The biggest problem with these courtyard houses is that there aren’t any. Well none that I can afford anyway. If you want anything decent, you’re looking at upwards of a couple thousand US dollars a month. These ones are renovated with all the traditional woodwork, painting, parking and a couple of pygmies that will pull you in a rickshaw to the Peking Opera.

“BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE, there’s cheap ones out there!” I can hear some of you seasoned Beijing expats whining. Correct. Just like a microcosm of all that is China, the courtyards come in super rich, or super poor styles. The middle class is still confused, insecure and not sure what it is or wants to be. I saw several places that were just slightly within my price range (when they know it’s a foreigner looking for them the price gets jacked), but they were more than just fixer uppers. I mean, most of them looked to be modified by someone who had played Rubik’s cube their whole life but was never able to solve it. Just a complete jumble of rooms that made no sense. Most of the courtyards had been built over with concrete structures that looked fortified enough to withstand airborne attacks.

Often a few of the inner rooms still had some old geezers milling about with their pet pigeons that probably wouldn’t have been down with a bunch of western dudes getting buck wild to rock music and some floozies in the courtyard. But maybe they would have. I guess that will remain one of the great mysteries of our time.

One thing we couldn’t get drilled into the heads of the scheming property agents that were showing us places was that the whole point of having a courtyard home is the fucking courtyard. Why would I want to live in one of these things just for the sake of living here? If not for the courtyard, what is this magic “culture” they keep referring to that makes these places so special? The street cred, so I can be cool and say I lived for a year in one of these damn places and wore a mao suit as pajamas!? Do they think I want to live in this dilapidated area so that I can squat to take a shit next to someone else just to savor the hutong life? Do you think I want to navigate my way severely intoxicated through a series of impassible, unlit, alleyways that have random wires looking to get into the decapitation game just to get home from the bar?

I suppose you could renovate them, make em all nice and old school, get rid of those squatter toilets with the bucket of water for the flush, make the geezers hit the bricks and hook it up some pygmies to do your bidding. I also suppose your landlord would then quickly find a way to void your rental contract, make you hit the bricks, jack the rent, and charge a couple grand for it just like all the other renovated ones.

Yeah yeah yeah, history and architecture is fantastic and all, but honestly, most of them have been scarred beyond recognition. The ones that have been properly renovated are stuck in disneyesque tourist zones that require you to wade through tons of “oh isn’t this quaint” retards snapping photos of shops selling overpriced gimmicky bullshit that has nothing to do with the hutong life, culture or even common sense.

Well my solution to the ordeal was to say fuck the courtyards, fuck the hutongs, fuck the scheming agents and landlords and most of all fuck Beijing. If I’m going to get shanghaied might as well do it…in Shanghai! Longtangs here I come!

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.

Anyone seen my coke stash? I’ve got some art to create and I need to be in the right state of mind…

798 was a former military industrial complex, used by the commies in the 50’s with some help from the East Germans and their Russian comrades. What’s fascinating is that several of the factories within the complex are still operational. A couple years back, some artists recognized that within the aging socialist industrial spaces there was enormous potential for studios, galleries and rent control that could save their hides from the pre-Olympic property boom. Then unfolded the same old story; the artists came, and like bears scavenging for honey, the wealthy followed. Probably unique in this all too familiar gentrification scenario, but not surprising considering the breakneck pace of China, is how the industry is being pushed out before it even collapsed. Most cases you’ve got areas that are run down because some industry bites the dust like steel in Hamilton or autos in Detroit. Nope, not here. They jump on that shit while it’s still steaming hot.

When I first heard of it, my mind conjured up images of yet another SoHo or Queen West. A land once filled with dirty hippies and bohemians thanks to the wicked creative environment, but then replaced by people with more money than brains. Here you’ve got wanky mix of bicycle riding artists, bmw driving artists, gallery staff of all colours, the aforementioned rich, Korean tourists surprised that their neighbors can think for themselves, some Chinese tourists who are just as surprised, and factory workers who look like they go through some kind of time warp on their way to work everyday. This leads to some enjoyable moments, like the look on the factories workers’ faces as they pass by the Korean tourists giving the peace sign in front of the pink statue of a naked woman riding a bike while spread eagle.

There’s no subway station within walking distance, so I took the metro to Sanyuan Bridge and then cabbed it from there, which was another 15 minutes. On arrival I was starving, and didn’t want to diddle around, so I quickly made haste to the nearest café that looked modestly busy and consumed what was obviously a frozen cooked pizza. Note to those who want to get good rations or refreshments, head to the back of the district near the train and there’s a street there that has much better options than the compost I ate. After my so-called meal I wandered…and wandered…and wandered. Seriously there was so many damn galleries in this place, looking at them was like trying to chop off the head of a hydra, you’d get through one and out pops two more. If you’re the type of person that will look at a piece of art as if you’re staring into the portal of another universe, where, I might add, they have stripper flavored milkshakes, then you could be here for a while. Another nice thing was that they’re all free, as in beer with vodka as a chaser. The art on the other hand, was the opposite of free and perhaps multiplied by the number of letters in this post. I’m taken aback that the local government went from putting 798 on demolition death row, to letting it exist, and all the while no admission fees have yet to be instituted. Usually if there’s an area of interest in China, there’s a price to it, regardless of whether it’s of actual interest or not. Perhaps the galleries have to pay extra “security” fees. Either way, it’s still a worthwhile way to spend an afternoon or two.

What I did come to realize though while walking around was how nice it must be to have a place like this. In Qingdao, a city of 7 million, and we might have 2 small galleries total. Hardly worth the effort to visit unless their showing something you dig. With 798, there’s something for everyone. Of course, what’s being exhibited changes all the time, so it’s not a been there done that kinda place. I’ll admit I’m probably not much of an art fanatic. I appreciate good photography, and there are some styles of painting, drawing and mixed media that float my boat, but I think most modern art is nothing more than fecal matter with sparkles thrown on top for distraction. It’s like the artist just pulled some crazy shit out of his ass, and then afterwards was like “so this piece represents the relentless struggle of the masses within a post-materialistic society and their natural spiritualistic harmony….GOOOOSE!” Alright then. So it was nice to come across not one but two galleries that featured quite a bit of work that blew my hair back. More on that later.

The best thing about 798 is the quantity and quality of all the spaces. Over time you begin to think those two words are mutually exclusive on the mainland. Gems like these remind you otherwise. It blows my mind the architecture they used back then for factories, when nowadays they’re all a bunch of blue and gray windowless boxes that are built in some enormous factory making factory. Lots of space has been converted into lofts serving all kinds of artistic endeavors, hopefully one of them being hardcore S&M activities involving the Beijing political elite. In many instances, the original features of the manufacturers have been left behind, like giant weigh scales, tooling machines, and hilarious communist slogans painted on the walls. I really liked searching for all the little details the area exudes. Of note, there’s a giant above ground piping system that runs all over the complex that serves some industrial purpose. Distributed sporadically throughout the area, there’s these leaky release valves that are dripping water (I hope) and steam into their environs.

798 yea or nay?

Definitely yea, if you want to check out the latest in crazy Chinese contemporary art, walking around in an area of Beijing without retards honking, industrial architecture, or have a steam valve fetish like I do, then 798 is for you.

Now for the photo tour:

Enlightening interior spaces!:

significant ceilings!:

head toward the light:

my screwy steam valve fetish:

And some chinglish to finish things off:

Finally, this is the bonus, my own work of art. “Purple shirt wearing mustache man contemplates life and spam amid chrome covered objects”

A part of my excursion to the nation’s capital during the Labour Day weekend was a little side trip to the recently refurbished Qianmen Street. Qianmen means front gate, cause the street runs right in front of the front gate to a certain infamous square and the Forbidden City.

Naturally I picked a day of the unholy trinity of Chinese holidays to visit. Instead of something that should have taken no more than an hour, I spent several wading through the unwashed masses as they enjoyed their holiday being yelled at through bullhorns, remembering which red hat wearing group was theirs, and admiring the 4.3 million sq. feet of soulless granite that makes up the TAM square.

It’s a long pedestrian walking street with two fake electric trams running along it. How exactly are the electric trams fake you ask? Well they’ve got the junk on the roof to hook up to an electrical wire, not unlike what you’d see on the streetcars in Toronto. In this instance however, there are no electrical wires running along the street. So this leads me to the conclusion that either the Chinese engineers have mastered the art of making things turn invisible, OR the trams are powered by nothing but the self-fulfillment of those engineers.

The architecture along the street is starts off in the nouveau Qing Dynasty style popular in Chinatowns the world over, and oddly it fades as you head down the street into this dark boxy modern stuff that I haven’t made up my mind about. It’s as though whoever was building it started off all traditional, with lots of details, then started to run out of time and money, so they decided to throw a bunch of rectangular shapes together and hope for the best. I don’t think it looks horrible, but the context is messed up. Just like using the font from the title of “Their Will Be Blood” for the invitations to a baby shower.

I read somewhere that this street was supposed to be open in time for the Olympics last year, or that it was open in time for the Olympics. Either way, if by open they mean the buildings are finished and devoid of life, then I guess it’s certainly open. The only buildings that had tenants were a large H&M store and a China Post office. While walking down it, I saw a side street that signs of commercial activity in the form of trinket shops, but it was also full of people, and narrow, so I dared not venture into that heart of darkness.

Qianmen Jie could be awesome. Instead of putting in banal corporate retail and chain stores, they should fill the street with nothing but bars and discos, and the odd strip club or massage parlour for good measure. It’s got a central location, but it isn’t near any residential, so noisy drunks aren’t an issue. There’s an adjacent subway station, and huge avenues filled with taxis and busses to transport the winos to and fro. Plus the Great Hall of the People (aka China’s parliament) is only a stone’s throw away, so the customers are already there!

Qianmen Street Yea or Nay?

If you’re in the area because you’re checking out the square, the Forbidden City, or Mao’s waxy corpse, then it might be worth a gander once it actually has stores. If you’ve already been to Beijing and seen all that stuff, then it give it a pass, in the same way that you’d pass on competing in a log cutting competition that used logs of poop instead of lumber.

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.

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