Day 18 - Why Shanghai women are notorious

Shanghai laneway

The population of Shanghai: 23 million (without counting all those migrants from the countryside who do not have permits to be here).

(Just as a point of comparison this is greater than the entire population of Australia).

By my estimate about 20 million of this population are currently driving crazily on the street outside my hotel. I thought Beijing traffic was extraordinary until I arrived in Shanghai. If Beijing is about power and the past, then Shanghai is about money and the future. It's all about the hustle, (in Beijing you are not constantly accosted by young men saying "Shopping, lady, handbags, designer handbags?") and is a city of extremes - great wealth, great style. Property prices are the highest in China, a 3 bedroom apartment in the French Concession rents for about 30,000 rmb per month (about $4500), and I see many stylish women displaying the mainland obsession with designer labels, crossing the road swinging Tiffany, Prada and Louis Vuitton bags. A story in today's paper tells of fake 'Italian' brands of designer clothing sold throughout China being exposed as local products. Since the melamine milk scandal which killed a number of children and made about 30,000 very ill, the Chinese have lost confidence in Chinese-made products and are mad for imports. Many of these so-called 'imports' are of course fakes. This is the land of the simulacra!

There are also very disturbing sights here indicating great poverty and squalor - maimed beggars with twisted limbs, and incredibly young, bedraggled mothers dragging miserable pinched small children through the appalling traffic, with much shouting and slapping. The contrast between wealth and poverty seems greater than in Beijing. Perhaps in Shanghai it has always been thus, and the foreign influence has always been greater as well. Now of course it is exacerbated by the fast pace of change.

My translator, who works here but comes from the north, in Xian, tells me that Shanghainese women are famed throughout China for their spoiled and manipulative behaviour (also, apparently, for their odd habit of wearing their pyjamas out in public, complete with high heeled shoes!) and the men are known to be good at cooking and housework. When I jokingly tell her that she should be looking for a Shanghainese man to marry, she curls her lip and says, "No way, I would have to tell him to 'man up'!" We are in a taxi and the driver is listening to a Shanghai radio soap opera in dialect (I am missing the Beijing rolled 'r' accent), and she says, "Listen to those high voices, what did I tell you about Shanghai men!"

Driving into the far distant Puxi suburbs to visit the Shanghai American School this morning, outside the window at an intersection I saw:

A middle aged man in a very new, very stiff and shiny, bright blue pinstriped suit, smoking a cigarette, serenely pedals his bicycle through a chaotic jumble of cars, buses, taxis, trucks, and motor bikes. The driver of every one of these vehicles is smoking, flicking ash and cigarette butts out their windows, and occasionally spitting as well. Meanwhile, in the opposite direction, an old woman in a headscarf and face mask, and traditional cloth shoes, rides a motor scooter, with a basket of eggs on the back. A young man wearing a studded leather jacket, and with a very sharp and studiedly 'rock star chic' haircut, steers his motor bike across with his 2 feet, without using the engine. A girl in a hot pink jacket and gold gym boots strides to the beat of her i-pod in the middle of this traffic. You can't say 'lanes' of traffic because there are no lanes. Driving in China is Darwinian, and I frequently genuinely fear for my life. It's sometimes terrifying, but never boring!

Tomorrow: artists Chen Hangfeng and Monika Lin, and some more galleries.........

Day 17 – Shanghai

Number Two High School Entrance

I cannot believe that March is nearly over and this was Day 17 of my 'big adventure'.

I am exhausted after a huge first day in Shanghai, starting out at 7.00am with a long taxi ride over 'Jetsons' style futuristic elevated freeways across the river to Pudong New Area, and the government's showpiece Number 2 High School, attached to the East China Normal University. This was really fascinating, but certainly not a typical Chinese high school. Firstly, it is extremely difficult to get into, and the students are academically selected. Secondly, it has a strong international program, with sister schools in Canada, the United States, the UK - and Geelong, Victoria. International students come on exchange programs to the school, so dialogue is far more open than in a traditional Chinese school. The campus is large, modern and very impressive.

Number Two High School Campus

I am invited to watch Mr Liang's 11th grade art class learning about the traditions of Chinese calligraphy. Mr Liang is a young teacher, but he manages his class of 40 students effortlessly, using humour and his strong presence to ensure that they are engaged and actively involved in his lesson. He is also being watched (and videotaped) by the school Principal for his annual review, as well as being observed by me, my translator, and 2 other visitors from another Chinese school. None of this seems to make him nervous, and his class of 16 and 17 year old students obviously respect him and enjoy his lesson - and they all clap when he demonstrates the technique of brush calligraphy.

Mr Liang demonstrates brush calligraphy

Mr Liang begins his lesson by asking students to identify Chinese national treasures, and there is laughter as they name Mahjong and Chinese Opera.  He uses an interactive whiteboard effectively (but not interactively, which would be difficult with a class of this size) to show examples of the development of the art of calligraphy from the earliest bone oracle carvings, through Qin dynasty stone carvings, the bamboo strips used before the invention of paper and the Han Dynasty script, through to cursive script which is expressive, conveying the emotions of the writer to the audience. At various points the students are asked to discuss questions he has raised, and then they stand to respond very politely to his questions.

Calligraphy table

Students writing calligraphy

When the students begin to write the 2 characters he has identified, using beautiful bamboo brushes and black ink from blue and white patterned jars, there is some giggling amongst the girls and a bit of pushing and shoving amongst the boys - all very normal. They are curious about my presence, and some are very keen to be photographed (no different than Loreto girls in that regard!) At this school, students in 10th and 11th grades all study art - but they have only one 40 minute lesson per week, in a class of 40 students. Some students elect to study a more intensive course, however no student is able to study art in 12th grade as it is not a subject for the Central Examinations.

Students with calligraphy

With the students

After the class Mr Liang and I have an interesting discussion about the nature of the art curriculum in China, and about his interest in the use of ICT to support student learning.  While Mr Liang is a highly competent and skilful teacher, and is himself a practising artist, there appears to be something of a disconnect between the art taught in the school system (about 50% Chinese and 50% Western) and what is actually happening in the art world. He tells me they are reluctant to accept contemporary art as 'real art' and he is unsure about the value of 'pushing the boundaries' with them. Of 18 lessons given to one class last semester, he estimates he would have used examples of contemporary art in two of them. Students at No 2 High School are clearly very competent painters, and accomplished in the traditions of drawing. There are many paintings on display which reveal the influence of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism which show a considerable degree of skill.

Mr Liang is interested to find out about the NSW Visual Arts curriculum, and we note a number of the key differences between our two systems. We agree, however, that art teachers will always find a shared understanding and common ground as we are constantly advocating for the legitimacy of our subject in the curriculum! Shanghai schools are rigorous, and perform the best of any school district in China in national and international testing. There is currently much controversy and public debate about this, I have read, as some parents begin to question whether students are actually being taught how to think for themselves, or merely how to learn in a very narrow and rigid way. Students suffer a great deal of anxiety, stress and depression as a result of the high pressure, high stakes testing to which they are subjected. Every young Chinese person I have spoken to has made some reference, either veiled or specific, to the notion of trying to 'bring honour to their family' through their academic achievement and future career.

A focus on literacy and numeracy to the exclusion of other areas of the curriculum (as happened in the US with the Bush 'no child left behind' program) forces the arts into a shadowy zone of 'optional' or 'non-core' knowledge which can be dropped entirely when political/economic agendas change. At considerable cost, I would argue.

A snippet from the Shanghai Daily - a Middle School teacher in Guangzhou has been fined after slapping a child who dared to argue that his homework regime was unreasonable. He has been forced to apologise to the child and parents - a very grave loss of face.

The afternoon was spent at the Zendai 'Art Supermarket' and then with the young Canadian director of 'Art Labour' Gallery - a fascinating 2 hours which resulted in some more artist interviews and a most interesting discussion of whether the current western fascination with Chinese art was really a kind of fetishisation, a new version of postcolonial 'Orientalism', in which a certain type of 'chinoiserie' is privileged at the expense of other, more authentic kinds of artistic expression. Something to really think about ... am I guilty of this romantic notion of Chinese art as somehow 'other' also? Martin says he thinks Australians are much less likely to fall into this trap than are Europeans, as we seem to have a more secure sense of China's location, significance, and our own place in the Asia Pacific region as well.  We agreed that currently the Chinese artworld seems to be in a transitional phase where it will emerge as something different, stronger and just as fascinating. More about this, and more thoughts about what I have seen and experienced in my 11 days in Beijing, later.

Day 15 - The ‘Romantic Revolutionary’, and the Summer Palace of a Powerful Empress

Summer Palace

This morning I met up and coming young artist Wu Junyong in his studio in an artists' village on the outskirts of Beijing, where currently between 60 - 70 artists live and work, until the government redevelops the land for a new railway line. The artist's life is always a precarious one, especially in this city of swift and dramatic change.

Wu is known as a pioneer of the use of Flash animation techniques, creating works which are at once poignant, lyrically beautiful, politically charged, technically sophisticated and sometimes nightmarish in a way which recalls Goya. When I look at his animations, in which tiny puppet-like men and hybrid animals are manipulated into grotesque parodies of social rituals I am reminded of the hand drawn animations of South African artist William Kentridge. These works also meld a personal visual language with a political or social imperative. Wu's most renowned work, 'When we are rich', is a savagely satirical indictment of 'new China' with its loss of traditional values and an obsession with the trappings of wealth and success. He believes that China today combines the worst side of a feudal society with the darkest aspects of capitalism, and he tells me that living in Beijing is a constant source of inspiration for his work, as it is like a theatre where all the craziness of the world is on show: thieves and counterfeiters, scam artists, scholars and philosophers. He sees himself as a surrealist and a 'romantic revolutionary', and I ask him to define this further. He thinks that a kind of idealism, and a dissatisfaction with the present, inspires him to create his ironic and satirical depictions of the world as it is, a social critique in which, he says 'art is like a thermometer, taking society's temperature'.

We drink Oolong tea from his native Hunan Province, which he quickly decides is not good enough, as it is 'last year's tea', so he makes a new pot of 'this year's' green tea, from the area around Hangzhou where he grew up and trained as an artist. I have drunk more tea from delicate tiny cups in artists' studios in the last ten days than ever before! He shows me his works in progress, and I am especially taken with his new paper cuts, which feature many of the same images that appear in his animations. He is working on hybrid combinations of Chinese and Western fables, fairy tales and folk tales, which combine to form apocalyptic and sometimes funny (and sometimes rather graphic) narratives. On the table, magically appearing from delicate drawings and the deft use of scissors, are frogs turning into princes, horses, elephants, spiders, Chinese 'scholar' cranes fighting over books, the small men wearing long pointed hats that populate his animations, and the Greek myth of Daphne turning into a tree. In this last instance Daphne wears a vase growing out of her head, as there is a Chinese expression that a beautiful girl is like a vase of flowers. I had previously thought that the pointed hats worn by the tiny puppet men in his works may be dunces' hats, in a veiled reference to the Cultural Revolution and the ways in which intellectuals were humiliated by the Red Guards. Wu says no, there is a specifically Chinese reference to the scholar's hat, and that these men are, for all their airs and arrogance, merely animals after all. I suspect that there are many possible layers of meaning here, however, not all of which I will be told.

Wu Junyong in his studio
Photographed by Luise Guest and used with permission of the artist

Wu shows me animation works both past and present on his laptop - they really are extraordinary, at once beautiful and disturbing. He believes that animation is the closest thing to imagination, as he is 'like an emperor with magic powers' who can summon up a whole new world. This world is one of political satire, mythology, social comment and a meditation on personal life all mixed together - he describes the process of creating his work as 'like writing a poem'.

Wu has just had a solo show, 'Duet' at Art Issue Projects Gallery, in which he showed work from the last 5 years. He has sold one of these works to the Shanghai Art Museum. He has also previously shown work in New York and LA, and has been collected by Judith Nielson for Sydney's own White Rabbit Gallery. However he does not believe it is necessary for Chinese artists to show internationally, as the focus of the artworld is now on Beijing. He will have another show of new work at Art@F2 Gallery towards the end of this year, in which there will be no animation at all. He wants to show audiences a different aspect to his practice and is working on sculptural forms and installation. Anything is possible in China - artists can work on projects of a scale and ambition that can only be dreamed of in Australia. Labour is so cheap that workmen - in fact whole villages of craftsmen, in some cases, can be hired for a minimal cost.

I tell Mr Wu that an American critic compared the way in which he has pushed the boundaries of the artworld to Marcel Duchamp and the revolutionary impact of his famous dada urinal, 'Fountain'. He curls his lip at this and stresses that he is not referring to any artists or art conventions, although he does show me a print of Breughel's 'The Blind Leading the Blind' and tells me that everything in his new work stems from looking at that painting. Wu is making specific comments about Chinese society which speak directly to Chinese audiences, but which may be 'read' in different ways by audiences in the west. The images in his work are a pictorial language, through which many possible meanings are both revealed and concealed.

In the late afternoon I walk around the beautiful artificial lake of the Dowager Empress Cixi's Summer Palace - she was the 3rd concubine who became the Empress in the name of her son, and then her nephew, and who ruled China for 50 years. I walk through ornamental gates and stone archways and along avenues of flowering peach (symbolising longevity), cherry and plum trees. Over and over I see the familiar symbols of the dragon, the phoenix, the lion and the tortoise. I am becoming much more aware of how significantly this rich traditional symbolism informs contemporary artists.  In China everything is a visual metaphor, and true meanings are often hidden.

Summer Palace rooftops

Summer Palace pavilion

Day 14 - Sunday

A beautiful sunny spring day in Dazhalan and Liulichang, then to the studio of Liu Zhuoquan.

Near Dazhalan

I feel so pleased that I was able to visit the hutongs described so beautifully in Michael Meyers' book, 'The Last Days of Old Beijing'. I loved the book, and felt through reading it that I came to know the narrow alleys, and the slightly wider shopping streets lined with 'scholar trees', of Dazhalan and Liulichang where he lived and worked as a teacher (known to his students as 'Teacher Plumblosson') before the Olympics in 2008. I explored the area this morning with a gentle but very knowledgeable guide and translator, Mona, who told me which sections were original and which had been pulled down and then rebuilt (some might say 'faked'!). She told me that the government decided it would be far cheaper to pull down many of the old areas and then rebuild with new bricks and paint the fronts to look like the old shopfronts, than to restore these ancient crumbling courtyards.

Hutong doorway

Hutong rooftiles

However, enough still remains in an unreconstructed and quite chaotic state to give a very good idea of the traditional hutong life, in narrow criss-crossing alleyways just wide enough to be traversed by a small person on a bicycle, or once upon a time, a sedan chair. I went from here to the Capital Museum, in a wonderful new building - all timber, steel and glass, very beautiful - with excellent displays of historical artefacts relating specifically to the history of Beijing, and the 5th floor given over to displays relating to cultural and folk traditions. Being with a Chinese person to explain the complexities of rituals, customs and beliefs makes everything more accessible, and I feel I come away with a much better understanding of the layers of past and present that make up this city and its art. There are many school aged kids in the museum writing notes and I ask Mona whether Chinese school students also study European or American history and she says, 'Yes, a little, but don't forget we have 5000 years of our own history to learn.' This kind of puts it into perspective for an Australian!

Later in the day, when I am talking with some other Australians at 798 about coming back to Beijing in the future, Tony Scott says to me "Aha! You're hooked! I knew that would happen." And, yes, I think it's true. I want to speak better Chinese, and I cannot imagine not coming back to see the change and evolution of this extraordinary place.

In the afternoon I went with Tony Scott and his assistant and capable young translator,  Rachel, to interview artist Liu Zhuoquan, who works with traditional craftsmen who have mastered the ancient art of 'inside painting', once used on the beautiful snuff bottles dating from the Ming and Qing dynasties. In Liu Zhuoquan's practice, however, they become ways of making a comment on many aspects of life in China today. He sees the work as suggesting a scientific laboratory, as the bottles (discarded and 'found' objects referencing the everyday) contain beautifully painted, miniaturised 'experimental material' relating to nature, biology, human society and also to politics. Liu Zhoquan, although born in Wuhan, spent many years in Tibet, and the beliefs and practices of Tibetan Buddhism have profoundly affected his world view and his own art practice.

With Tony Scott and Liu Zhuoquan

Some of the bottles reference the present, and the dramatic changes people must accommodate in their daily lives as China embraces (dominates?) the global economy, for example some have expensive branded sneakers painted in them, whilst others reference much more controversial subject matter. I know that art students will be fascinated by this artist's practice, and apart from the Hong Kong Art Fair next month he will be seen in Sydney in a group show of Chinese artists at the Stella Downer Gallery in Danks Street later this year and at the next Sydney Biennale. There are also plans afoot that may result in his inclusion in the next Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane. He tells me that he is bringing 10,000 bottles to the Sydney Biennale!

Liu Zhuoquan with his bottles
Photographed by Luise Guest and used with permission of the artist

Work by Liu Zhuoquan
Photographed by Luise Guest and used with permission of the artist

Today's South China Morning Post has a story of many child labourers, some as young as 9, found working in factories in ShenZhen making Bluetooth adaptors.

Day 13 - Saturday night after a huge day at ‘Qi Jiu Ba’ (798)

Hu Qinwu
Photographed by Luise Guest and used with permission of the artist

I have waited to write about my meeting on Thursday with Hu Qinwu, because it was very significant and made a huge impression on me, and I had to let it sit and ‘percolate’ for a while. I had originally seen his work at an exhibition at the Stella Downer Gallery in Sydney last year – in fact he was one of the first artists that I was determined to contact when I came to China. On Thursday afternoon we met at a café and art bookstore in 798, with Tony Scott, the organiser-in-chief of China Art Projects, and his assistant and translator, Rachel. Mr Hu is a softly spoken and gentle man, who radiates a quiet certainty, and a confidence that owes nothing at all to ‘flash’. He is perhaps the antithesis of the style without substance that so often dominates the artworld.

We went to his studio, near that of Liang Yuanwei at Black Bridge District. Here I was completely astonished at his prolific practice, the beauty and subtlety of his painting, and how it has developed and changed since about 2003. Hu makes us chrysanthemum tea and shows me his most recent works, in tempera or inks on paper, in which the Chinese characters of Buddhist sutras seem to shimmer, dissolve, disappear and reappear under a pattern of repeated tiny circular forms. They are at once abstract and not abstract, meditative pieces which evoke the colour field work of Mark Rothko in their power to engulf and immerse the viewer.

Hu says he chooses to use tempera because it requires great skill and control over the process – it is the opposite of expressionism. He mimes the actions of an expressionist artist, waving his arms around in big gestures, then shows me how, in contrast, he works with great intensity and concentration, with the works laid on the floor, as he drops water onto the layers of tempera to create the dots in a tightly controlled and precise grid pattern, which is sometimes drawn on in fine gold lines. There are also enormous canvases with subtle layers of colour – in some works rich reds and blues lie underneath the greys, blacks and whites of the grid of dots. Recently, however, he has removed all colour in favour of a subtle muted palette of greys. He doesn’t want too many elements occupying the surface – there is an increasing simplicity and purity in these works.

Hu tells me the dots can represent text (much like the text in a Buddhist sutra) which resists one single interpretation. They also hide layers of calligraphy and colour. Irresistibly I am reminded of the way that dots provide the sacred ‘shimmer’ in Aboriginal desert paintings. In Buddhist theology, he says, meanings are arbitrary, and language is just a way of labelling the world. In his practice he has created a unique pictorial language which is precisely articulated, yet suggests many possible interpretations and layers of meaning. His own personal history and the recent history of China have had a profound impact on his work. The change has been so fast, and so overwhelming, that he believes that people must turn inwards to find an inner peace and calm. Quietly spoken, modest in many ways and yet authoritative, when I ask him if he could identify particular artists who have been influential in his practice, he says, ‘No, I believe other artists will look to me for their influence’. All I can think is ‘Lucky, lucky students in the Painting Department at CAFA who are being taught by Mr Hu!’

Hu Qinwu
Photographed by Luise Guest and used with permission of the artist

I am feeling very exhausted and travel weary tonight after another big day. Sometimes I forget I am not 25! I began the day at the Panjiayuan Open Air Antique Market, or ‘Dirt Market’, which is extraordinary, but maybe not for the faint hearted. Spirited bargaining does not come easily to me in English, much less in Chinese while trying to do the maths for the exchange rate (never my strong suit!) and pass the calculator back and forth. I had really hoped to go to the National Museum of China, newly re-opened last week and reputedly a vast treasure house of Chinese history and antiquities, because I particularly wanted to see Song Dynasty painting after meeting Liang Yuanwei on Thursday. To my great disappointment after crossing the vastness of Chang’An Avenue and Tiananmen Square I discovered all the tickets were sold out and none would be available until Tuesday – by which time I will be on a plane to Shanghai. Ah well, I have a list for next time in Beijing, which includes the Summer Palace, the Lama Temple and the Great Wall, because the focus this time is on the art and the art education.

Panjiayuan Market

So, off to Qi Jiu Ba for a second visit – it must have been quite amazing a few years ago when it was genuinely an artists’ village in the Bauhaus inspired architecture of the old factory work unit that it once was. Mao era work units were vast, encompassing many factories, schools, shops and worker housing. 798 is no exception, it is enormous. The area has been a source of much dispute recently, I am told, as the work unit, which still owns the land and buildings is, understandably  in my view, anxious to maximise the profits for its ex-workers, but this has come at a cost to the artistic integrity of the zone. Developers and entrepreneurs of every variety have moved in, selling dreadful T Shirts, ghastly pottery and appalling art, mixed in with the serious galleries. These include international art ‘brands’ such as Pace Beijing. It is amazing to me that in October in New York I visited all three Pace Galleries in Manhattan (one on W. 57th Street and the other two in Chelsea) and attended their ’50 Years of Pace’ exhibition, and here they are now in Beijing.

Shasha Liu, the young gallery manager of Art@F2 in Caochangdi had invited me to an opening reception for a new exhibition at Tang Galleries, and this proved to be wonderful. Works are by Chen Zhen, Huang Yong Ping, Shen Yuan, Wang Du, Yan Pei-Ming and Yang Jiechang, in an exhibition called “Tracing the Milky Way” curated by Jerome Sans. This is one of the most exciting exhibitions of contemporary art I have seen so far. Huge and adventurous installations pose questions about what kind of world we live in, and the role of the imagination.

Tang Galleries installation

In one work the head of an enormous fish is grafted onto the carriage of a train. The fish head in turn has the heads of other animals protruding from it – an inventive and somewhat disturbing voyage into taxidermy, and a nightmarish vision. Another work is a room filled with firecracker work tables and bundles of firecrackers hanging from the ceiling amidst pendulous lights. Yet another consists of stacks of burned and charred newspaper, with printed Perspex or glass sheets referencing contemporary issues such as war in the Middle East. A work that I particularly like is a documentation of the destruction of traditional ways of life and housing in Shanghai, a meditation on both colonialism and communism. This room is filled with stacks of printed posters relating to these issues, with the instruction “Please take” – so I did.

Tang Galleries installation

This exhibition certainly proved to me, if any proof were needed, that the art scene in Beijing is incredibly vital and that artists are working within and beyond international contemporary art conventions. In fact most of the artists I have spoken to talk about national identity and their belief that the world will come to see China as a leader in every respect, including art and design – the label will no longer be ‘Made in China’, but will proudly state ‘Designed in China’ too.

In the 4 hours I spent wandering around 798 I saw much of interest in amongst the tawdry, and also many photo-shoots taking place for ‘China Fashion Week’. I visited a fabulous show of work by Robert Rauschenberg, David Salle and Michael Bevilacqua at Faurschou Beijing, and an interesting show of paintings by Hong-Chen Zhao at the Hong Kong Art Museum. Inadvertently I wandered into another opening reception of an exhibition by a young artist from Macao, Carlos Marreiros, called “Tobacco Wars” which combined  text and drawing in interesting ways. I love the small things about cultural difference – in Beijing, art openings are generally held on Saturday afternoon or evening and include vast quantities of elaborate cakes, in addition to the usual wine! The ME Photography Gallery had a lovely show of evocative black and white photographs documenting the use of the bicycle in Beijing – there is a sense that as more and more people own cars, and live further and further out of the city, beyond the 4th and 5th ring roads, the ubiquitous Beijing bicycle will disappear. The exhibition was like an elegy to a fast vanishing way of life.

It took over an hour for the taxi driver to traverse Beijing and return to my hotel, and during this journey I had to call a Chinese acquaintance and ask her to talk to the taxi driver about where we were going, as so many of them only know the geography of one section of the city.  I feared that we might be driving in circles around the 3rd ring road for all recorded time, like some kind of Chinese version of Dante’s Inferno. By the time I returned I was so exhausted that I couldn’t face another trip out for dinner. There is a McDonalds near the hotel, so for the first time in many years, I entered Maccas, where of course everything is written only in Chinese characters. I successfully managed to order a hamburger and a coke in Chinese, but most unusually for McDonalds I was unable to communicate that I did indeed ‘want fries with that’!

Days 11 and 12 – Spring arrives in Beijing

Outside my open window tonight there is a constant blaring of horns and ringing of bicycle bells, but the air actually smells like spring instead of like choking dust. Just today I have seen more magnolia trees in flower, weeping willows with green buds everywhere and workers in orange uniforms watering the dusty patches that may soon, perhaps, turn into grass. This feels like a different city than the one I arrived in exactly a week ago. Partly perhaps because I have overcome my shock at its immensity, and sometimes when I am in a taxi, or walking, I even know (sort of) where I am, and partly because the arrival of spring has changed the atmosphere in the streets.

I have had an amazing two days, which have been so full that it is hard to know where to begin to describe them. Today, thanks to an introduction from Professor Ian Howard, Dean of UNSW College of Fine Arts, I spent most of the day at the Central Academy for Fine Arts. This was quite extraordinary – an enormous institution which is legendarily difficult for students to get into. They accept only the most gifted of applicants, and in a tour which encompassed the Printmaking, Painting and Sculpture studios, as well as an exhibition of work by First Year Design students, I was utterly astonished at the standard of their work. Chinese art students are taught with an academic rigour that is long vanished in the west. There are many viewpoints about this, yet the artists that emerge from this system, including many of those on the faculty, are at the cutting edge of the avant-garde.

It was exciting to be there, breathing in the (no doubt toxic) fumes in the etching, lithography, woodblock printing and screen printing studios, which reminded me of my own student days, long before OHS and Chemical Safety ruled our lives! I was in a state of extreme envy at the size of the etching presses and the setup of these studios, where students were intently going about their work in a serious and dedicated way. Then to the First Year Painting classes, where students were painting at their easels from 2 models, set up at either end of the room. Studio after studio, down a long corridor, was set up in this way. Their paintings were very, very good. I loved being there – going into painting studios is something I immediately understand and where I feel at home, breathing in the smell of oil paint and solvent fumes – the smell of art! I was invited to join a delegation of faculty and students from the Norwegian Academy of Fine Arts, and we had some interesting discussions over lunch about the relative merits of a ‘free’ and ‘conceptually based’ western system of art education versus the rigorous and academically challenging system which operates in China.

Later, in the fabulous CAFA Museum (which was also showing a large touring exhibition of works from the Uffizi Museum in Florence) I looked closely at an exhibition of work by first year students in the Design Faculty. This was also pretty astonishing in its technical excellence, but also for the way in which the students are encouraged to think creatively in response to the demands of specific design limitations. The curriculum owes much to Walter Gropius and the German Bauhaus, acknowledged explicitly by the Director of the Faculty.

It is probably not surprising that CAFA is a powerhouse of art education – Beijing, after all, is a city in which a reputed 10,000 artists live and work. This is an amazing statistic!

I met two of those artists yesterday.

The first part of Thursday involved another long and hair-raising drive down dusty rutted laneways where dogs (many, many scruffy dogs of every possible shape, size and breed) wander at will, nosing through the rubbish, and cyclists are on what appears to be a suicide mission. Women push their prams straight in front of speeding trucks and buses. Very small children sit unsteadily on the back of bicycles, or sometimes on the handle bars, and teenagers give each other a ride – sometimes 3 kids to one bicycle. I am not sure how we arrive safely at the studio of Liang Yuanwei, in a district called the Black Bridge Artists’ Village, in Caochangdi, but somehow we arrive unscathed. The driver is not happy about his car, however, and is polishing the exhaust pipe with his handkerchief and muttering darkly as Stanley and I enter her studio.

Photographed by Luise Guest and used with permission of the
artist

I first encountered Liang Yuanwei’s work in the collection of the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney, and was immediately drawn to it. Richly painted impasto canvases simulate pieces of cloth, some patterned with flowers, some with checks or dots. The cloth was collected from friends and relatives, some has a personal significance or a memory attached, but mostly I think it is intended to be quite banal, creating a surface on which the artist can layer rich painterly surfaces. A recent exhibition, the Golden Notes, was said by art critics to resemble Song Dynasty ‘bird and flower’ patterns, referencing Chinese history.

A small, quiet and intense young woman, now heralded by the press as ‘one of the best Chinese painters under thirty five’, which she finds quite amusing, Liang Yuanwei pours green tea and talks about the enormous shift in her life. From unwillingly graduating from the Design department at CAFA because her father would not permit her to study Fine Arts, and having to ‘lose face’ by asking undergraduate students to show her how to stretch a canvas; she is now to show her work at the next Venice Biennale, in the Chinese Pavilion with renowned artist Song Dong. She will then show at the London Art Fair, followed by her 2nd show at Pace Galleries Beijing with iconic artists Sol Lewitt and Agnes Martin. Not someone to blow her own trumpet, she quietly says she hopes not to embarrass herself in the company of such great artists.

The past decade has been lonely. As a self-taught painter, not a graduate from the CAFA Painting Department, she was not accepted in the Beijing art scene, and had to fight for herself and to “act tough”, dealing with gallery directors who ignored her, and one who famously told her “There are already too many female painters”. Liang says she has always been something of a rebel, living ‘in the margins’ in a rock and roll culture. It is ironic perhaps, that as we discuss the current Chinese art world she agrees that in China today many young people aspire to be artists – artists now occupy the space once reserved for rock and roll stars.

Photographed by Luise Guest and used with permission of the
artist

During our conversation Liang refers to artists who have been of great significance to her, such as the pioneering sculptor Eva Hesse, Mark Rothko, and also Wolfgang Tillmans, Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter. The most profound influence, however, which I immediately identify and understand when I see her recent minimalist and beautiful installation pieces, was the German artist Joseph Beuys. As a young girl, she always knew she wanted to be an artist, but at that time she knew only of Van Gogh and one or two famous local Chinese realist artists. Only much later did she find out that there was another way to make art. While she was studying Design at CAFA in 1995, some of her tutors returned to China from Berlin, bringing back with them contemporary art, in particular, the conceptual ‘Fluxus’ work of Joseph Beuys.

Liang is a determined and courageous woman, and she is now embarked on a path which she says is a balance of possibilities, between fear and trust – an artistic trajectory in which she is also caught up in China’s transformation and the dramatic changes in its economy, culture and politics. She says the change is so fast that she has had to turn inward, to find a quiet and calm place, and true values.

Photographed by Luise Guest and used with permission of the
artist

This idea is one I hear over and over again from Chinese artists, and from other people that I talk to. My translator, Stanley, I discover today, has quit his well-paid job in a pharmaceutical company because he is unhappy about corporate ethics, and wants to be a writer. He talks knowledgeably about books, poetry, Chinese history and spirituality. He is writing a novel about three generations of a Beijing family, and we talk about his desire to write and to teach. He is unsure what the future may hold for him, but he does not want to go into his family’s pickled meat business, and for the moment prefers to work as a tour guide and translator.

One thing that fascinates me here is that educated people are completely at ease with an identity as an intellectual. The artists I have met are articulate, deeply thoughtful, well-read and conversant with both Chinese and Western history and philosophy. It is most unlike our Australian suspicion and quick labelling of people as having ‘tickets on themselves’ or showing off. From the distinguished 53 year old Wang Jianwei, a former young soldier in the People’s Liberation Army, who as a young man in Sichuan spent a year being ‘re-educated’ in the country; to younger artists such as Liang Yuanwei, artists talk books, writers, history, philosophers and theory with a passionate intensity which is lacking in Australia. Perhaps it is only people who have known what happens when education is removed, as it was for so many during the Cultural Revolution, who can really value it. Liang talks about an important book by the American James Cahill, a reinterpretation of classical Chinese art. Stanley says to me later, “Yes, I have read that book and I agree with Miss Liang Yuanwei that it is very important”.

I am embarrassed to be so ignorant.

Meeting with Liang was just the start of an extraordinary day in which I also met the artist Hu Qinwu, whose work is permeated by Buddhist spirituality and whose gentle demeanour and profoundly beautiful paintings captivate me; visited the studio of Tony Scott, who runs China Art Projects in Beijing; and ended with a dinner in a beautiful restaurant designed to resemble a Qing Dynasty courtyard house.

Days 9 and 10 - A vibrant school, two extraordinary artists, and a LOT of flower blossom tea

On Wednesday I spent the day at Beijing City International School, where the Visual Arts teachers, under the leadership of a feisty, funny, fearless and very thoughtful Englishman called Richard Todd, are doing some really exciting work with their students, from the Elementary grades (starting with tiny 4 year-olds) through to the 12th grade IB Diploma students.

I loved my day at this school.  Richard and I had a great time planning a possible artistic exchange unit which would involve our respective Year 10 and 11 students in exchanging and altering photographs, to share their sense of cultural and personal identity across two countries, and many cultures and backgrounds. More of that later! The school is a really dynamic place: a not-for-profit international school, established with the idea of ‘giving back to China’, located in central Beijing, not far from the extraordinary ‘Today’ Art Museum. I have been so impressed by the students in the three international schools I have visited thus far – they are mature, responsive, yet independent; trusted and trusting in their relationships with teachers, and able to engage as respectful equals in dialogue with adults. I think there is much in the IB approach to pedagogy which encourages this autonomy in students as learners – learning frameworks are absolutely explicit, student profiling is the norm, and students are not competing with each other in quite the same way as happens in many of our schools.

Richard is passionate about student (and teacher) reflection, and has designed a unit of work for his 9th grade which explicitly, through art, is about teaching the skills of purposeful reflection. He has been designated an ‘Apple Distinguished Educator’ for his creative use of ICT in project based education, developing a system of Year 9 individual student blogs, which function as a ‘Learner Profile’ for the Middle Years Program in the IB, in which they record their reflections on their learning in every subject, upload samples of their work to show growth, record their feelings about successes and failures, identify where they have taken a risk, and where they have used specific thinking skills. This is really metacognition in action! Richard has developed a system of ‘tagging’ to retrieve, classify and file all the multiple layers of information which the blog will hold.

Basically we talk all day, over lunch (duck and noodles) in the cafeteria; in between my observation of classes such as his Year 9 group, who work most independently, finding all the information and materials they need on the Year 9 Visual Arts class ‘wiki’; and discussions with his 12th grade students about their interesting and experimental IB bodies of work; and thought-provoking meetings with other members of the creative arts team.

I am very impressed by one 11th grade student, in particular, who is working on a series about the social stratification in Beijing. She has interviewed all the school’s guards, cleaners and ‘servants’ about their lives, recording these interviews with an interesting video. She has then photographed each person going about their daily tasks, but in a most sensitive manner, where they are depicted with great dignity – it is not at all obvious or naive. Her intention is to make a point about the way in which the city relies on the labour of these individuals who are so often invisible to those whom they serve.

As I walk out into the evening street and hail a taxi, I am thinking about the tangible and intangible factors that make some schools so dynamic and interesting for both teachers and students. One of these is of course the passionate engagement and commitment of the teachers, and I have just witnessed that to a very significant degree at BCIS, evident in the meeting of the Creative Arts Team, planning a cross curricular project involving students from Years 6 to 9. This promises to be a multi-media extravaganza based on a range of ‘monster’ themes including ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ with a composer in residence, and a Japanese Buhto Theater expert, and the sheer creative energy of the team (e.g. “Can we have an 8th grade student abseil down the start of the building to start the show?”!!!) It is also evident in the passion of the newly appointed Visual Arts leader of the Elementary School, and the beautiful environment she has created for her small student; and in the students working around the school in a range of areas into the evening. In many respects so similar to my own school, where both staff and students give so much of their time and dedication, but also such a contrast in terms of its multiplicity of cultures and languages, and the richness that can bring.

Tomorrow I will write about my meetings with the extraordinary young artist Liang Yuanwei, described by a journalist as ‘one of China’s best painters under 35’, and with the deeply spiritual painter Hu Qinwu, whose Buddhist sensibility permeates every aspect of his work. I spent Thursday at the studios of these two artists, interspersed with a visit to the ‘Three Shadows’ Photography Gallery, and the Art@F2 Gallery, both of which had particularly interesting exhibitions. The day finished with a dinner at a most beautiful restaurant, designed to resemble a Qing Dynasty courtyard house, with beautiful Chinese furniture and views into the courtyard – apparently it is particularly beautiful under snow, but today I have even seen a few magnolia trees in bloom, so spring is on the way. Everywhere that trees are in blossom there are people taking photographs of them – clearly it has been a long winter!

In the city streets the red lanterns and strings of fairy lights sway in the strong wind, above the discarded plastic shopping bags which blow around every corner.

Six Hours in the Beijing Traffic – Day 8 (Part 2)

Wang Jianwei

Behind a typical grey exterior wall and a pair of metal gates, opened by a tiny old woman who struggles against the strong wind, is the cool and minimalist studio of distinguished artist Wang Jianwei, described by  Artzine China as “a kind of sociologist or anthropologist”, an artist who “challenges the division between art and real life”. 

 

I am a little intimidated to be meeting this august person, but, gentle and with an intense gaze through black spectacles, Wang is affable and ready to talk, makes me flower blossom tea and, through the heroic efforts of Stanley, my translator, we chat for almost two hours. When we leave, Stanley says “That was HARD!” Mr Wang tells me he like my questions, because most westerners just want to ask him about Chinese politics, and instead my first question was about his new show, ‘Yellow Signal’ opening at UCCA (the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in 798) on April 1. He is disheartened that international audiences are still so focused on the work of the Cynical Realists and the painters of the 1990s, the ‘megastars’ of the Chinese art firmament, with their cultural revolution imagery.

Most comfortable and expansive when discussing the philosophical underpinnings of his works, which range from Chinese history, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism to the French structuralists and psycholinguists such as Lacan, he shows me a book by Slovenian philosopher Zizek, ‘The Sublime Object of Ideology’ and tells me that this is the key to his new work. He tells the story of the Buddhist apprentice who asks his master ‘What is Buddhism?”. The master replies “Tofu”, or sometimes ‘Vegetables”. It strikes me at this point that Wang is very much like the Buddhist master in the story, confounding his apprentice with an unexpected and very abstract response which can be so opaque as to be almost impenetrable. This is ‘ji feng you’, something which cannot be expressed. I think I am as mystified as the Buddhist apprentice monk at this point!

The ‘yellow signal’ of the new work refers to the yellow light which is ‘in between’ the clarity and obviousness of the red and the green signals. It is a transitional and ambiguous space, a ‘liminal zone’, if you like, which most of us ignore because we prefer the simplicity and order of the red and the green with their command to action – either ‘stop’ or ‘go’. In particular, he says, for the last 5,000 years of Chinese history people have been controlled by clarity or certainty.  He wants us all – and most especially the Chinese – to learn how to doubt. Chinese education does not teach students how to doubt, he tells me, and maybe this is why the political control is so tight. His mantra is ‘doubt everything which is certain’. What IS certain is that this work showing at Ullens will be quite extraordinary, although I leave with no clearer idea about what audiences might encounter. He tells me that through the period of the work’s exhibition it will constantly evolve and he will keep changing it. It will include video and new media but also other forms as well. He says it is not like the opening of a flagship store, full of branded goods, but instead it is a work in progress.

Trained in the rigorous academic Chinese system as a painter, the opening of China to the world made him realise the abundant possibilities of other art forms. The beginning of his shift towards a much more conceptual practice came in 1983, when one of his teachers returned from the USA and mentioned the word, ‘installation’. He said at that time the word confused him, but ‘this is the beginning’. He explains ‘To me the definition of what is art or is not art is no longer important – why don’t we just think about art as a collaboration of human knowledge? If the green light is the history of art and the red light is science, then contemporary art exists in the yellow light’.

I ask him, “If a student asks you ‘Mr Wang, what kind of artist are you?’ what would you tell them?” His long and measured response distils a lifetime of thoughtful inquiry. He says, “I am 53 years old and the most important thing is that I keep learning. The history I have lived through brings this legacy: when a person lost the choice of his own future, this was terrible. I want to determine my own future by learning, which includes making mistakes.”

We talk about this period of rapid change in Chinese society, and how people cope with this. He believes that Chinese people are overwhelmed by their economic success, and they have to learn how to enjoy it, and learn “how to be the big brother”. He says in his gentle manner “I don’t want to change the world”, but perhaps with his emphasis on developing a way of thinking which avoids the easy, the obvious, the simple and prefers the ambiguity of the ‘yellow light’ his work suggests the kind of change which is possible.

As I leave, once more I am really overwhelmed by the warmth and openness of China and of Chinese people – I don’t believe that a humble teacher would have access to an artist of such eminence in New York, or London, or Sydney for that matter. I hope that this is something which will not change with China’s increasing affluence and confidence.

Wang's studio

Six Hours in the Beijing Traffic – Day 8 (Part 1)

Li Ming

Today I discovered what was truly the most extraordinary landscape on the outskirts of Beijing, with a journey to Songzhuang Artists’ Village. This area is about 2 hour’s drive from central Beijing, and it is where many artists have relocated now that 798 and Caochangdi have become too expensive. Unbelievably, there are about 2,000 artists living and working in this area, in what was once a poor rural district but now looks like a post-apocalyptic, barren, dusty landscape of broken down abandoned houses and shops, loops and swirls of electric wires on poles leaning drunkenly into the roadways, broken pavements and roads, rubbish swirling in the wind, and old men riding bicycles with trailers piled high with building rubble or corrugated iron fencing. School children in bright red tracksuits cycled in and out of the crazy traffic – there is no inhibition whatsoever about driving on the wrong side of the road, leaning on the horn, playing ‘dare’ with the oncoming traffic. Several times I was covering my eyes and praying that this was not my final moment, but I am learning that despite the chaos it all seems to work without total carnage resulting. It is the dodgem car school of driving.

Improbably, in this wasteland that to me is reminiscent of the opening scenes of Peter Brooks’ bleak black and white film of King Lear, appear big signs for art galleries, shops and exhibition spaces. We look at a map at the ‘welcome centre’ – this is VAST, it would take weeks to see much at all. Many buildings are unfinished – a huge, flash new museum is rising amidst the dust – obviously the plan is for this to become a tourist drawcard and the new 798, but … there is a way to go. Some museums and expo spaces look quite modern and smart until you get up close or go inside, and then you can see there has been little or no maintenance. Things happen on a shoe string budget it would appear, and that sometimes doesn’t include much lighting.

We visit the studio of Hua Juming. In fact, I literally and most embarrassingly fall at his feet, tripping over a large rock on the pavement. Later, after we see the documentation of his performance piece, ‘Crawling the Great Wall of China” where he and his wife and son crawled along a section of the Great Wall on their bellies, my translator wryly suggested that I was engaged in some performance art too – this is my first indication that this serious young man has a sense of humour.

Hua Juming is a pixie-like character who lives here with his wife, also an artist, now that his son is grown and at university.  As soon as he hears I am from ‘Audaliya’ he says “Ah, White Rabbit!” Obviously Judith Nielson’s important collection and her buying trips to China are legendary among the artists. He tells me that he enjoys the camaraderie of working in such close proximity to so many other artists. My suspicion would be that there is much ‘gan bei’ involved in these collegial get-togethers. The work in the studio, most of which he proudly tells me is already sold ‘to America’, is in some ways a pastiche of other famous Chinese artists, with recognisable images. Thoughtful and strategic appropriation? Or a way to make a quick buck from buyers who expect from Chinese art a recognisable ‘brand’? I am initially doubtful but finally persuaded that his intentions are serious and that this work has developed from a series about Western art history, with collage-like montages of iconic works by Jasper Johns, Warhol and Duchamp. These Chinese artists really do love their Pop Art – or is that what many buyers want and expect?

His performance art is in some ways more interesting. Here is his description in a self-published book, of a work from 1994 entitled ‘One Thread Penetrates One Ton of Books’, which I have to say I found utterly charming, so I reproduce it here in full:

‘One day at noon I was having a sun tan at home balcony. Suddenly I had a strong impulse to do something. So I found a pile of books and a thread. Within half an hour, I used a huge nail to drill a big hole on every book and linked with that thread. Afterwards I got a lot of sweat all over my head. Then I hung that thread together with those books up in the balcony, left them to be blown away by the wind. The wind took them away page after page. This experiment of penetrating books, directed me to an idea that I wanted to use a thread to penetrate all the collection books from the Argentina national Library in the capital. Of course the National Library’s collection were not penetrated by my thread. However in 1994 I and SHS members together did penetrate all the books in Huangshi  Xinzhi Bookstore…tens of thousands of books seemed to be a mountain, it metaphoric the complicity of contemporary society and culture.”

Once Chinese artists discovered modern Western art, in the late 1980s, the lure of Dada was particularly influential, as you can see from the account of this performance art – on artists such as this as well as the more famous figures such as Ai Weiwei. I hypothesise, bumping back over the lunar landscape of Songzhuang, that there is an element of bleak absurdity in writers such as Samuel Beckett, and in Dadaist poets and artists, that the Chinese felt particularly drawn to in a post Cultural Revolution time. In fact, as I look out the window at some peasants trudging along with their faces averted from the bitter wind, I think they could indeed be Vladimir and Estragon, waiting still for Godot

.

I will write tomorrow about the extraordinary experience of spending an hour and a half with Wang Jianwei in his courtyard studio on the other side of Beijing, and his explanation of his new work, ‘Yellow Signal’, which opens at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art on April 1, by which time I shall be in Shanghai.

Day 7 – From the Western Academy to the Ming Dynasty Watchtower

After spending Sunday learning as much as possible about the history of Beijing, with an utterly exhausting and fascinating tour of the Forbidden City (ask me anything about the significance of the phoenix, the dragon, the lion, the colour yellow or the number 9, I can now tell you!)  today I am catapulted into the 21st century and then back again to the Ming Dynasty.

I began Monday morning with a long taxi ride on the Airport Expressway out to the suburbs where the Western Academy of Beijing is located. I had some instructions for the driver written in characters but was slightly panicked by trying to say things in Chinese like 'Take Exit 4', "go to the second traffic lights and take a left, then turn into the school parking lot and drive to the security guard's office" - all while the taxi driver was tearing along at breakneck speed, swerving back and forth across 6 lanes of traffic, and cursing all the other drivers.

The WAB campus is huge, comprising a pre-school, elementary school, middle school and high school. Architecturally it is fantastic, with many references to Chinese traditional architecture within the modern buildings of the campus. Tamara Palmer, the American art teacher who began her teaching life in the New York public school system, but has since taught in the Netherlands, Jakarta and Bangkok, tells me the school was established by a visionary educator who really wanted a school that connected with China, where the students were not cocooned in an expat bubble. All students study Chinese up to the 9th grade in this IB school, and most continue their study of the language into High School.

I was fascinated to hear that this is a school where all the arts are truly valued, and students have the opportunity to select from Art, Music, Dance, Drama and Film. In fact all students MUST have an arts subject in their pattern of study for the IB, and many opt to take more than one of these. An obvious comparison occurs to me with the situation in NSW schools where 'arts' teachers are all too often caught in a negative spiral of competing for student elective numbers.

I spend the morning in Tamara's art room, where I watch, listen, and ask lots of annoying questions. The students are relaxed and comfortable in this environment, yet are also challenged to produce work of a high quality. IB standards are rigorous (although not more rigorous, I believe, than the NSW curriculum). Tamara is teaching a class of 10th graders in a unit of work called 'East Meets West', They are currently making sculptural ceramic forms inspired by an eclectic mix of influences, such as Nazca and Mangbetu pottery, and also a range of Western and Chinese artists. Earlier in the academic year they completed a painting which combined Western and Chinese elements in order to make a social comment - an interesting way to introduce students to postmodern practices of appropriation. Some paintings were technically excellent and all were thoughtful and interesting.

Photograph used with permission of student and teacher

In order to produce these works the students had studied the Cultural Revolution and Mao's history, and had researched the important 'Cynical Realist' painters Wang Guangyi and Yue Minjun (Year 12 Loreto students should recognise these names!) They had done some research about Cultural Revolution Propaganda and had also seen an exhibition by one of the teachers at the school, who had photographed and interviewed a range of Chinese people about their memories of the Cultural Revolution. This had a profound effect on the students, as I realised when I read their comments in their "Workbooks" (the IB version of our "Visual Arts Process Diary").

In the senior years of 11th and 12th grade the approach is very much one of student-centred 'discovery learning'. In a two year program students produce a body of work, a significant essay, their workbook or process diary, and are then interviewed by an IB examiner. I watch some 12th grade students painting, and discuss their work with them - they are confident, articulate and thoughtful young 'Third Culture" people, adept at finding an identity and a path through the maze of family history, and current and past locations, and a sense of their place in the world, which cannot always be easy. Some have been to school in 4 or 5 countries, some have lived only in China, many are learning in their third or even fourth language.

I talk with one 11th grade student who has always lived in China - in her workbook in writing about her own identity she says that she is truly 'Made in China'. Her father is Spanish, but came here as a young Communist during the Cultural Revolution, and her mother is Venezuelan. She is planning a really fascinating series of artworks for her IB body of work exploring this somewhat confusing identity.

Tamara has invited a photographer to show the students an 'Afghan camera' - this is used in Afghanistan to take passport and identity photographs and is essentially a wooden box which acts like a pinhole camera, except it also contains a dish of developer and fixer, so works as a portable darkroom. This student plans to take 'passport' photographs of herself, her young brother, her parents and their 'ayi' (maid), and then also make passports for a Chinese family, which would have father, mother, daughter (but no brother due to the One Child policy) and an 'Ayi' (an auntie in a Chinese family). At the same time she is working on a series of photographs of herself in Venezuelan dress, carrying a book about the Spanish architect, Gaudi, standing in a traditional Chinese hutong. She will contrast this with another series of photographs taken in Venezuela over the summer, wearing a Chinese dress and carrying a book about another Spanish artist, perhaps Picasso. She is also painting, and printmaking. As an 11th grader this is just the beginning of her IB body of work - I can see advantages to working so broadly, avoiding some of the problems inherent in the NSW HSC, where students can get really bogged down or disheartened.

Students in this school seem to be very independent - they obviously believe they are in charge of their own learning to a much greater degree than I see at home. I watch them ask Tamara for assistance when they need it (as is always the way, someone's ceramic form collapses beyond resuscitation before the end of the lesson!) but essentially her role is much more backgrounded than the very directed teaching that often happens in NSW schools. I am impressed by the quality of the work and the sense of student ownership. I will be asking myself some hard questions about how to develop this level of autonomy more effectively in my students, and how I can help them to be less dependent on me as a teacher:  to see themselves as effective and active learners, rather than as passive recipients of my teaching.

After lunch I race off to meet Brian Wallace at Redgate (www.redgategallery.com). I have no idea what to expect of this gallery and am completely astonished by its location, in the Ming Dynasty Watchtower of the old Beijing city walls. My visit coincides with the 'Plum Blossom Festival' - there are many official cars and besuited men (cadres? I have always wondered what a cadre might look like!) seriously walking among avenues of lanterns and fake plum blossom attached to the trees, amid the usual Beijing traffic mayhem and a few old men serenely flying kites amidst the cacophony. It is a very windy and bitterly cold day - the wind comes straight from the Mongolian steppes - and also very rarely and amazingly, the sky is actually blue. When I woke up this morning and looked out my window I couldn't work out what was different, then I realised that it was the first day I wasn't looking at the city through a thick haze of brown dust.

Once past the many guards dressed for the festival,  improbably wearing sky blue satin Ming costumes and bizarre hats, and up many very steep crumbling Ming stairs, I emerge onto the old stone city wall that surrounded this city at the centre of the world. "Zhong guo", or China, literally means "Middle Kingdom", the centre of the earth. Certainly many Chinese, such as my young guide for the Forbidden City, take this very seriously now as an indication of China's future strength and power. She did keep assuring me that Chinese were  a very peaceful people who had never been invaders, and said this so many times that it started to make me a bit nervous! Once inside the extraordinary interior of the old Dongbianmen Watchtower, with its enormous red painted timber columns and intricate network of staircases and carving, I sit with Brian Wallace in his office to talk about his significant role in shaping the contemporary art scene in China.

Brian first came to China in 1984 so has witnessed all the extraordinary changes since that time. In the late 1980s under Deng Xiaoping's "Open Door" policy there was a brief flowering of contemporary art, with young artists trained in the rigorous academic techniques of socialist realism suddenly experimenting with performance art, conceptual art and new ways of thinking about painting.  Before Brian opened the gallery at Redgate he had been organising exhibitions with artist friends at the nearby Ming Observatory. The observatory's store of astronomical instruments had been expanded during the Qing Dynasty by the Jesuits (there is always a Jesuit connection!) who had entered China to spread Christianity but had been welcomed by the Ming and Qing courts for their scientific expertise and their skill as court painters. There was no gallery system and no art market in China at this time - Brian and his friends were able, amazingly, to organise exhibitions in venues such as the Old Summer Palace, the Confucian Temple and the Altar of the Sun, in Ritan Park. Hence Brian's wry observation that contemporary Chinese art began in the Ming Dynasty.

One of the most influential features of Redgate today is their artists' residency program. In 2010 they had 133 applications, and awarded 70 places to artists, writers, and academics to stay in an apartment or studio for 6 - 8 weeks.  I asked Brian about the ongoing dialogue and artistic 'conversation'  that continues to resonate between Chinese and Australian artists....there really does appear to be something, albeit perhaps intangible, that creates a connection between our two cultures. Of course there are those, such as Lindy Lee, who are Australian born Chinese and come back to find that sense of a Chinese identity; and others such as Ah Xian and Guan Wei who came to Australia many years ago but who now really straddle both places in their life and work. Other artists who have benefitted from the residencies, such as George Gittoes or Graeme Blondell , have produced interesting bodies of work as a result of their immersion in Beijing. Some, such as Jane Dyer, have stayed on and now live in China. China changes people! Brian points out that his and other Chinese residency programs  are so popular because, let's face it, "China is THE place to come". On Sunday there is an Open Studio exhibition of the current resident artists at the 'Premium Red' Restaurant, which will include work by artists from Australia, Scotland, Finland, Austria and the United States.

Ironically perhaps, as a result of the aforementioned Plumblossom Festival, Brian has had to remove many of the works from the exhibition of the three Shanghai artists, "China Dream", which just opened on Saturday, as they were deemed by officials to be insufficiently celebratory and festive. I am really disappointed not to see the entire exhibition, but what is still there is quite wonderful, in particular works by Pu Jiu. The catalogue notes explain that this artist comes from a wealthy Shanghai family who was dispossessed during the revolutionary era. He found his own visual language through his practice of filling sketchbooks with drawings of village life, creating a massive genre of stylized paintings that have "come to represent China's modern age".

Image used with permission of Redgate Gallery

This exhibition, like much new art in China, seems to be an attempt on the part of artists, curator and, indeed, audience, to understand this new China and their part in it. It is subtitled "Narrating Society and the Floating Worlds in China" - as the catalogue notes, "Chinese society is an ever shifting world of constant change. People reinvent themselves, whole cities appear in short periods of time, people's relationships change, and many people live in a floating world of inconsistence".

As I wandered through the vast 'Malls of Oriental Plaza' on my way home after my conversation with Brian, I was musing on this change. I watched elderly grandparents doting on their 'Little Emperors' carrying bags of designer brand name baby clothing. Young people sit in Starbucks listening to iPods and texting, while glamorous couples exchange their Mao-emblazoned renmimbi for more designer label goods.
Meanwhile out on the streets, women in fur hats ride rusted bicycles, and old men still wear cloth shoes and Mao style caps to fly kites beside the fake plumblossom!