell them, even though there was often nothing to smell. This despite the recurring themes of the body, waste of all kinds, the frequent burning of paper, wood, wax. Theoretically, there should have been a lot to smell, but the pieces were as clean as they were provocative. Some of them have become even more sensually vivid as I sit in my living room a day later. The materials are related, always tactile, sensuous, gorgeous, filled with colour and texture, contradiction and impossibility. The sumptuousness of pieces that are about difficult, often grotesque, morbid topics has a lot to do with the material he uses. The materials are varied – wax candles, wooden railway sleepers, alabaster, chairs, animal skin, rubber, abacus beads. And they are always carefully put together.

Chen Zhen, Round Table - Side by Side, 1997
Aerial View

One of the first pieces we come across is breathtaking. Le Chemin/Le Radeau de l.écriture (1991) builds a raft from railway sleepers that sandwich books, on a bed of rocks that we could expect to find by the side of the railway tracks. The old wooden planks have been inscribed, scarred, graffitied with Chen Zhen’s name and other personal markings. The piece symbolizes, apparently, a voyage between different cultures. To me, it symbolized memory, the books once read, the lines once travelled, and the lives inscribed on the surface. It is also threatening. Long metal bolts protrude from the wood, making it dangerous as well as held together. Red paint falls into the carvings in the wood. The smell of another place, another era, a life lived already and still continuing is pungent in the room that houses the raft.

Chen Zhen, Bibliothèque, 1999-2000

Le Chemin/Le Radeau de l.écriture sets the tone for the pieces to come: everywhere Chen Zhen has burnt paper, red paint, memories that seem to be hidden in vitrines, in the grains of the wood, in the beauty of the complicated concepts he develops in each piece. The sense of workmanship, engineering, the themes of death, waste, decay, the body and its refuse, bodies and sculptural objects that are nevertheless clean and materials that are sanitized fill the exhibition spaces of Galerie Perrotin.

 

Chen Zhen, Beyond the Vulnerability, 1999

In one of the most compelling of a whole gallery of installations that will engage whoever experiences them, Chen Zhen “repurposes” (strictly speaking recreates) a public toilet in Le Bureau de Change (1996-2004). The constant sound of flushing pervades the top floor of the gallery space at 76 rue de Turenne, as Chen Zhen would have it, continually washing away the waste materials of the body and the mind. He turns the toilet block into a currency exchange bureau – the hidden, or not so hidden — connections between different kinds of business that take place in these spaces become frighteningly intertwined.

Chen Zhen, Beyond the Vulnerability, 1999
detail

I loved Chen Zhen’s use of candles to enable children to imagine, or create images of their architectural environment in Beyond the Vulnerability (1999). He made houses out of candles, the wax of which was melted, but the wicks left untouched, to bind the candles. The houses represent the favelas and stilted shacks that are home to the children of Salvador, in Brazil. The candles are colourful, alive, transparent like the water that surrounds the children’s favelas. And they are fragile, always tactile and sensuous. The piece must have given the children the opportunity to see how beautiful their world was. It may be fragile and vulnerable like the candles on glass tables, but whatever holds the houses together is lasting.

 

Chen Zhen, Round Table - Side by Side, 1997
side view

There are so many pieces in the exhibition that I haven’t mentioned. Not because they are inferior, more because I had to choose, however reluctantly. However, I cannot omit mention of Round Table – Side by Side 1997. Chairs of all shapes and sizes, for children, for adults, oriental and western, are perfectly inserted into the top of two conjoined, unfinished tables. The piece consumes the greater part of the space in which it is exhibited, leaving little room for us to walk around, to find an optimal viewing position, to get comfortable in its presence. The odd height of the table is immediately unsettling. Because it is chest height, thus ensuring that we are both tempted to imagine ourselves sitting at the table, as well as unable to. A man who we shared the gallery space with commented that the height and the proportions of the tables isolate us in their presence, in the same way that those who might sit at the tables are isolated from one another, unable to move because their seat has become a part of the table. This work is clearly about cultures coming together, but never really finding compatibility, always isolated and alone in their uniqueness. It is about difference —different wood, different chairs, different sized sitters—and the uneasiness of coexistence. Again, the wood, its tactility, the worksmanship, the craft like care that is taken to make sure everything is at the perfect, if uncomfortable height, creates a fineness and a vulnerability to Round Table – Side by Side. And yet, it is also sturdy, showing no signs of physical fragility.

Every year I make a grand claim, and for 2014, this is the occasion. If there is one exhibition to see this year, Chen Zhen would be it. Enjoy!

Lasting Memories of China

World Apart, Temples old and New in Shanghai

 A rainy day in Shanghai: it doesn’t seem fitting as my final day in China, but then again, it was the perfect headline to my stay in Shanghai: perhaps it was Shanghai’s final warning that this is not a city for me.As I wandered around, attempting to orient myself in this money making metropolis, I was reminded of a question I had in Beijing. Secluded within a Buddhist monastery around the corner from the Yunan Gardens, I was reminded of a wonderful afternoon I had spent in the Lama Temple in Beijing. Apart from being havens of peace in the middle of these bustling noisy cities, the temples fascinated me because of the reverence shown them as national treasures by a political system I thought was vehemently opposed to religion. And if the strange brand of Communism that rules China is open to Buddhism, how to explain the hostilities towards Tibetan monks and their protests in the form of self-immolation? How is it that Buddhism still has some voice in China, if not one that is raised in political forums? I can’t claim to understand the complexities of the Chinese government, but I do know that it is filled with contradictions. Everytime I asked one of my contacts or friends about the particular brand of Communism that seems to be flourishing in China, the answer was the same: “it’s complicated.” Not one person ever attempted to help me make sense of a dictatorship that allows private industry, free trade, and yet, enforces media censorship that is, nevertheless, able to be circuited.

Creatures at the Lama Temple

While I can’t report with any accuracy on Chinese politics, what I do know from walking the streets is that China is a country filled with contradictions: between old and new, wealthy and poor, and surely that which permeates the pride of monuments such as the Lama Temple in Beijing and the monastery in Shanghai, between a religion open to all Gods and a government open to none.  And it’s the existence of these contradictions that, on the one hand, makes it possible for me to travel to China and be made to feel so welcomed, and on the other hand, ultimately keeps me on the outside ….

… I wrote the above paragraphs on the plane on my way home, and I have now forgotten all the contradictions. All I remember of China is the warmth of the people, how hard they work, their when a woman in a store of the Monoprix genre helped me buy stockings. When I had finished my grocery shopping I went downstairs to buy stockings as it had become obvious that even in the heat, Chinese women never go bare-legged. The shop assistant was so helpful: she obligingly answered my queries — in sign language — about thickness, size, colour, because of course, everything on the packet was written in Chinese characters. She showed me other pairs with different toes, of different deniers, undid packets, stretched them out, and went to great lengths to make sure I had the stockings I was looking for. As she walked me to the cashier, tapped the price into a calculator, showed me how much I owed, and bid me goodbye, I knew exactly why the Chinese hate the French. Where in Paris would the Chinese find such courteous, patient, and obliging assistance, all with understanding that not everyone speaks French?

A rainy day in Shanghai's old town

Even though Shanghai was not filled with great memories, there were moments like this that were magical. It doesn’t make Shanghai exotic as the myth goes. But it does mean that even in the razzle and dazzle of a city fighting for dominance on world markets, in among the contradictions and disenchantment, I found the stuff of memories to serenade me back to China.   

Shanghai: Disappointments and Surprises

This is Shanghai

My feelings toward Shanghai will always be tainted with association as the city that blocked access to my blog. I think, more realistically, Shanghai was probably not to blame, but the hotel submitted to government censorship. Try as I did, I couldn’t circumvent their server, whereas in Beijing, the hotel was more interested in the comfort of its customers than obedience to the Chinese government. And by the way, did I mention, the hotel in Beijing was government owned, where they send their VIP guests?

Self Portrait in Shanghai

Once I got over my frustrations and I started to look around, there was not so much to endear me to the place. Word is out that Shanghai is an exotic “Paris of the east.” Alternatively, it is known as the rival to neighboring Hong Kong for business, the hub of a thriving Asian economy. There is no doubt, this is a wealthy city: money oozes along the streets in big cars, neon lights oversized shopping malls filled with every name brand under the sun. Shanghai is wealthy because of its long historical entanglements with the West, and of course, as the destination of the opium trade in days gone by. And today, it’s wealthy because of its every growing expat community, here to head up manufacturing, sustainability, construction, oil, and to trade the markets. Add to all this a less obvious working poor, streets not as wide, a brighter sunnier climate, faux colonial buildings, and a neighborhood such as Jìng’an begins to look very much like gentrified Georgetown, Washington DC. Venture further inwards to Nanging Road and Shanghai with its intense neon lights and teeming crowds looks a lot like a cross between Hong Kong and Las Vegas. Beyond its looks Shanghai is a city with a lot of appeal for Chinese business.

My dinner companions

With my mind already made up, I couldn’t leave without making some effort, however small, to find traces of traditional China in the streets of Shanghai. And what better place to begin my search than People’s Square. My evening was made not by the square, but by two Malaysian men at a dumpling joint on Huanghe Road on the edge of the park. Always slightly ashamed of my non-existent Chinese, I had my face in my dumplings when the older of the two began talking to me. It’s these moments that make me so happy for shared tables. Not only do I get to share dinner with others, but I get fun and interesting conversation into the mix. As we ate out of our tin dishes that looked like they dated from the Cultural Revolution, we talked together with the man sitting next to me about living in Shanghai, about beautiful places to visit in China, and about traditional Chinese food. Sadly, I can’t relate much of the important facts of the conversation because I never fully understand the Chinese names and places. Every now and then I would be distracted when the guy in charge of pan frying the dumplings on the street had to wait for the next batch to be steamed and he hung his head through a window, a hole apparently cut in the glass for no other purpose than him to stick his head through and talk.

The chef

No sooner had we finished eating than the older man promptly told me I had to have a foot massage at 30 Yuan (about 4€) for 90 minutes. There was no suggestion I might not want a foot massage, but rather, I was brusquely led across the road and before I knew it was lying back in the upstairs parlor of Hanlu’s with my feet in a bowl of hot water. If I closed my eyes, I felt like the chosen concubine as my feet were slapped and pulled, rubbed and kneaded. There were no candles or rainforest sounds, just a room filled with cigarette smells, a television playing something that was of great fascination to all of the masseuses in the room, and constant chatter mixed in with the sounds of men being massaged behind a screen. Every now and then, the girls massaging two men in suits, still on their telephones, in front of me would continue their labor and announce in a very loud voice something that obviously had to do with me. Everyone would turn to me and with a smile that was almost a laugh, break into intense discussion. When I clearly had no idea of what they were saying, the masseuse would slap the man extra hard, and order him to translate. The first time he obeyed, asking “What country you from?” Given the continuing hilarity of all but me, I have a feeling something was lost in translation. Later when the same thing happened again and he asked, “You want full massacre?” any doubts were dismissed.

View from my hotel window in Shanghai

When 90 minutes later I hobbled out of Hanlu’s, my feet fatigued from the realignment of Qi, I reflected on my conviction that language is in anyway necessary to a therapeutic relationship. Indeed, in the inconsistencies and mis-interpretations, I realized its potential danger where physical exchanges can be transformative. Who would have thought that I would learn this, in Shanghia of all places? I can't say my night at People's Square endeared me to Shanghai, but it did reassure me that there are gold nuggets of all kinds to be found in even the most unlikely of cities.

LEE Yongbaek: Angelus Novus, Pin Gallery, Beijing

LEE Yongbaek, Angel Soldier (Installation), 2011

This was easily the pick of the exhibitions that I saw in Beijing on my afternoon at 798. LEE Yongbaek was chosen for the Korean Pavillion at the 54^th Venice Biennale in 2011. And as I understand it, Angelus Novus is a version of the works he presented in Venice.

LEE Yongbaek’s work fulfils my two essential criteria for art worth looking at and spending time with: first it is a truly multi-media exhibition in which he pushes at the boundaries of each medium: photography, video installation, installation, sculpture. And second, Lee’s work is a searing political critique of institutions which might ordinarily claim to be at opposite ends of the political spectrum with art, but that Lee demonstrates with conviction, are in fact, in cahoots. The art gallery and museum are as much a target of his work as are the military and the government behind it.

LEE Yongbaek, Broken Mirror, 2011

 I can’t remember the last time I saw an exhibition that was both frightening in the levels of violence it represented and critiqued as well as mesmerizingly beautiful in its aesthetic. For me the most terrifying and powerful pieces were found in the Broken Mirror series in which the frames of old master paintings contain video screens made to be mirrors. As we stand before the “images” which are really reflections of ourselves, we hear shots fired on a soundtrack that fills this and the surrounding gallery spaces. We “see” a bullet hit the glass mirror thus our image, and with it, the certainty of our identity, our vision, our self-understanding, shatters. Alternatively, as we attempt to contemplate the reflected image of a frame on the opposite wall, the “painting” is violently shot and this time, our reverence for art, together with the expectations the institutions that enable it are smashed. Then the image dissolves back into the dark, deep expanse of a mirror with nothing to reflect. The Broken Mirror series attacks the experience of art at every level: it assaults the visual and aural senses of the viewer, the art works on display, the institutions that exhibit them. There is nothing redemptive to hold onto in these shocking works.

LEE Yongbaek, This is Art + Pieta (Self-Hatred), 2011

 In another series (I refer to them as series but they are not serial in any way) LEE depicts pietas either destroying their casts or holding a repetition of themselves, tenderly as the Virgin once held Jesus. Obviously, psychoanalytical critics will have a lot to say about Lee’s work thanks to its persistent discourse of destruction as a simultaneous variation on self-destruction, self-hatred, self-immolation and the smashing of all pretences of the art institution. Not to mention the engagement with religion that is surely invoked through the reiteration in plastic of the pieta as genre. His ability to conjoin self-violence with that of the most public of institutions is another level on which Lee’s work speaks to the urgency of art as socially and culturally responsible, or in this case, irresponsible. In one work a Pieta strangling its cast, having already dismembered it, is literally trapped by giant stainless rods, each one of which has the name of a prominent world art museum on its handle: Pompidou, Tate, Stedelijk, Minsheng and so on. And at the end of each rod, a letter of the alphabet contributes to a collection of letters that spell out the title of the piece: This is Art (2011). The rods with letters immediately reminded me of charcoaled fire pokers; they left no way out for the self already entrapped and crippled by its Self-Hatred.

In the opening two rooms of the immense Pin gallery, soldiers wearing fatigues camouflaged in flowers hang from the ceiling and stalk the space. Tropical rainforest birds sing sweetly making the experience of this apparently peaceful environment one of enchantment. This is until we spend time in the space and it sinks in that the soliders are carrying rifles, and that they re hanging from the ceiling. Suddenly, the singing birds create claustrophobia and nausea. Each soldier had a name tag, as soldiers do. But their names were disturbing: they carried the names of famous film directors, actors and celebrities. These sculptes are the angels of the exhibition title, Angel Soldiers, and are then repeated in oversized C-print prints, and again, in a single channel video in which they move in slow motion through a desert of flowers, their rifles appearing every now and then. In the same way that Lee denies any refuge from the institutional forces that crucify the individual in the Broken Mirror and Pieta series, in Angel Soldiers, flowers are no haven from the attack of and by soldiers at war. The subversion of ordinarily distinct and oppositional icons is not only unsettling, but here, it is frightening.

LEE Yongbaek, Plastic Fish, 2011

Lee’s work is further complicated by its address of the political situation in Korea, and of course, by the process of setting this in relationship to all the other discourses that run through the exhibition. I am not able to speak with any authority on Korea, but it’s clear that an artist who is entwining discourses on the self, the military, the art institution, nature, and technology, has his own identity as the pivot around which these all turn. And let’s not forget, Lee’s is not a world where artistic creativity can be celebrated with any optimism.

China: Land of Opportunity

view from my window, 11th floor, China World

Repeatedly over my week in Beijing, every Westerner I met announced that they would eventually leave the city. Why? They all had the same reason: “Because of the air quality.” In a city that teems with 20 million people, and by the looks of things, 2 million cars on the roads at any one time, it’s not the density of people and traffic, the stigma of being a foreigner, or the difficulty of the language that will force everyone out. It’s the air quality. Air quality is not really in the vocabulary of the cities in which I live, so I didn’t fully understand what everyone was talking about. And when the announcement came from British people, I wondered what could be worse than the damp, cold and overcast skies of the place they call home. When I opened my curtains on my final morning I finally understood. So that’s polluted air, I thought, as I searched for the second layer of high rise buildings on the other side of Jianguomenwai Avenue. That was, until I got to breakfast and my waiter told me it wasn’t pollution, it was “froggy.” Froggy or fumes, it doesn’t make much difference. I could finally imagine how depressing it might get to open the curtains to this, morning after morning after morning.

Same View on a Sunny Day

I enjoyed a week of brilliant sunshine in Beijing, and the sun was just the beginning of what, for me, was a glorious week. I hate nothing more than tourists and travelers who compare their host country and culture to the comforts of home. But I can’t resist sitting China side by side with the world I come from.

If I had my time again or if I had the courage to pack up my life in Paris and move anywhere in the world, froggy or fumes, it might possibly be China. With a dream and a dime, I can imagine coming to Beijing where I could thrive, where doors would open and I could make the world happen for me. This is the sense I get of what happens when one comes to Beijing: whatever the nature of the dream, in Beijing for the small price of time and energy, that dream will come true.

Being Tourists

 The Chinese don’t seem to be as stuck on being Chinese as the French are on being French, or the British on being British. With one pocket full of energy and the other filled with ideas, foreigners are embraced, included, even promoted in their plight. To give one example, a colleague has come to Beijing where she will, after only a couple of years on Chinese turf, curate an exhibition in the 798 district. In London, such opportunities don’t present themselves to the young and aspiring for it takes lifelong connections in the art world to wedge one foot inside the door. And in another example, an American Friend is in Beijing studying Chinese medicine. As he happily admits; he didn’t even finish high school in America, and here he is studying to be a doctor. Everything is possible in Beijing, especially if you are foreign. That said, to be a foreigner doesn’t necessarily mean privilege, but it does mean, at the very least, to be a worker among the hoards of Chinese workers.

Guards in Tiananmen Square

Unlike the British, the Chinese don’t care much for rules and regulations. Unlike any other nation of people I know, the British don’t give an inch when it comes to two things: 1. Changing place in the queue, and 2. Waiving the paperwork. Britain is a country where people are oppressed by the bureaucracy – the form filling, the imperative to account for every decision in the workplace, the signing and countersigning first by one committee, then the next and the next. In China, my sense is that the relationship to bureaucracy is complicated and as unpredictable as everything else. Looking from the outside, everyday life in China appears to have no notion of forms and mindless bureaucratic hurdles. Even traffic lights seem to be a mere suggestion. However, I am assured that the layers of bureaucracy are even thicker and deeper in China than they are in Britain. Of course, they must be, we are talking about a Communist country that has suffered years of colonization. But there’s a difference, and the difference is what makes living here as a foreigner not only attractive, but possible: the Chinese are not afraid to circumvent the rules for a few thousand RMB. There is nothing that can’t be bought and sold under the table: visas, permits of all genres, higher education, and the list goes on.

This is meant to show people exercising in the background, but it didn't come out

Together with the potential access to circumventing the bureaucracy, there is another factor that makes dreams come true in China. This is not a world that weighs under the social devastation of unemployment. And neither is this a world in which people sit around in cafés whiling away the hours, philosophizing and bemoaning their rights, or lack of them. In China, everyone works. Work is the driving force of an economy that is growing and growing and growing at exponential rates. And this translates to the foundational principle for the realization of a dream in China: work hard and the world will become yours.

This man wanted to taxi me home, but it was too cold,
so I gave him the money anyway and took his photo

The reality in China is of course, the working poor. The other night when I was out with my American friend who has recently moved here to Beijing, after 20 mins on the corner trying to hail a cab a man on a bike stopped with the idea of taking me home. It was too cold so we gave him the money anyway, and took his photo. Then he insisted on taking photos of us, and me being the perfectionist, I kept asking him to retake the photo because it wasn’t the right focal length. After three photos my friend stopped me, with what for me was indeed a reality that had never occurred to me: “some people are so poor -  he might never have held a camera.” How is it that I share the same streets as someone who has never held a camera? If Britain is weighed down by the layers of mindless and unnecessary bureaucracy, then China is crippled by the gaping chasm between rich and poor. I say that anyone can make it here, but let’s be clear, I can only speak for Westerners. 

This woman ran after me on Tiananmen Square to be photographed with her and her baby

There is no doubt that Beijing is at the centre of the world today. The vibrations of its streets, the noise, the masses, even the air, are the marks of a city that works hard, really hard. And if I had my time again, this is where I would be, learning Mandarin, learning first to survive then to prosper in what must be one of the densest urban jungles.

798 Art District, Beijing

Party Members in 798

Today I ventured out to 798, Beijing’s home to contemporary art. The site of the art world here in Beijing is itself worth the hike. The galleries have taken up residence in a disused electronics factory that was apparently built by the East Germans, by the look of things, in the 1950s. As I was guided around the space by one of my fellow Artslant contributors, I was amazed at the buildings, much more than I was by the art: the original Bauhaus style with Communist slogans still sprawled across the walls made the buildings sights to behold. I was struck by the immensity of the spaces as well as the design – dwarfing Chelsea’s biggest spaces, and making art gallery hopping in Paris appear as precious as a tea party.

Pace Beijing

That said, I didn’t think that the galleries always used their spaces to their advantage. Pace Beijing for example, had both an extraordinary building and an exhibition of work by the hottest name on the US art scene, Sterling Ruby. The Pace gallery occupies a former arms factory, a building made prominent by a sawtooth profile roof with repeating clerestories. Despite the height of the ceilings, the clerestories ensure they come so low that the space becomes effectively horizontal. Nevertheless, some of the Ruby sculptures were extreme in their verticality and thus had to be hidden behind supporting concrete pilons. And the result was a closing down of the building on the art work, completely distracting from the reason we are presumably enticed inside. I was so much more intrigued by the building than Ruby’s sculptures, and yet, in another space, the reverse may have been true.

Pace Beijing again

A highlight of the day was the non-profit art center, Ullen Centre for Contemporary Art. But again, it wasn’t so much the art that appealed to me, rather, the whole experience of visiting the space is what I will take home with me. As a part of their “service,” I was greeted by a young man who showed me around an exhibition by Los Angelean Walead Beshty. The man went to great pains to explain the art to me — all about transition and transportation of art to the museum, it was okay, but nothing earth shattering. And as he meticulously pronounced certain words, slowly and carefully to ensure comprehensibility, it was all I could do to stop myself telling him that he was far more interesting to me than the art. Though the art wasn’t as chintzy as some of the work I had seen during the day, the young man fascinated me because he had clearly read the script and was regurgitating it with great competence. I wanted to know what was not in the script.

Tatsuo Miyajima: Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust 

Also on exhibition at UCCA

I have seen this again and again over the past week: Chinese people following a script. And when the script doesn’t quite go according to plan, the trouble begins. My guide at the UCCA was the same – when I asked him a question, he struggled to answer me, and simply repeated what he had said before, not because he didn’t know the answer, but because I think he had not necessarily learnt the vocabulary to answer. I was so appreciative of his English, especially because my Chinese now extends from “hello” to “thank you.” And what I loved most of all was his eagerness to impress me, to make my visit to the UCCA a pleasant experience; it didn’t really matter that he was not always informative and that I didn't always understand his English. When he had difficulty explaining why a particular photograph was very grainy, I wanted to save him, and so I asked where he lived. This is always interesting: which ring road orients them? And if I am courageous enough, I will ask how they live, what floor, how big, and then, if I can, how much. Somethings I take with me wherever I go, and one of them is an obsession with appartments: how big, how much and where? My three favorite questions. I didn’t get this far with the guide at the UCCA as I thought better and asked him about his studies: marketing and publicity. This of course raised a whole new set of questions, beginning with how he got to be a guide in an art gallery. His story was quite common for a young Chinese man, but for me as the foreign listener, it was fascinating. When he asked me if I had enjoyed my “visitor’s experience” I was profuse in my thanks. I find it special and unique to be in a world where as a foreigner I am made to feel so welcome.  It’s for these reasons that at the end of my day at 798, I was ultimately more impressed with the people I met than with the local art that I saw.

Walead Beshty

Beijing: Real impressions

Either I am getting old or I have read too much fiction set in the years of the Cultural Revolution. When I imagined China, sitting in my apartment in Paris, I imagined streets dense with people on bikes wearing Chairman Mao suits, I imagined truck loads of dead rats, children urinating in the streets, public announcements on PA systems flooding the air, blaring indecipherable instructions. I imagined the hawking and spitting on the street. In short, I imagined a cold, strange world full of  unfriendly and distant people. How wrong I was.

The Chinese are warm and friendly, always ready to help when they can, though most don’t speak much English. There’s nothing cold or distant about most Chinese people, and on the contrary, they are emotional, warm, they yell when they need to, speak loudly if necessary and even when it is not. In my first days here I kept wanting to compare China to Japan, especially as Japan is meant to be the wealthier country, the one that is supposedly closer to the West, both economically and metaphorically speaking. But the two countries could not be more different, especially in terms of the mentality. And strangely enough, here in China, it seems to be more relaxed. Behavior does not appear to be coded in the same way as it is in Japan, or even France for that matter. There is a freedom and a vivacity to the interactions between people – between me and them, between each other. For a country that still functions under a dictatorship, even if a somewhat more relaxed one, there is a very keen sense of individual identity. The young especially are all out and about with their fabulous haircuts, tattoos, wild clothes and heels where to express oneself in these ways in Tokyo means being on the edge, alternative. Here, it is de rigeur to be expressive and alive with one’s own sense of individuality. 

There's not much Communism left on Jianguomenwai Avenue

Even more surprising, though I shouldn’t be surprised, is the equality between men and women in seemingly every walk of life. Being in China reminds me that there were advantages of Communism that we are too quick to forget in our efforts to do away with all of its ruinous and scandalous dealings. Communism was a system that had equal place for men and women, and this filters into, and keeps the city of Beijing alive today. This, and the whole lane on the roads given over to bicycles make a city in which neither women nor bikers are second class citizens – now there’s a liveable city. 

Scallops. This was served under a bell jar that was lifted and the dry ice 

underneath wafted with the smell of the flowers

The sign indicating the way home

And when I went running, Beijing came alive in a different way. As I ran in the bike lane, very peacefully, down past the worker’s stadium and the voice of the PA system blared out at top note, I was reminded of the old days, the image I had of how Beijing was meant to be. In a short distance, I felt as though I had run from the present through the early twentieth century and into the twenty-second. The conglomeration of architectural styles, modes of life and transport, storefront lighting in all possible variants, were from different eras, different political regimes, different cultural beliefs. It’s a city of the vastest contradictions that I could not have begun to imagine prior to arrival. And there are many beautiful things about a city characterized by its air thick with pollution, its dazzling skyline filled with searing sometimes gawdy towers. For example, always, wherever I go I am greeted by orchids, in full flower, in the most elaborate of arrangements. Even on the 12 lane highways someone has taken the care to arrange the flowers as exquisitely as the Parisian patisserie owner dresses her window. And the service culture is first rate: even when they don’t speak English they are obliging and friendly – unless of course you stop bargaining before buying at the market.

The flower arrangement in the lobby of China World Hotel