Yesterday I finished with a remark about the fact that I couldn’t enter my own weblog here in Beijing. This got an extra confirmation when yesterday evening I visited a Chinese artist: here the same problem popped up. Without many words our glances at each other meant the same. The Olympics and also …. But at least I still can send my texts and photos.

This morning I had the appointment for the next session with my ladies group. This showed up to be in the Academy for Fashion in Beijing. Not that this was known to us but our driver, the one we ordered for already several times, was given this address. Well, after some time you get accustomed to this kind of surprises. Although it’s called the Academy for Fashion we learned that they also have disciplines in ornaments, industrial design and painting because Zhanhe, one of our group, is teacher here and gave us a tour in the afternoon.
But first we had our session which meant concentrated working. The group counted five women again like last Sunday but there were two new faces in it because a few others probably had other things to do. In consultation we decided that we all could work free on the paper I had brought with me. It’s interesting to notice that now we are getting to know each other better a few of the women feel more free to use their very basic English. The whole ambience was really nice with Chinese titter and tatter and a lot of giggling. They all worked in different styles, from pure abstract to realistic figurative. How I will let this fit in the exhibition I don’t know yet. But that’s my problem, not theirs.

We ended this morning session with a real nice lunch offered to all of us by Zhanhe in the special restaurant of the academy. This was appreciated of course very much. That on our way to this restaurant we had a look into the two huge lunch spaces that are available for the 2000 students here made even more lovely! Isn’t this one of the reasons why we are here? As a normal tourist you will never have part in this kind of things. I more and more realise for myself that these experiences are really unique.
It became even more fun when we got the tour I mentioned above. Old memories came up when we entered the classroom where the students of Zhanhe were working. But before we were allowed to enter the nude model they were drawing had of course to vanish behind some big paintings. From time to time only a curious head was sometimes visible. The students liked our visit very much and became even more enthusiast when I was allowed to make remarks about their work which Zhanhe tried to translate as good as possible. A lot of photos were taken of me and them like in the official stuff with the most important person in the middle. Because all of them of course had flashy mobile phones with the possibility to make photos. In comparison to theirs mines belongs in the museum as Middle Age stuff. They all also were wearing typical Western clothes, T-shirt and jeans. If there hadn’t been Chinese bodies in it with Chinese heads on top talking Chinese this meeting also could have taken place somewhere in the Western world. But are a lot of the clothes we wear not ‘made in China’!