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.

What to do on a normal Beijing Thursday? Well, some work in the morning, then lunch in town with members of the Dutch Club here because it’s the third Thursday of the month (just information for the insiders), have a look in the neighbourhood of the restaurant where a big band of young children is receiving some very important person visiting their school and then of course to the Lama temple. Who did say something about diversity and contradictions?
The lunch was really nice, sitting outside and talking uncomplicated in Dutch to the ladies of working male expats in Beijing. I’m curious in which language I will dream tonight, Dutch or English. Because the last couple of nights English started to become dominating.
The young big band, fascinating to see these children play so well, sounded really good. At home I have heard bands of adults with less quality.

But the highlight of today was the Lama temple, the most important Tibetan Buddhist temple in town. Here the next reincarnation of the Panchen Lama used to be chosen. In the middle of Beijing amidst the high apartment buildings, new offices and the heavy traffic in the streets suddenly arises this centuries old complex representing a lot of history. Within the walls rules a benevolent quietness unless the many tourists, as well Chines as foreigners. I found it remarkable to see so many young Chinese offering and praying very concentrated.
Because usually one doesn’t speak to much about the recent past it was also remarkable to read on one of the official signs that due to Tsoe-En-Lai, the Prime Minister in that time, the temple had survived the Cultural Revolution and had been opened again to the public in 1981. More queer it was to read on the most important temple of the complex the other official remark that in 1990 the big 18 meter high Buddha inside, made out of one piece of sandalwood, had been mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records. How important this book can be! And how nice is it to show the ambience of the temple by a lot of pictures.

Days fly by. I put a big table in the gallery space to experiment with water colour, Chinese ink and the different sort of paper I bought in the material shop near the Academy. But life is not work alone. So this afternoon we had lunch with Nan Fei, an artist I had contacted already via e-mail at home. After lunch she took us to a gallery lead by a French women married to a famous Chinese rock star and the studio of a Chinese artist who made huge paintings. That’s again such a question I’m wondering about. I have seen now so many real big paintings. Where are the walls to hang them, who is buying them?
But that’s not what I wanted to write about today. Today is showtime for our hutong restaurant, the one I mentioned already several times before. Simple but clean and delicious food. The best way to show this is of course by a lot of pictures.
The daughter or son is taking the orders, father wipes the floor and takes care of his grand child, mother keeps an eye on the bills, the money and puts rice from a big pan in the small cups and then there are two men in the kitchen. This kitchen looks very organised with only one disadvantage, the noise of a starting aeroplane that’s coming out of it when the gas is burning high under the pans for new plates ordered. But we don’t complain about that because we know how high, or better said low, the bill will be afterwards. And that the beer-machine is standing besides the dishwasher in the restaurant itself while the television is sometimes a bit too loud, well, who cares.
By the way, when we leave at the end of the month the restaurant will have one menu with English characters besides the Chinese ones. Each time we see an interesting dish on one of the tables we ask if we may have a look at it, ask where it is in the extensive menu and write the English translation to it. Isn’t that a good example of globalisation?

Hegezhuang is the name of the part of Beijing where we stay for this month. It’s pretty far from the centre of town but this doesn’t say anything in a big city like Beijing. It’s still just a bit country like but not too far away tall buildings are already visible which probably means that within a couple of years a lot of the ground around will be used for building houses, apartments, offices etc. Developments are going really fast here.

But let’s stick to Hegezhuang. In my view this area shows all what’s going on in the centre of town. The gallery where we live is part of a new build artist village. Four years ago nothing was here and now this so called 318 Art Garden is filled with studio’s where artists work and live. It’s simple and clean but not rich in its ambience (see photo). Therefore it’s so interesting that on one side of our enclave a very, very expensive teahouse, the Green T House, is found. Even an American guy we met last week in Frank’s Place (read about in the blog of May 8), who was a main stockholder in a world famous truck company, told us that his visit there had been a real rip off. So, imagine what it has to be to even the richer Chinese. But the building itself is beautiful (see photo) in all its white colour and the interior shows a kind of minimal Chinese design I have never seen before. May be they have to find their clients in the rich enclaves in our surroundings. High walls like the Great Wall hide the houses inside partly but it’s still visible that they are really big and the gates are pretty well guarded. Our taxi driver told that these houses could be bought for about € 800.000. For Chinese standards this is, I presume, a huge amount of money. Certainly when this is compared with the € 4 we have to pay in our restaurant in the hutong nearby for a delicious and extensive meal for four persons. Contradictions in Hegezhuang also are not far away as is of course the case in the whole of China nowadays.

If we walk from the gallery to our hutong, in the opposite direction from the Green T House, we pass another enclave for art. Here a lot of new galleries are build. In a huge old factory hall they already hanged a lot of art of Chinese artists living in the several art villages in and around Beijing (see photos). But about these art enclaves I would like to write another time. In my opinion all these contradictions in just this small piece of Beijing reflect what’s going on in society here. But I feel really happy about the fact that still this traditional hutong exists with its small shops, its food stalls in the streets (see photos) and its many friendly and happy people. Even when they don’t speak English.