Back in China

Back at our hotel in Beijing I spent a few minutes checking on my emails and then met up with a few of the others to head over to the Temple of Heaven. Once there we split up with some choosing to do their own thing while Alisdair, Darren and I – who had plans for the afternoon – strolling around together. I have been to the Temple of Heaven before. I know I have. I have the photographs. I wanted to go again because I have no memory of it at all. The reason for that is that when I visited last, on my first trip all those years ago, we were taken there straight from the airport on our arrival. We were all so tired and jet-lagged that it’s a wonder we were still able to operate cameras.

It was worth another, more wide-awake, visit. The pictures really say it all.

When we had had enough of the rather marvellous site, we wandered out of the gate opposite to the one we had entered by and went into a nearby cafe for lunch and to discuss our plans for the afternoon. Last night I had had no plans but then I overheard Alisdair asking Neil about a place he had read of – 798. 798 is an art village, a series of converted warehouses and other buildings in which the very best of the Beijing art scene can be found. I always love to visit galleries, especially when I’m travelling and can see things I might not get the chance to see at home. I had never heard of 798. I had, truth be told, never realised that China now has a vibrant and exciting art community. When I heard it being discussed I asked if he minded if I tagged along and a little later Darren also decided to join us.

Outside the cafe we soon found a cab and, after some confusion with our written directions, we were on the way. It proved to be rather a long way out towards the airport. Eventually we got there and went in. It was everything I could have hoped for and more. It was huge, bigger than my home town, with hundreds of galleries and bookshops and restaurants and bars. If I ever return to Beijing again I shall take at least a whole day there. I could easily spend a week there. Every kind of art was on display. Paintings both representational and abstract. Sculpture in every possible style. Satirical works and highly stylised works. Photography, graffiti, embroidery.
It was completely marvellous.







Among the exhibitions that I saw and especially enjoyed were

· an exhibition of black and white photographs of Chinese life

· a series of paintings of women’s faces hidden in clouds
· some photomontages showing thousands of people in a mixture of landscapes
· a statue called “The Ideal and the Reality” which morphed from the classic Marilyn Monroe pose into a female Chinese soldier without indicating which was the ideal and which the reality
· a series of large photographs by a former prostitute showing herself nude in various unlikely places such as business offices, in each of which she was shown as having the position of power by virtue of holding the shutter release with the cable running out of frame to the camera

· various outdoor statues that were in the streets and squares.

However the one that impressed the most by far was also the strangest. We were wandering more or less at random in and out of galleries on the principle that there was far too much to see for us to employ any kind of logical approach. In one there was a Chinese woman at a desk in a large white room with a single work at one end. The work in question looked at first glance like a green laser hologram of a larger than life figure. Closer inspection revealed it to be no such thing. It was in fact a sculpture made of fine mesh net and cunningly lit with green light so that the sculpture, the lighting and the resulting shadows created the hologram illusion.
The woman from the desk indicated a curtain covered doorway that I hadn’t previously noticed. We went through and found ourselves in a large darkened hall filled with sculptures in the same style. Red and green lighting on elaborate mesh sculptures created a startling illusion of holograms that floated around the gallery space like disembodied phantoms. I was like being trapped in Superman’s Phantom Zone and it was really quite remarkable.



The artist, according to the leaflet I picked up on the way out, was a Korean called Park Sung Tae and I can do no better than quote from that leaflet. “Park’s installations have gained a reputation for the uniqueness of their materials and for their... communication with the installation space. [They]... have been constantly spotlighted by leading art fairs around the world and have been collected by major art museums of Korea, including the National Museum of Contemporary Art and Seoul Museum of Art.”



When we came out we went for a couple of beers in one of the rooftop bars which had a slightly disconcerting glass floor that allowed us to look down onto the heads of the people in the gallery below.

I vowed as I sat there that the next time I come to Beijing, and I am certain there will be a next time, I shall spend at least a whole day at 798. I only wish that there was something comparable here in the UK, but I’ve looked at art galleries all over the world and seen nothing quite like it.

In the evening we had dinner at John’s and then a night time walk around the Hutongs which was much more impressive than our daytime bicycle tour had been, but it was a last evening kind of activity – interesting but full of the knowledge that it was all over now and tomorrow we would be on our way home.

As ever I had thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing, especially as it had proven to be such an unusual trip.