A last reflection to end this weblog after 30 days of my “Beijing Project”. It has been a marvellous experience. I had a measuring point because of our visit to Beijing and China 13 years ago but then as normal tourists. I now know that I just have to forget that after a stay of one month as a less normal tourist in a small quarter of the city that has in it a lot of aspects of the city as a whole and where I could make contact with several layers of the population.
The Beijing of today cannot be compared to the old one. Of course I have to be careful with extrapolating Beijing to the rest of China. As you cannot say that you have visited de US after a visit to New York, you also cannot say that you visited China after a visit to Beijing. But nevertheless it’s no problem to conclude that China is changing enormously. A couple of days ago I wrote that reading about this is just one thing but really experiencing it is something quite different.

A city with 6 rings of 6 lanes around the centre with the 6th ring having a radius of more than 25 kilometres, a city with a lot of new nuclei of which every one in itself is big enough to be a city in The Netherlands, a city with everywhere new, sky high apartment buildings in a often very nice variety of architectural styles, a city with an enormous amount of new and also nice office buildings. You cannot show that by pictures, you only get the feeling by driving through it.

And also a city with a bubbling art scene. A city where thousands and thousands of artists are trying to earn some money and becoming famous, a city with an endless amount of art galleries with often huge exhibition spaces. You should say that such a development cannot go on, also because in the modern art world India is coming up now like China did before. But may be I do not judge this in the right way if you have a look at the Law of the Big Numbers. If in the future only 1% of the Chinese are getting interested in art and are willing to spend money for it, their number is nearly the population of The Netherlands.

All over Beijing you notice that the model of Western consumption is becoming popular. Very big shops for electronics, shopping malls in American style, an amount of expensive new cars, enough to cause a total stoppage in every city in my country, in spite of the many kilometres of subway lines that have been build in an unbelievable short time and that are used by many, many people who cross Beijing for just 20 eurocents and, well, just name it!
All the disadvantages of this, the traffic jams, the air pollution, the breaking down of the old Beijing, seem to be accepted more or less by most of the people. But they have seen worse things during the last half century. As far as it’s possible for me to judge it in the right way after meeting with and talking to a lot of people I think that they are quite satisfied with the situation of the moment. I found them much more open and laughing more easily than 13 years ago. The many artists I met showed all a great hospitality in spite of the fact that they knew I was just a ‘poor’ artist from The Netherlands who didn’t come to buy their work. The people in the hutong nearby were all very friendly and curious and all clothed clean and proper in a Western way. ‘Our’ driver, who drove a lot of kilometres with us in his car, dreams of a big house near the water with his wife and kid. I got the feeling that people ‘live’ much more than 13 years ago and also have the possibility to ‘live’.

Is this an ode to Beijing? No, certainly not! But I’m asking myself now carefully if we in the West have the right image of this country and don’t emphasis too much only the negative aspects that of course are also present.

When there is an opening, there is also a closing. Today, to my regret, the closing of my exhibition here in Beijing had to be effectuated. ‘To my regret’ because for my feelings this month has been much too short and I wouldn’t mind to stay here a bit longer.
The same men who hanged my banners in the beginning came to bring them down. As usual taking down is done much quicker than building up. It was clear they had been thinking about the best way to remove the clamps that fixed the banners to the beams of the roof with a scaffolding as low as possible. A long stick showed to be the best solution (see the photo’s).
They also helped removing the staples with which my oil paintings were pinned to the wooden frames, rolling up the banners with the paintings around them and packaging all for the transport back home.
Suddenly the big exhibition space that had housed my work for the last couple of weeks seemed very empty. But all thing come to an end, also this Beijing art adventure that has been very inspirational. Tomorrow I’ll write for the last time in this weblog of my “Beijing Project” and then also this part of the project can be closed because on Saturday morning we fly back to The Netherlands. But much of a rest is not foreseen then, on Sunday waits the so-called Art and Culture route in my hometown Middelburg that is always held on the first Sunday of the month.