Alex Goes To China

Last Saturday night Jo and I caught a sleeper from Beijing to Shanghai. We shared a cabin with two Chinese men; an old, retired businessman and a salesman in his early 20s. The old man spoke very good English and told us about his work auditing factories in China for American companies.

When we arrived in Shanghai we were really tired. It was 7.30am and we couldn’t check-in to our hotel until 10am, so we hanged around a Chinese fast food joint and ate some MSG while we waited.

After we checked-in and got some rest, we had a look around. We are staying near Huaihai Rd, the French Concession and The Bund in the heart of Shanghai. These areas are very westernised but in quite different ways. The Bund is like the city from a Hollywood remake of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Jetsons. The French Concession is a bizarre version of Paris circa 1930 complete with Art Deco and Baroque architecture. And Huaihai is another one of those International shopping malls with every designer label you can think of plus a few local brands that have made enough money to afford the rent.

Some of the highlights of this area have been away from the tourist traps. We went to a pet shop down the road that had frogs, squirrels, chinchillas, crickets, turtles and much, much more. Also Jo and I went for a late night massage (fearful we would be offered a happy ending). Instead we got a traditional Chinese massage. My masseuse was small and young and yet her hands were so strong I am sure she could crush a skull with a casual clench of her fingers. My back still hurts, but in a good way. I can feel the tension from dragging luggage around and sleeping on strange beds melting as my back heals.

On Friday Jo and I are going to Fudan University to meet some artists, teachers and students at the Shangahai Institute of VIsial Art (SIVA). There is a 5 hour itinerary for the visit including lunch. I am looking forward to the opportunity to see how arts education functions at this university. Perhaps I will do part of my PhD there…

Overall I have to say I think I prefer Beijing to Shanghai. My Beijing experience was more grassroots and communal compared to my impressions of Shanghai. Shanghai has a more corporate, commercial feeling. The common comparison of Shanghai being like Sydney and Beijing more like Melbourne is probably accurate. These are only first impressions though, and judging them this early is a little premature.

Hot, wet and noisy; Shanghai from on high.

One of Jo and my reasons for going to China was to see which city we might live in, in the future. Another reason is to have a holiday; and by ‘holiday’ I mean ‘be a tourist’.

So far we have been to 798 Art Zone, Tienanmen Square, The Great Wall, Wangfujing Dajie and Nanluogo Xiango. We are thinking about going to Beijings underground city (a nuclear bomb shelter built by Mao in the 1970s to house 40% of Beijings population) and perhaps The Summer Palace. These things are important historical and cultural sites which are also quite entertaining. And yet having said that, the most interesting part of this trip so far has not been the monuments and tourist sites. Rather it has been observing the banal, ordinary lives of the people in Beijing.

The streets are not as busy as I would have expected. They are dirty, but not as much as I would have thought. My expectations are constantly being challenged. Generally the Chinese are warm and friendly without any hint of racism or xenophobia. If anything they are too accommodating to foreigners (perhaps because of the opportunities a comparatively wealthy westerner may represent in the new economy).

Traveling with Jo has also been a bit of a coup for me. Her Chinese is quite good and she knows her way around. For instance, we have not had any problems finding delicious, hygienic food. She is even teaching me Chinese with a patience I wish my secondary school teachers had possessed. And because of her skills we have been able to fit comfortably into a sort of way in China that is both challenging and pleasurable.

Overall my impressions of Beijing are such that I know I could live here. The challenge would be to find meaningful sources of income that develop my artistic, academic and technical vocation. But if I can manage that, then a longer term adventure in Beijing would be awesome.

The centre of Beijing; urban life in Dongcheng

I have moved my blog from http://alexgoestochina.wordpress.com to here because of ongoing connection problems caused by the fact that the PRC have deemed Wordpress.com to be counter-revolutionary during the 20 year anniversary of the Tienanmen Square Massacre.

Anyhoo, this is a nice work around thanks to my colleague Ed, who created this service for artists to have an affordable, easy to manage web space. You too can have one of these revolutionary sites by signing up here: artistspace.com.au

After that little hickup I can now post some images:

Flying to Beijing was a dream run. Cathay Pacific economy class served delicious meals on the new or refitted plane. Movies were plentiful on the headrests of the person in front and the stop over in Hong Kong gave Jo and I two hours to stretch and eat some noodles with beer at Ajisen Ramen.

Our hotel is in the CBD, the Beijing Perfect Inn. Thankfully it is on a really interesting street (Guloudong Dajie) that seems to specialise in PSPs and XBox 360s. There is also a little alley (Nanluogu Xiango) that runs off it packed with great restaurants, little bars and cafes and other interesting shops. And everything is very affordable.

I wanted to blog earlier than today but The Great Firewall wouldn’t let me. My counter measures didn’t work. But today, auto-magically, it’s back online so here we go. I might back up this blog on another site in case it happens again (thanks to Ed):

http://alexgoestochina.artistspace.com.au/

We went to Tienanmen Square yesterday. It was a little uninteresting visually, but it was quite a powerful reminder of the political situation in China. We also went to Wangfujing Dajie which is a shopping strip packed with international brands, department stores and the like. It too was a little disappointing. I think we prefer stuff that is more below the surface of China. We will be hunting for more of that in future. Having said that, it is interesting to contrast the history of Tienanmen with the present day reality of Wangfujing Dajie as an example of where China was and where it is going.

I will post some pics ASAP.

It is the night before takeoff. Jo and I can’t sleep, we’re too excited. The plane leaves at 7:35am so that means we have to be up in less than 5 hours to go through the check in and customs, etc.

I finished installing the show at Conical (refer to last post), I wish I was able to be at the opening, but Beijing and China awaits and this has been planned long before the Conical show.

So, I might have a lie down now. Stare at the ceiling for a bit and then spend a day on a plane. My next blog will prolly be from Beijing. Wish us luck!

I am going to China in 5 days, but before I go I will be completing a video installation for an exhibition that opens at 6pm Friday 26th June at Conical Gallery. The show is titled ‘Langscapes’ and it features curator Kirsten Rann with artists Bernhard Sachs, Peter Daverington and myself. My work will be titled ‘The Absence of an Horizon’.

The show will close on July 17. This is 4 days before I return to Australia. This means, unfortunately, I will never see the show. If you see it, let me know what you think.

PS: “Absence of an Horizon” was made completely with open source software; including Ubuntu (Jaunty), Blender, Kino, Kdenlive, DeVeDe and Brasero.

Human history is filled with horrors. Despots, dictators and socio-economic and political systems that are nothing but barbaric and atrocious. China particularly could make Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (a nasty little story) seem like a romantic comedy. Chinese empires have committed genocide, rape, torture and war for nearly 4000 years. The Cultural Revolution of Mao itself also has played its hand in a number of massacres which leave the number of dead in the tens of millions and the scars of its rule the continuing brain death of a nation.

Yet things are changing. I suspect that with the new international era of Chinese engagement, it will fair better (probably because I am a naive optimist). Also, I contextualise the above rant with the knowledge that Europe has a very similar history, as do many of the Great Civilisations of millennia past. Civilisation is not very civilised.

I hope humanity is not doomed to repeat the horrors of history, and I especially hope China will learn from its past and move forward.

One of the things I am looking forward to in Beijing is seeing the 798 Art Zone. This is the largest art centre in China and apparently is filled to the brim with contemporary work from around the world. Wikipedia has a pretty good page on it. Check it out here. Also they have their own website which you can find here.

“Chinese security personnel try to stop pictures being taken as they check the photographer’s documents in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.”

Source: telegraph.co.uk

20 years after the massacre

As a social media consultant and an Internet g33k, I am quite invested in the notions of freedom interwoven into the web. For this reason I am quite upset by China’s attempts to censor the World Wide Web (and equally upset by Australia’s recent attempts).

Something I take satisfaction in however is the counter measures being taken by white hat hackers the world over in creating easy to use tools for side stepping the censors. My personal favourite is the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC). With people like this in the world we will always have alternatives to fear, oppression and abuses of power.

And now on a lighter side, here is another conflation of Chinese and Australian politics.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptccZze7VxQ&feature=player_embedded]