The work that I liked the most was located in Star Gallery, a small place hidden away on the second level of a low-rise building snug between some of the bigger galleries. There on display was a solo exhibit by the artist Chen Fei (陈飞). The aesthetics of his work wasn’t an a-bomb on the stimuli or anything, but I liked its simplicity, stark colour schemes and high contrast. Dude’s work reminds me of single pane comics, Gary Larson not so much, but maybe I’m not the only one to see a little Shintaro Kago in there. Keeping with the subtle comic style, there was a dash of humor and irony mixed in too, of which I don’t often encounter here in industrial utilitarian land.

Now for a closer look at some of this work:

I’m Fine
Most of his paintings had one of two girls in his work. I’m not even sure if they were different girls, but they were definitely dressed different, and in my black and white world if someone can wear two completely different outfits, better watch your back, that loon probably has some mental disorder. I like the idea behind this piece, but because I don’t know whom either of these girls are it’s hard for me to get any real emotional attachment to it. For example, if this girl was my Suzie Wong, there might be more of that special feeling in my cockles, or maybe in my sub-cockle area, maybe in my liver, maybe even in my colon, I don’t know.

The Story Says, What is Is, What is Not Is, What Is is also Not
It’s such a simple idea: a character in the painting, painting the painting. Really though, there’s a lot more than that going on here. First we’ve got chicken pox all over the fucking place, I mean swine flu ain’t got nothing on this. Then we’ve got some interaction between the ironically dressed woman and the girl. Is she passing the torch so to speak? Is girl really a nurse who’s trying to salvage a crafts class at the old folks home gone awry? But perhaps the most important question in all of this…why isn’t the girl wearing any shoes?! The INSANITY!!!

The Left Fist Has No Strength
This one was cool enough, but I think it would have been far more accurate had the artist drawn a normal arm slightly above that tentacly mass that’s emerged from the girl’s torso. Why? Take a ride on a bus with a bunch of tanktop clad Chinese girls hanging onto the handles while their pit-muffs are shoved in your face and then you’ll know what I’m talking about. You also won’t be able to sleep for days.

Famous Painting
Continuing along with the theme of strange tentacles in place of body hair, we have this little number. Maybe the previous painting was the girl’s reaction to this one. But I’d be even less surprised if the artist got this idea from some dude here in Qingdao who tried to make off with some squid. Seriously, cephalopods are multiple-armed currency in this town.

Suddenly there’s Snow Tonight, Old Man Straight is Lovable
This was my favorite piece. I like how the foreground is perfectly lit as if it was daytime; yet clearly daytime it is not. Thanks to a childhood in the boondocks, I also have a thing for old tractors and trailers. Some other excellent details that aren’t shown in my low res photo, there is a run over frog on the road, and there’s a bloody arm hanging out the side of the trailer. The resulting combination effectively blows my mind.

To Remember Our Comrades by
This piece is no where near original, cause I’m certain I’ve seen similar work with all kinds of random dudes in a group shot like they just won the Stanley Cup of weirdness. It would be the perfect kind of painting to hang in a den of marijuana consumption, so that people would have something with lots of details to focus on when they’re stoned. I’m glad I didn’t have much of an affinity for this one, because at Y650000, (about C$110,000), I can only afford about 2 square inches of it. This brings me to my final conundrum.

Why is Chinese art priced only for those in possession of golden egg laying super geese?

Art is pretty. But no matter how wealthy I ever become, there’s no way I’m going to drop down as much money on one contemporary painting as I could on one hell of a WD40 fueled robot orgy nice sports car. Hell, for a hundred grand, I could make my own art (in the form of crudely drawn penises) and put it up full-page style in the New York Times. You better believe it’d get more exposure. I guess the ever growing legions of nationalistic Chinese millionaires combined with rich western muppets who want in on the next big thing has knocked the supply/demand curve into an image so distorted it could be artistic in it’s own right. In fact, that could be an entire series of hilarious paintings. I need to get paid for this shit. Maybe then I could buy some of this art…and barrels of WD40.

If you’re flying from Toronto to Beijing, make sure to get on the direct flight. The airplanes are the most modern in the fleet and every seat has its own standard electric plug and TV. Compare that to flying with a connection through Vancouver where you’ll be on jets that feel like Russian hand me downs. Before you get to the Beijing airport, stock up on all necessary goods. Once inside the giant liquor and cigarette warehouse that is PEK, you won’t be able to find any decent food, reading material or batteries, which I learned the hard way. You will be able to find lots of overpriced but duty free booze, and 4 stores selling the exact same Olympic merchandise adorned with the rainbow gremlins.

I noticed all the usual things once back in Canada, for example the streets are quiet, the air is so clean, everyone is obese, etc. There’s also some other things that I noticed that probably aren’t as normal. The service here blows. In China I do find it mildly irritating having a chorus of “欢饮光临” everywhere I go, but I never realized not having it and being totally ignored would be so much more annoying. There’s no hustle. People cross the streets whether or not they have the right of way as if they were immortal beings and time didn’t exist. Back in the PRC, they scurry across like little squirrels trying to avoid the onslaught of poorly built and poorly driven vehicles. Finally an obvious one: everything here is absurdly expensive. $2.75 to take the bus, are you kidding me? I can take the bus twenty freakin times for that price. Tonight I just had dinner for $30 and it wasn’t even that great. For that price I could have dinner for two at the fanciest restaurant in town OR I could eat so much street food that I’d need to see a proctologist.

It’s nice to see everyone again, which is the principal reason I came back. It’s good that I’m only around till next Friday though, cause with my world class whining, I’m sure they’re already counting down the days. Finally I’d like to announce to the world my discovery that jet lag is a bitch. I’m sure the scientists of the world have been waiting for such a breakthrough announcement. No matter how many sleeping pills you pop, no matter how soft your bed is, you’re still sure to screwed by random intervals of exhaustion and waking up in the night from sweet sweet dreams of cars honking and people horking.

Thanks to Mark for the turkey.

]]> http://dragonhunting.com/2007/re-entry/feed/ 1 http://dragonhunting.com/2007/train-ride-to-lhasa/ http://dragonhunting.com/2007/train-ride-to-lhasa/#comments Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:49:26 +0000 james http://dragonhunting.com/?p=11 The train from Beijing to Lhasa leves Beijing West (Beijingxi huochezhan) Station at 9:30pm. For some reason we were recommended to arrive like 2 hours early because it was such a big station and we would need it to find our way around and all that bullshit the travel people tell you. Realistically, you could get here about 20 minutes before your train is set to leave and walk on.

Once outside of the station there’s really only one way in through security and as expected it’s a vortex of people funneling in through one set of doors and a bag xray machine. They don’t even bother putting you through a metal detector or doing any body searches so I have no idea why they even have the machine. They’re pushing people through so fast that someone could smuggle a patriot missile through and they would just assume it’s a model rocket.

Although Beijing West is a pretty big station, leaving to Lhasa on platform 2, basically you just go up the escalators and then hang a left and go through the first set of doors into the soft seat lounge. They have food and drinks in here, and it wasn’t so packed. There’s another room right next door which leads to the same platform, which is more packed, and doesn’t have as comfortable chairs, so why you would wait in there is beyond me. They didn’t check our tickets going into the waiting area.

Having previously taken the overnight train from Beijing to Shanghai, I was going on with some expectations, mostly because this was a brand new train and is supposedly a pride thing for China as it’s the highest altitude train in the world or something to that effect. The train ride from Beijing to Shanghai is pretty decent, as it’s 16 hours, you get a soft sleeper with 2 beds to a cab and you get your own washroom and meals. This was different. There are 4 beds to a cab in soft sleeper and 6 beds in hard sleeper. There are community washrooms on each car, one of which is a regular western toilet; the other is one of those hole-type things. There were no showers. This is a 48-hour train ride. I’ll admit I’m no stranger to not taking a shower after such an interval, but I’m sure things got pretty nasty back in the cheap seat cars.

Leaving from Beijing, there really isn’t much to do but drink, then passout and sleep. You can’t see anything after you get outside of the city because it’s pitch black. There is the occasional bonfire, and by bonfire I mean entire building with no roof flaming up, but other than that it’s comatose. There is one stop around 11pm in Shijiazhuang I’m not sure if you can get on and off at this stop. I’m also not sure why you would want to if you could, the city is the Chinese butt-fuck-nowhere.

The next day on the trip, the morning was rainy and overcast, so there wasn’t a whole lot to see. We started off the day by traveling through Shanxi province, which I will remember as having the most colourful and steamy piles of garbage I have ever seen. There is a stop at around 9am in Xian where you can get on and off, which is nice cause they have real (MSG percentage was probably under 50%) snacks and food on the station platform. Speaking of food, the food on the train was classy. If you ever take this ride do yourself a favor and bring cases of food. Don’t rely on the warm wet bread and microwaved eggs for breakfast to keep your stomach from imploding during multi-day ride. Luckily the beers are relatively cheap, at only 10 yuan for Beijing beer (brewed by Asahi I should add). I tried to order a drink, but for some hilarious reason they only sell the booze by the bottle, and they only sell 26ers. So it’s like, “well we’ll sell you some vodka, but you’re gonna have to get smashed”.

Later in the afternoon, the rain cleared away, and the sunshine made a damned fine effort to penetrate the smog that seems to cover all of china all the time. We made our way through Guanxi province, stopping in Lanzhou. At this point it was real backcountry China. The cities and towns are basically mud and brick shacks, the roads are mud, and the people of the countryside must really hate the train because they dump all their trash along side of it. Lanzhou is the last million plus people city on the way to Lhasa. It consists of hundreds of commie blocks, and a bunch of factories spewing out gases ranging in colour from leprechaun green, to black hole black. Past this magnificent example of industrial development gone awry, the mud and brick shacks become mostly mud shacks and people are using tools and animals to farm instead of machinery. I can’t help but wonder if they’re happy in their less than developed conditions. I see the kids playing, seemingly happy, and some people wave to the train with one hand, while the other hand throws back a bottle of baijiu, so I guess they’re alright.

At night, I’m in the cabin with two Chinese people. Both have headphones on and are doing their thing. The guy is dropping ass like you wouldn’t believe, while the girl is laughing hysterically. It sounds like some kind of strange fetish. 24 more hours of this.

The next day I wake up to some sweeping mountain views and a stop at some tiny station where the assman gets off, I thought we were in the clear from there, but the day is marked by the pass through the highest altitude point of the train ride. We make it to over 5000m above sea level. Much before that, the effects of altitude sickness start to set in for everyone. The most common feeling is dizziness and headache, but some are worse off. The poor girl in the bunk above me, must have got serious nausea because she threw up a few times and was moaning in agony most of the way. I definitely felt the dizziness early on, but after a while the worst thing I really had was a headache. I didn’t eat anything but a small bowl of rice all day and had multiple naps so I’m not sure if that made things better or worse. The trip through the Qinghai Pass is a display of an entirely arid, desolate nothingness with big round hills. There is no vegetation, animals, or human settlement which is a huge change from the almost constant civilization that followed us most of the way. There are however these very unnatural grids of rock that a fellow traveler hypothesized might be to block snowdrift formation.

Once we finally made it into Tibet, the scenery changes for the better, there is very light mossy grass vegetation with different varieties of animals roaming about. The mountains turn jagged, like mountains should be. There are Tibetan settlements spotting the vast plains, with much different style of housing than what was in the other parts of China that we traveled through. The houses all look like mini-castles, with tower type things at the corners. There’s lots of random Tibetans hanging out by themselves with their yaks. Because Beijing likes to have the same time zone for the entire country, we don’t see any time difference, so it doesn’t get dark until about 8pm, which is a nice change from the daylight savings nonexistence back east. We arrive at the station at about 8:30pm, which is a bonus because we weren’t supposed to arrive for another hour. The station is huge considering only one train a day uses it. Off I got to the Lhasa hotel, which was formerly the Holiday Inn.

This is the most interesting stuff you will see on the Qinghai Express

There are three main sections that tourists can see that are just outside of Beijing. They are: Simatai, Mutianyu, and Badaling. I’m going to save you some trouble; Badaling is pile of shit. Ok, so I’ve never been to the Badaling section, but I know many who have. It is the closest section to Beijing, which means it is the most popular, which means unholy masses of people descending upon it, and hawkers all over the place. I hate the whole tourist thing, and I wouldn’t even want to see all kinds of idiots climbing over the thing with their “I climbed all over the Wall” t-shirts. Also Badaling is almost completely rebuilt, so not only is it covered in cretins, it’s as fake as those DVDs you picked up in Beijing.

Your best options to see the Wall are Mutianyu and Simatai. First thing is how you’re going to get there. I would recommend either hiring a private driver or driving there yourself if your dumb enough to have rented a car in Beijing. You can get a private driver for the day for about 800-1000RMB, which is like $150. If you go with friends it just gets cheaper. Of course there is the tried and torturous tour method. Doing this, your going to spend about 200RMB, you’re going to get about 45 mins at the wall, and 3 times that trapped in some silk museum or gem factory that turns into a giant maze of a store selling over priced feces. If you’re going with other people it’s definitely worth the extra money and if you’re by yourself it might be a little steep but it’s well worth it for the extra time it gives you. The driver will go straight to the wall and back without any commercial detours and because he’ll be napping while you’re on the wall, he’ll want you to take as much time as you can. The trip to Mutianyu takes about 1.5 hours in decent traffic but remember that the traffic in Beijing moves at a glacial pace whenever it knows you need to be somewhere and this adds on an hour.

I’ve been to Mutianyu twice, so I can vouch for it being decent. Upon arriving there you will be faced with a gauntlet run through a number of hawkers selling all kinds of crap, just walk quickly through and ignore them because everything is junk and overpriced. No matter whom you go with whether it’s a tour bus or private driver, they’re going to try and convince you to take the cable car up. If you’re a lazy degenerate or you’re under time constrictions you probably will. Honestly though it’s a 10 minute hike and it’s all paved with easy steps and handrails. If you can’t climb it you’ve got some serious fucking fitness issues. Once you get to the top, you’re at tower 7 or 8 out of 20. The entire stretch is about 2.2 KM so you can go either way, but going to tower 20 is more of a climb. At Mutianyu, it is generally empty of tourists, making it quite serene. Once you do get to tower 1 or 20, the wall disintegrates and they’ll be a guard type person (basically an old famer) who’s there to make sure you don’t try to go any further, which is a shame cause past tower 20 it looks to be a crazy climb. Some of the Mutianyu section has been rebuilt which is obvious, but some parts use the original granite. To get down, just take the same trail you came up, avoid the slider thing, it sucks, everyone I know whos tried it said it sucked and all the guide books say it sucks.

Simatai is supposedly the best of the three because it is the most original, but it is the furthest away. I always forget about it because its farther and not really advertised, but I’m sure I’ll make it out there one day. The best time to see the wall is the same as the rest of Beijing, and that’s when it’s cold in the winter. Reason being, the air isn’t like working in a mustard gas factory and you won’t drown in your own sweat climbing up it. In the summer it’s about 36 degrees and the air turns into a mix of chemicals that makes smoking seem like a healthy activity. For some reason there is also way more tourists in the summer, as if they were there to get their annual sulphur dioxide intake. I was dumb enough to go in the summer once, and you can contrast one of the pics I took then versus just recently in the March.

The Wall in summer

The Wall in winter