Today I allowed myself a whole day off to have a look at modern Chinese art. This meant also a visit to the 798 Art District, an area we already visited about two weeks ago for a much too short time. Some books say this was the area for ammunition factories, others state that it was for the development and manufacturing of electronics. Whatever it may be, in the fifties the old DDR helped the Peoples Republic of China to build up this complex where at its peak about 20.000 people were working. But modern developments diminished the value of the complex and its decline set in.
After some time professors and students discovered the area and the big halls as an ideal settlement for their studios. This gave a new impulse to the complex but in 2004 the situation became very unsure because the government developed ideas for the building of apartments there. But in some way or another they were pursued to let fall this idea, may be because at that time Chinese art was already booming in the Western world. So the new idea of making it an art district as never seen before got shape. Now the development accelerates as seems only possible in China. Many hundreds, may be even thousands of cheap workers are busy with new pavements everywhere, with planting trees and lot of flowers and with renovating the many big halls that are still there, even after the huge number of galleries that are already settled here. In August, when the Olympics start, the tourist will walk through an art district no one has ever seen before, a propaganda place for Chinese art and fashion of which all other countries can be jealous.
I found it fascinating to see the many young Chinese people strolling around. Here you get a glimpse of the new, modern China. Of course I tried again to illustrate this with a large number of pictures of the huge exhibition spaces, the mess in the streets at the moment and the kind of art that is shown.