798

The other day, a few friends and I decided to venture off to 798, the art district here in Beijing. Only a 45 minute walk from Wangjing and well worth it! We stepped into the gates and what felt like outside of China. I didn't quite know what to expect out of an art district in a country like China. I mean, anywhere else in the world you can expect to find extremely avant-garde work in a gallery, but would it really be the same here in China? I was pleasantly surprised with what we discovered. We walked  down the narrow pedestrian filled streets past art galleries, cafes, quaint shops, and bars and stumbled upon a contemporary art gallery that we decided to check out. We payed the well worth it 10 rmb and wondered in. What we saw was not what I expected from Beijing at all. The first corridor featured a variety of pieces about human impact on our society which was pretty neat. The large gallery  that included my favourite piece, a copy of the fake New York Times that was released by The Yes Men in New York City, was full of a variety of artwork that exposed topics that I didn't think would be allowed to be put on display in a communist society like China. The entire time we were there, I couldn't help but be amazed by everything. I couldn't believe my eyes and I didn't feel like I was in China at all. It make me think that art is one thing that links everyone in the world together. It doesn't matter what kind of country you live in or where in the world you are, art is something that we can all relate to and use to express how we feel about the world around us, no matter how suppressed we may be. I was really forced to re think every impression that the Western world has put into my head about China and see it through an unbiased set of eyes, and man what I saw was beautiful and ironically quite liberal! Another neat thing we saw our the first street musician. He was playing guitar and singing in the street and since this seems to be a rare occurrence here, we stopped to watch for a while. We soon realized that street musicians here in China are a little bit different than back home. Typically back home, people will busk on the street and you walk by and freely drop money into their case. Well this man had his guitar case open and had cds for sale for 20 rmb. A friend of mine wanted to encourage the man by giving him some money, but wasn't keen on having a cd so walked up and dropped a few rmb into the case. The man stopped playing and started speaking to him in Chinese, motioning for him to buy a cd. My friend then dropped some more money into the case and took a CD and walked away and yet again, the man stopped playing and ran up to my friend and gave him his change because he overpaid for the CD. This was hilarious to see but also very interesting to wrap my head around the fact that the man would not take his money without him having something for it and would not allow him to overpay..he only wanted what he thought his music was worth. The man didn't understand that simply just hearing him play was worth the money. Seeing the art district here in Beijing was a beautiful and an eye opening experience and I hope to make it back there again before I leave the city.