Once tutored by our previously featured artist He Duoling, Tang began his study at Sichuan Pedagogical Academy (Oil Painting department) in Chengdu. He encountered the works of Caravaggio, Tiepolo, Rembrandt, Rubens, Velazquez, Sargent, Goya, and Dali (the latter of whose influence can be seen from Tang’s use of floating fish and eyeballs) and was inspired by their razor-sharp precision and faithfulness to movement and form, their exquisite renderings of light and shadow- a precision of motion that 20th century animators would carry to whole new realms.

Whatever Flies in the Sky

As far as standing out among the crowd goes, Tang is a modestly rebellious intellectual. He’s not advertising full-on eroticism, psychedelic candy colors, or ubiquitous culture cues, but there is enough of the present culture in his work: just look at the popular video game Legend, which he likes to play. Tang Wugang’s paintings are broken, interrupted, and sliced through, even demented at times. He may keep things to scale, but he will offer multiple perspectives, painting a gloomy abscess where light and emptiness reveal the pieces of exploded persons, helpless and breathless, war-torn, drowning under wreckage. Arms, legs and heads disappear as if ripped off, suspended in depth. Moodily sketched female busts and the lingering impressions of war heroes, frozen in place and space, await the end of some struggle or the punishment of some crime.

I visited Tang’s house on a frigid Saturday night in his cul-de-sac near the Chengdu airport, tucked away in the southern reaches of the city. Unlike spaces in modernized He Tang Yuese, his house is a cozy three-story affair- no high ceilings or modern facades. In the lower part of the house are his dining room and studio. We ate together with a number of friends. The household help set out simmering hotpot with Korean-style paocai, lotus root soup, rice, and dishes of spicy vegetables, a meal prepared in observance of a showcase of Tang’s work that day at the nearby Millennium Hotel, where we’d been earlier to photograph his works.

"General" Canvas Painting

After dinner, he led me to the adjacent studio where I took pictures of paint sets, worktables, and canvases as tall as me. “Why is the head missing and an apple floating at the same level?” I asked the artist of one armor-clad figure, warily drawing toward three others. I got a piecemeal answer which, as we walked from studio to hallway, up the stairs, through the study and sitting room, typified each response he gave me: incomplete. A painting hung on every wall. Though Tang remained aloof about the meaning of his work, every portrait and landscape seemed to have a special significance that tied it in with the rest.

An absence of overt explanations challenges any easy interpretation of Tang Wugang’s dream landscapes. The artist’s symbols are of purely personal and, he’s hinted, mythical significance. Wu Yongqiang, a Sichuan University art professor, writes:

“Tang Wugang is absolutely not a painter who believes in ‘repetition as power.’ He is never a follower of domestic contemporary art trends, painting a symbol again and again until it’s dead… [He] prefers to egotize through his works, rather than sell them as a brand product. He chooses targets at random… Everything, whatever flies in the sky, swims in the river, grows in the soil, gets delivered from the womb or sprouts from seed, can be found in his works.”

The artist takes a look at a recent work in his studio in Chengdu

Colors are muted: shadow and rust are rubbed away, revealing dim exteriors, eerily torn. Fish, apples, eyeballs and other objects appear injected into the atmosphere as in a gel, often propped on the end of stems, or else fixed onto long, spindly ejections of fluid. Tiny fish eat through the empty space like worms in woodwork, suggesting underwater decomposition. At times solitary figures are caught at a crossroads. This recalcitrance of space, the cross-section of the underwater and above land, the absent and the present, make for an uncomfortable viewing experience. But Tang’s palette permits only partial visibility. The cool and removed atmosphere evokes ravages of distance and time which prohibit any actualization of movement. But ravages don’t mean surrender; this is Time trying to resurrect itself. Tang’s bodies don’t speak to a present, riotous existence, screaming to be heard; but rather to a confused, disintegrating, implacable past.

"故国悲风" Oil painting on Canvas

In the shadows of one image was the head of a faded general from pre- Minguo (Gregorian) times in China; a marauder scavenged from the annals of history. His mustache appeared to be fluttering on the winds of a whole, crumbling city, which turned out to be the scene of his own or his kingdom’s demise. I took him for a Western figure, like one of Velazquez’s, but Tang insisted that this Chinese helmet was part of the war regalia having very precise characteristics that he’d taken the time to research. In another work was a boy Tang could recall from his childhood- they were classmates- rimmed by a crushed piece of paper (a homework assignment), and more objects from school: an apple, red stars worn by high-achieving students in the old days of the PRC. There was a man, further in the distance, his back to the viewer (the artist or the boyhood friend?) bent and looking troubled, in despair.

From Chengdu to Ke-lo-ah-ke

In the sitting room lay a traditional Chinese tea service- an yixing clay teapot on a tray, surrounded by little figurines sculpted playfully into animals; a turtle and a monkey. “I’m the turtle,” Tang Wugang said, pouring tea over the clay turtle; the woman beside us happened to be born in the Year of the Monkey, and he drenched the monkey in tea and handed it to her. I’m a Tiger; there was no tiger, but there was wonderful, deeply scented, rich Pu-erh tea, with a scalding bite that made me think of charred conifer leaves.

The artist in his studio

Tools of the trade

Beside us were two birds in cages- one was a female named Wei Wei. The other, a male, had no name. In addition to being a connoisseur of history, Tang Wugang has a special fondness for exotic birds and other rare species. The shelves in his house are stacked with books from end to end on art and history, and tapestries and ornaments fill the upstairs of the house, as well as a large tropical fish tank, displaying his love of wildlife. His images always reflect these collections of esoterica. Whether it’s purely an aesthetic appeal, I’m not sure. Like a man of the Renaissance, Tang did not have the opportunity to view his favorite Western art directly when he was in growing up, so he’s developed a style that Westerners may perceive as derivative- leaning toward ideas and themes that appear out of context in place and time. Such derivation typifies much Chinese contemporary work, both because Chinese students are instructed to sketch the plaster heads and busts of Greek statues, and because, as full-grown artists, they often try to work from memory… a model that loses its substance after a while.

A pair of Tang Wugang's oil paintings side by side

“I listen, and I read about the West,” Tang, said to me, pouring out tea and emptying the teapot several times, trying to get the flavor to suffuse the pottery. “In college I read many Western books.” His hands moved eloquently, like a song. A CD recording of traditional Buddhist chants droned out from the stereo by the fish tank . (Tang Wugang said he’s not a Buddhist, but appreciates many aspects of Buddhism.) “I understand plenty of Western culture. What I understand, I like. I like the Beatles. Do you know Ke-lou-ah-ke?” he wanted to know, injecting an idiosyncrasy that I was forced to decipher. “Oh, yeah, On the Road,” I said. He took me off on a string of other pop and literary references; where they began and ended I wasn’t sure.

Art Imitates Life Imitates Theater

Three collections of Tang Wugang’s works are featured on his website: Outside the Circle and Inside the Dream, the strangely named Shutiao (French Fries) and Dog Chase Tomorrow, and finally, ‘Feiniao Tianchang’- The Flying Bird in Heaven. Two more series are discussed in an article by Professor Wu Yongqiang, mentioned above. Regarding the title of the first series, Professor Wu describes meeting the artist for the first time and getting a partial explanation:

“‘I am just amusing myself,’ [Tang said.] ‘Including with painting. I am not involved with the Circle and I know little about the Circle.’

…Anyone who has heard about the ancient martial art circles [in China] and the contemporary art circle existing today would be aware of the said ‘Circle.’ When I reflect on this, I have to move my eyes back to the warriors painted by Tang Wugang. Loneliness hides behind the glittering sword, and it suddenly occurs to me why the paintings in this series were named ‘Warrior-Departure.’ Armor, sword and horse ride on, incarnated as a human in battle upon the eye contact of the viewer. However, when you finally find out which is which, they are turning head to leave… now, you see the lonely Universe at their backs… Tang Wugang, who stands outside the circle, draws up the brush to amuse himself alone.”

Regarding the theatricality of the artist’s work:

“Aren’t we living in a cultural ambience full of historical theatricals? Aren’t people joking with history, not only now, in an era where we are ‘amusing ourselves to death?’ Isn’t the official history, which has always been transcribed by the elites, time and time again, made fun of again and again? The series ‘Wailing Winds of the Past’ is a theatre for the theatricals…Actually, these paintings are interrogating the theatricality of our culture.”

Finally, looking at Tang Wugang’s striking use of light and bold shadow:

“[His] paintings are colored, but the colorfulness cannot cover the black tones. He applies black in such diverse ways that I cannot help thinking about the charm of ink in Oriental art, not to mention the images in the ‘Warrior-Departure’ series being filled with a calligraphic quality.”

At first glance, Tang’s use of metaphorical signifiers, style, and overall visual language is difficult to decipher. To some it may appear derivative, lacking anything to distinguish it from typical Western fantasy art or graphic design. But the relationships are so mysterious that you must look again. Is there social rhetoric at work here, a rhetorical message? Whatever it is, it’s encrypted with a purely its own significance. I wonder: do Tang Wugang’s historical symbolist images, shadowy, broken, and mysterious, compare to at all- or do they totally disrupt and bastardize- the traditional Eastern practice of depicting persons from history?

When I came across the painting Wild Garden, I thought, Pop Surrealism. The colors fit. The pastel frock has a rotundness against the painting’s muddled and blended background, similar to Mark Ryden’s use of pastel, and the whole thing treats of nature in a deliberately mocking way. The woman recalls the elegant nymph-like muses of Degas, however; she is not in the least grotesque. A vaguely Asian-looking person isolated against a desolate wilderness, she creates an overall mood too somber and earnest to be absurd. That right bunny ear jerks upward as though genuinely listening to, or for, something.

The artist is not a surrealist, but is widely regarded as one of China’s greatest living masters of realism. He Duoling (pronounced Huh Doo-oh-ling) resides in Chengdu, where he was born in 1948 and earned his art degree from the local teacher’s college in 1977. He went on to study painting at Chongqing’s Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in the late ’70s, and with a number of his colleagues in the early ’80s, founded China’s infamous “Scar Art” movement.

The Scar Artists were attempting to counteract a strict regime of socialist realist propaganda at the time. Insisting on more personal–and more reflective–themes, the Scar Artists co-opted the idea of the “real” for themselves while exploring subjects of humanism, intimacy, memory, emotion, and sexuality; in a reaction to the political ravages of the previous decades which had not been allowed to surface in art through critical dialogue.

Thanks to a friend, I was able to meet He personally and pay a visit to his studio. The studio, in He Tang Yuese, boasts staggered walls and windows of varying lengths and sizes, with one footbridge intersecting the structure diagonally in a cubistic temple to modern art. It is located near other outstandingly modern buildings and galleries, a true artists’ sanctuary.

The first painting I saw when I walked into the garage was in the same series as Wild Garden, entitled Shalott the Rabbit. Standing on a broad easel, across from the indoor basketball hoop, was this painting–it shimmered and floated in an otherworldly haze. Monotone, like the concrete pillars and structures of Chengdu, its green tint would be one I’d come to recognize. The painting deliberately borrows its imagery from the 1888 work The Lady of Shalott, by John William Waterhouse. The artist often plays on the romantic musings of the Pre-Raphaelites–painters like Waterhouse, Hughes, and Millais. Those Christian idealists attempted to resurrect what was dead or dying in an era of industrialization: feminine beauty and a sense of innocence and idealism, expressed through sincere renderings and faithfulness to “nature.”

He told me he wanted the rabbit version of Waterhouse’s Lady to be “limited,” meaning he wanted her to float in an isolated cubicle of water, like a tank–contemporary shorthand for innocence and beauty, which can be pummeled together with a prop and stage set.

He Duoling does sincerely respond to the Pre-Raphaelites; he does not merely parody them or extrude and rip off their imagery, like a pop artist. He’s also inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s famous masterpiece Christina’s World, which in one painting he simply copied, overlaying it with the image of a young Chinese girl lost in her own revelry. Just like the romantics, he starts out knowing what he wants to paint, creating a luminous base by applying many continuous background layers, outlining the foreground figures carefully, and composing his scenery with strokes of tinted oil liquid mediums. He creates a wash, also using techniques from traditional Chinese landscape painting. In his figures, who are mostly Chinese or look Chinese, the feeling of revelry and complacency reflects a sense of both national pride and personal beauty. An exaggerated light saturates the canvases, which are often glowing.

What bothers me about this work is not the way his paintings look; they’re beautiful. In their beauty, and also in the detachment and complacency of the subjects, there’s a uniqueness and an ascendent quality, as if the images were going to step out of the canvas and fly upward. But this is supposed to have radical implications for Chinese art. How different Chinese and Western sensibilities are! In the West, nothing’s threatening or subversive about depicting a beautiful woman, and pointing out man’s unbalanced relationship with nature is almost required.

To use tautology, an art movement represents new ideas that should be taken in context. In China, art has always held on to the tenets of realism. True, Chinese art may be abstract; it applies a wide range of interpretations to the real. But from ancient times until today, a “master” of art has been someone who can render nature exceptionally well. In Chinese schools, from grade level through university, drawing from life is the most rigorously practiced form of art. It’s done with a seriousness that is rarely applied in any Western-style education.

In the 20th century, this use of realism took an ideological turn, in the name of social realism and propaganda. The Chinese consider figure and still-life drawing to be the essential underpinnings of a socialist art education, garnered by tradition. But regardless of use, China maintains a strong national pride in its beauty and quality standards in everything. According to some artists I’ve talked to, “realism” in Western terms means work that’s amateur or incomplete. Given the painstaking renderings of art students in China, from novices to graduates, it’s no wonder why many Chinese sniff at the work that hangs in galleries overseas.

But when I look at the Rabbit series, it’s not technicality that makes He Duoling’s work great. It’s the other aspects–color choices, distortion, the positioning of the figures. And it’s also radical political innuendo, harkening back to the 1970s. In all his images, isolated, despondent, or transfixed adults and youths, placed in rugged or watery or ill-defined settings, paint a picture of China entirely backwards: it’s in perfect economic suspense. They capture an idealized China that doesn’t require “social realism” to exist. Adapted from late 19th-century British poetry, its romantic and literary themes somehow speak to the post-modern condition.

I don’t know the reason for He Duoling’s success. The artist seems to delight in the vitality of his subjects, mostly young, who look transfixed in time and pleased with their own dream-like perfection. Many could well belong to another era. Or, to put it differently, the youthful world contained in his musings belongs to a present-day China, but one which seems to dream of the past. He Duoling has described his own work as “mystical” and “poetic,” suggesting that he doesn’t know what it means or doesn’t want to say.

My guess is, what makes it successful is a combination of things: the Chinese love of the “beautiful,” which privileges Eastern thought but delights in Western subjects; an art market enchanted with the Orient; a Chinese population that sees progress wherever there is change, and novelty when something is drawn from outside. Over the years, He has painted much of the real landscape around him, but he clearly manipulates the settings, flattening them; painting into them–metaphorically and literally–layer after layer of meaning.

The instant I saw Luo Fahui in his palatial studio outside Chengdu, I knew I was looking at an artist. His piercing, good-humored expression gazed out at me from under his bald crown without sarcasm. Narrow shoulders clothed in the characteristic monotone shirt suggested a dark-clad modesty behind those scandalous paintings. It was the middle of the day and we were sipping tea from class cups in his tall whitewashed home. His wife had on a pair of purple tinted sunglasses. I felt like I was sitting inside a heated igloo.

He Tang Yuese (荷塘月色, Moonlight on the Lotus Pond) is where Luo built his home. One of a collection of fourteen artist lofts, including that of He Duoling, Luo’s home is a testament to what an artist can accomplish in China and also what the artist needs: opulence and solitude. Hanging above the fireplace in Luo’s lush apartment is one of his recent acclaimed works, a picture of a very young boy and a tiger. The boy’s features are obscured and he’s mounted atop the small tiger as though riding it, its head in profile and one eye almost on the viewer. Both tiger and boy look hastily painted, in a flurry of passion–at first. But then you look closer: many deliberate strokes and a bleeding of the paint coalesce to give these bodies a heightened transcendence, an eye-popping ethereality.

Chengdu artist Luo Fahui

I asked him what he thought was most significant about this boy’s posture. One of its hands is thrust into a fist in mid-air while the other clutches the tiger’s neck. My friend, Liang Wei, interpreted for me:

“The boy is based on a character from classical Chinese literature, Wu Song. Originally, he battled the tiger and killed it. But this painting does not depict the original scene, where Wu Song wields a spear and takes the life of the tiger and gets away…In this version, the boy is not subduing the tiger, he’s just mounting it cockily, and he is missing his weapon, his spear. The boy is meant to symbolize China’s overconfident middle class. There is some serious political and social commentary at work there.”

Gesturing toward the back of the apartment, Luo took us through the door into the 90-foot-square garage where some of his recently-treated canvases were being aired out to dry. We chatted in front of an electrifying blue, turquoise, yellow, and gray painting with an illuminated, almost religious-looking figure in the center. We had about a half an hour together, then Luo and his wife slipped out the door very quickly to catch their flight to Scope Basel in Miami, the site of his most recent show.

I am standing transfixed in the studio loft of Luo Fahui. Beside me, sculptures of both convincing and cartoonish nudes posture about the heightened suggestiveness of grimacing skulls and opening rose petals. Huge canvases stretched over frames cover the walls, their colors–gray, orange, red, green, yellow, blue, turquoise–unmistakable. Unmistakably Luo’s.

The Body Discovered

The Spanish art critic, Marcos-Ricardo Barnatan, wrote in his introduction to the artist’s book: “…In the West, the nude corresponds to an invincible need for the absolute, an inevitable search for essence…But this breaks down once and for all in the modern era, where all systems of property disintegrate and the body is literally discovered…allowing eroticism to flow freely…that is the procedure followed by a modernity that paints those glorious bodies– distorted, damned, exalted, embellished or simply manifest…It is this modern game…to which the painting of Luo Fahui subscribes. (22)”

Luo’s work is not just erotic, but dirty. In some of his paintings, this dirtiness is straightforward- we get to see a woman’s legs spread out in front of us, or a naked subject seductively stroking a flower or skull as if it were an impressionistic take on tattoo art. At other times, the flower is exploding, gushing forth its bloody red entrails, or the subject is likewise bleeding. All of his work is partly sexual, partly about decay. There is little of struggle or fighting. There is a lot of dominance and submission. Even the boy and tiger look to be caught in a sadomasochistic lovelock rather than a death match.

One thing that’s increasingly clear is what has become a trademark of much contemporary Chinese painting: its color. All color in painting is symbolic and in China, the significance of color is potentially explosive. When Luo chooses red and gray to emphasize his subjects’ vulnerability, their woundedness and alienation, he is not only speaking to a post-Modern sexual appeal, he is evoking the destruction and resurrection of hurt in China’s Cultural Revolution and the shaking historical events of the past half-century. Chinese artist and scholar Wang Lin writes of one such painting, Female and Flower: “[The painting]’s being a symbol of desire is but a secular metaphor; from this starting point, Luo Fahui aims to probe, seek out and expose the physical, psychological and spiritual changes that happened to the Chinese people after they entered the so-called socialist market economy.”

To put it otherwise, Luo’s work parodies many Western concepts of the nude and nudity, but not in a way that we are used to. Spun into his work, along with the bodies, are ideas–ideas of things we may not recognize: a person from Chinese mythology, a scene from Tiananmen Square. In the nudes are both the objectivity of desire and an untouchable frailty, a cosmic letdown. What is he depicting? Is it really sex?

Wang Lin writes: “First it’s image. No matter flowers, heads or bodies, in Luo Fahui’s paintings, they appear so clear and bright, sparkling and translucent…Flowers are like sexual organs of women, gorgeous, delicate and fragile. Heads, that of grown-up male’s and female’s or infant’s and toddler’s…His body depiction usually displays vague features and ambiguous structures, as if made from flour…The background is either gray nihil, or turquoise sky. With such imagery, the artist creates an erotic atmosphere both illusory and fragile, and the viewers often find themselves shrouded in a soft and bewildered emotional state.”

Luo himself wrote, in one artist statement, “Painting is actually my expression of ideas, of my spiritual and emotional desire to be realized in an independent way. Painting is my own space where I hope for sublimation – to experience freedom of thought and perfection of life, to experience the language of the primitive and the inner emptiness. Such an easy and pleasant existence, and a passage of life which I wish to continue.

But the intentionality behind his paintings is not directly linked with politics. Thinking on this subject, Wang Lin writes, “He is not a thinking-type artist who challenges the social awareness with concepts and schema, but a feeling-type painter who depicts the potential changes in the society’s mental activities with his sensitive neurotic reactions.”

Photos by Jeff Weir

For excerpts of an interview with Luo Fahui, go here.

In short: a massive graffiti battle attracting crews and writers from all over China, to paint inside a church on a Saturday afternoon. For Chengdu’s humble street art scene, this is the stuff of dreams.

Rather than go on about what a joy the event was (I also had a blast DJ’ing there), I’ll let the photos do the talking. At the bottom of the post, after the photos, you’ll find an exclusive audio interview with Xeme, Hong Kong based graffiti writer and Wall Lords event organizer.

Chengdu 2011 Wall Lords Graffiti Battle Photos

After arriving at the Luxe Hills gate, it was about a ten minute walk up stairs to get to the church. Outside of the church there were about 10 writers doing their thing and inside is where the competition was held and musicians performed. First the outdoor shots:

A large banner outside of Luxe Hills made the event location clear

Walking up stairs to the church, signs urged visitors "Please don't graffiti here"

Xian-based writer TBD lays down his outline outside of the church

Security guards look on as TBD applies final touches

A Russian writer from Saint Petersburg lays down some curved hatches on his outline

Guangzhou-based writer Jungle laying about halfway through his Ghost piece

Hanging outside with Gas (left), local rapper Lao Xiong (second from right) and two b-boys

 Photos from Inside the Graffiti Church

Stepping through the massive doors into the giant church was humbling. On the inside there were over a dozen writers from all over China crafting intricate murals across a 20 meter wide space.

Walking inside the massive church interior where the competition took place

St Petersburg writer Wais was the sole judge at Wall Lords in Chengdu

Hong Kong's INCP crew's submission was a psychedelic bird

Local rapper (and my friend & neighbor) Lao Xiong of Chengdu's Big Zoo crew performs

B-boy windmills on the Wall Lords print near the church entrance

Chengdu based MC and graffiti artist Eli Sweet

Wall Lords organizer and Kowloon-based graffiti writer "B" representing

Graffiti writer from ABS crew visualizes the winning design

Sketching the outline for the epic Poseidon piece by ABS crew

Finishing up the contest winning Poseidon piece at Wall Lords Chengdu

The winning piece is announced on stage by Gas: ABS crew's Poseidon

Bonus: Exclusive Interview with Xeme

Several weeks before the event took place, Xeme scouted the venue along with Gas and made preparations. During that time I met with him, collected details about Wall Lords, and made sure that he’d be available for an interview at the event. Here it is, you can stream or right click and “Save As…” to download the MP3:

Interview with Xeme at Chengdu Wall Lords 2011

Hong Kong based graffiti writer and Wall Lords event organizer Xeme

Conclusion

If you weren’t able to attend this event, I hope that the photos give you an idea of what being in attendance was like. It was great to see all kinds of Chengdu citizens, young and old, veteran artists and novices alike, unite to enjoy street art. And Wall Lords selecting Chengdu to host this event can be used as a certain milestone for measuring Chengdu’s cultural development. Overall an outstanding event that I had a blast at.

If you have any comments, post them below!

Adam Mayer arrived in Chengdu and got to designing buildings right off the bat. We met shortly before Sascha interviewed Adam for this post, which cast him as a pioneering foreigner blazing the Chinese trail of urban development: American Architects Finds Freedom in Chengdu. Since then we’ve become friends and it’s always been a pleasure to muse about Chengdu’s future.

His unique position as a foreign architect in the city affords him a phenomenal platform to witness one of the largest building booms in human history. And since Chengdu has been among the fastest-growing cities in the world for years now, it’s a land of incredible opportunity for architects and urban developers from around the world.

A year after arriving in Chengdu, Adam’s work is beginning to materialize around Chengdu. I thought this would be a great time to ask him a few question about what he’s up to and where Chengdu is headed.

Interview with Adam Mayer

Chengdu Living: For those who don’t know you, who are you and where are you from? What are you doing in Chengdu?

Adam: I’m an architectural designer from California, USA. Currently I am a Senior Project Architect at the firm Cendes in our Chengdu office. I’ve been living in Chengdu for a year.

Chengdu Living: What led you to China or Chengdu?

Opportunity to work in the world’s largest market for new buildings is what initially led me to China. I landed in Chengdu because at the time I moved to China (about 2 years ago) there was a shift happening with development moving inland from the coastal regions. Chengdu has been a big beneficiary of the Central Government’s push westward and development activity doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

Chengdu Living: What are you working on now?

Currently I am working on a few different things. One project is a proposal for a new 450,000 M² mixed-use project in north-central Chengdu. The project includes a 5-story shopping mall with three 120-meter residential towers and a 200-meter office tower. I am also designing a retail center just outside of Guangzhou and a residential complex in Tangshan, Hebei province.

Chengdu Living: How has working in the architecture field in this region differed from what you expected?

The Hailrun Complex in downtown Chengdu

It is not much different from what I anticipated. Project schedules are usually on an accelerated track, which takes some getting used to after working in the U.S. where contracts allot more time for architects to do thoughtful design work. In most cases, we don’t have the luxury of time with projects in China so design and production need to happen quickly.

This has to do partly with the fact that property developers have a time limit in which to build on land they have successfully bid on. The reason for the time limit is to discourage land speculation and promote urban development. Accelerated project schedules are not unique to the architecture industry but are rather a reflection of China’s overall rush to modernize and develop its cities.

Chengdu Living: What are the greatest challenges of working here? The greatest advantages?

The greatest challenges for a foreigner working in China are definitely the language and cultural barriers, though these are hurdles that can be overcome through spending some time in the country getting to know its customs and proactively studying Mandarin. The greatest advantage is simply the fact that China, as a huge developing country, offers a lot more opportunity for new buildings at this point in time than its developed world counterparts.

Chengdu Living: What advice would you give to Western architects working in China?

Be patient and know what the type of client you are working with. Not all clients are created equally, especially in China where everyone from factory owners to rural village chiefs are getting their hands into property development. In many cases these first-time developers don’t know what they are doing and rely on architects not only for design but to educate them about the development process as well. This can be a burden and time-consuming but it can also be a good opportunity provided you get lucky and the client has an open mind.

Established private Chinese development companies and overseas developers from places like the U.S., Hong Kong and Singapore usually have a better idea of what they want and put more emphasis on design quality and the finished product because they have a reputation to maintain. State-owned property developers are another thing altogether and can often be cumbersome to deal with because of their size and inefficient managerial culture.

Chengdu Living: What will Chengdu look like in 5 years? 10? 20? What’s the rate of change and what do you see for the future of China’s urban development?

Parts of Chengdu will look completely different in 5 years. Areas like the South Hi-Tech Zone and outlying areas outside the 3rd Ring Road will continue to urbanize and eventually merge with the city. In Chengdu’s Central Business District, DongDaJie (东大街) will be a canyon of commercial office towers stretching all the way from Chunxi Lu to the East 2nd Ring Road. The expanding subway system will help tie the city together. Further down the line, Chengdu will continue to evolve and add new buildings to the urban fabric.

Transportation in downtown Chengdu on a late summer evening

This is not to suggest that Chengdu will lose its inherent charm in its path towards modernization. Rather, Chengdu government leaders are aware of what makes the city a unique and attractive place not only with Chinese people but with foreigners (and more importantly, foreign investment) as well. They are trying to capitalize on this allure by promoting what is called a ‘Modern Garden City’. What this essentially means is that government planners are looking at ways to tie the city in with it surrounding natural environment by encouraging preservation of green belts in developing areas. Furthermore, non-profit organizations like the Chengdu Urban Rivers Association (CURA) are engaged in working to find solutions to cleaning up the city’s rivers by encouraging sustainable approaches to agriculture in outlying areas.

So in many aspects, Chengdu is a very progressive city in China when it comes to environmental and quality-of-life issues. I don’t think this is an accident as the city has a long tradition of being tied closely with its natural surroundings. The fertile soil of the Chengdu Plain along with the ancient Dujiangyan Irrigation System have shaped a culture over thousands of years that places high value on agriculture, influencing the strong culinary and leisure paradigm we still see today.

Chengdu Living: You’ve recently started authoring a blog called China Urban Development: what’s that about and what motivated you begin publishing it?

After doing some research about urban development in China I noticed that there is a dearth of accurate information about what is going on here. Of course, there is no lack of reporting about China’s development in the Western media- not a day goes by where publications like the New York Times or the Guardian don’t report something about China. Yet oftentimes the focus is just on how big or fast everything is rather than providing any real insight to what is going on here on the ground.

On the other side of awe-struck reporting is the ideological, agenda-based bashing of China by some pundits in the West. This really infuriates me because it does nothing to enhance understanding between China and the rest of the world and can actually be a detrimental influence on international relations.

So as an outsider working in a field that is directly related to urban development, I feel it is my responsibility to try and provide a more balanced picture of what’s happening this moment in China. I am by no means an apologist for the negative aspects of China’s development and I do acknowledge that there are tremendous challenges to overcome.

That being said, I am very bullish about China’s future and strongly believe that development is ultimately a positive thing for Chinese people and the world.

Do you have any comments on development in Chengdu or greater China? Leave them in the comments below. Then check out Adam’s excellent blog China Urban Development. 

An Economic Reality Check

I thought the following quote was really interesting because as any American might tell you, the standard of living in the U.S. far surpasses how Chinese live, yet the U.S. is faltering while China rises. I feel a lot of this yapping is psycho-somatic, self-inflicted doldrums. And I am not sure why. Why would a country with a massive landmass, a relatively small population and the most creative and talented people around basically throw in the towel and give up?

So the quote below was kind of a wake up call:

“I also know that some of you are skeptical about America’s future prospects.

With that in view, I would like to suggest that I respectfully disagree with that view and will allay your concerns. Let me put this in perspective so you can understand why the American people are also confident about their future. America today is by far the world’s largest economy with a GDP of almost $15 trillion, about two and a half times as large as China’s, the second largest; with a per-capita GDP which is more than $47,000 – 11 times that of China’s. I’ve read that some Chinese are concerned about the safety of your investments in American assets. Please understand, no one cares more about this than we do since Americans own 87 percent of all our financial assets and 69 percent of all our treasury bonds, while China owns 1 percent of our financial assets and 8 percent of our treasury bills respectively.”

Joe Biden & Xi Jinping in Dujiangyan

But then that was followed by the “Innovative & Green Revolution” rhetoric during Obama’s great run for the U.S. Presidency in 2008. I have seen little to prove that the government has any meat behind its words, and perhaps that is what helps drive the overall malaise: people waiting for the government to “do something”.

“In the 20th century, the wealth of nation was primarily measured by the abundance of its natural resources, the expanse of its landmass, the size of its population and the potency of its army.

But I believe in the 21st century, the true wealth of a nation will be found in the creative minds of its people and their ability to innovate – to develop the technologies that will not only spawn new products, but create and awaken entire new industries.”

Freedom & Liberty Are Good for Business

That empty claim was followed by this jab at rote learning and static systems (not the attempt at making Sichuan University feel better):

“A system that trains students not merely to learn and accept established orthodoxy, but to challenge orthodoxy, challenge their professors, challenge the ideas put forward to them, encourage individual thought and innovation; a system that not only tolerates free expression and vigorous debate, including between citizens and their government, but celebrates and promotes those exchanges; a system in which the rule of law protects private property, provides a predictable investment climate, and ensures accountability for the poor and wealthy alike; and a system with universities that remain – notwithstanding, and this is a great university - the ultimate destination for scholars from around the world.”

Wouldn’t it be great if politicians actually followed up on what they said?

“Openness, free exchange of ideas, free enterprise and liberty are among the reasons why the United States, in my view, is at this moment the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. It’s why our workers are among the most productive, why our inventors and entrepreneurs hold more patents than any other country in the world, why we are reinvesting in the fundamental sources of our strength — education, infrastructure, innovation …”

This is what happens to Sino-US relations when the politicians stop talking. It can get ugly fast.

Biden On the Burden of the Elderly

The following was in response to a question from the audience: “What concrete measures will America take to reduce its deficit?”

“The bottom line is we have to deal with two elements of our economy.  One is what we call entitlement programs – long-term commitments to our people in the area of particularly Medicare.  That is the safety net we have for people once they reach the age of 65 to be assured that they have health care.”

Biden never mentioned the second element, which I assume was either corporate tax loopholes or a plan to divert Wall Street bonuses to the needy. Biden strove for common ground with the Chinese – in this case overpopulation and its burden:

“I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand – I’m not second-guessing – of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.”

Meanwhile in the United States you have Pro-Lifers angered at Joe Biden ‘not second-guessing’ China’s one-child policy.

How Much Weight Does Biden’s Speech in Chengdu Carry?

Perhaps not much, but we will see. But as Forbes said, at least Biden didn’t make a huge gaffe, right? I don’t know why, but I find myself caring a little bit more about politics again. After a long hiatus due to severe disgust, I find myself talking about Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul and repeating to myself a greasy politico’s words:

I believe in the 21st century, the true wealth of a nation will be found in the creative minds of its people and their ability to innovate.

Currently we’re in the midst of another massive QQ-style internet takeover. This time it’s Sina’s Weibo micro-blogging service (think Twitter) that’s swallowing up millions of users. After hearing about it for weeks on end I registered an account and downloaded the Weibo app on my iPhone. After several months of exploring the system, interacting with old friends and making new ones, I barely even bother to get on QQ anymore since virtually everyone has already made the switch.

Here’s how and why you should get on Sina Weibo to begin interacting with friends in your neighborhood and across China.

The Weibo.com post interface alongside the logged-in user stats

How Does Weibo Work?

From the beginning (almost two years ago) Weibo has been described by nearly everyone as the Chinese Twitter clone. This does a serviceable job of describing how Weibo works: at it’s heart it’s a chronological timeline of less-than-140 character posts authored by people you follow. Simple enough.

Since its inception though, Weibo has added several features distinguishing itself from Twitter and becoming something of a Facebook-Twitter mashup. Since both of these juggernaut social networks are inaccessible to users in this country, this unison makes a lot of sense since Facebook and Twitter have already gone through the trouble of spending years figuring out how social networks like this should work.

Quick Facts About Weibo

• You follow people, have followers, and save favorites. Very similar to Twiter.
• Photo sharing is easy since Weibo automatically hosts images for you. Upload them from your phone or computer and they automatically appear directly inside the timeline. Like Facebook.
• In addition to pictures, you can also upload audio and video. These also appear in the timeline and play instantly just like on Facebook.
• There’s already over 150 million registered Weibo accounts and the user base will soon eclipse Twitter. Adding tens of millions of new users per month.
• Just like Twitter, Sina has verified accounts, indicated by a “V” insignia, for celebrities. Or anyone with a pinch of guanxi with Sina.

Why Weibo is Worth Your Time: Making Connections

New & old friends on Weibo

Being connected to your friends is a wonderful thing. Facebook or Twitter on their own don’t hold much appeal to me and I don’t think my case is very extraordinary. It’s the connections that are valuable. Weibo offers the exact same thing: a connection to all of your contacts in China.

If your friends in China are like mine (mostly people in their 20′s and 30′s), there’s a good chance that they’re all on Weibo and cruise their own timelines from their office computer or smart phone. And once you’re connected to them, you’ll stumble upon others with similar interests.

For instance, one of the first people that I followed on Weibo was Gas, Chengdu graffiti artist and friend. A few weeks ago he traveled to Changsha to participate in the biggest annual graffiti event in China. During his extended weekend in Changsha he posted dozens of photos of artwork all around the city and through those posts I got connected with artists I hadn’t even heard of before. The same thing has happened in many of the other social circles that I’m in be it technology, photography, or music.

In short, Weibo is a great way to connect with people who have similar interests in China. Or just connect to Tom Cruise or Bill Gates who have recently joined Weibo and accrued hundreds of thousands of followers in a matter of days.

Another Benefit: Improving Your Chinese

It goes without being said that since Weibo is mostly dominated by Chinese people who don’t speak English, almost no one is using English at all. This is either a huge problem, if you can’t read any characters at all, or will really catapult your written interaction in Chinese.

Like many of you, I’ve been (informally) studying Chinese as long as I’ve been in China, experimenting with different tools and tricks along the way. I’ve already gone on about Studying Chinese with an iPhone or iPod Touch and Weibo is really an extension of that.

J-Dilla (US hip hop producer) tribute on Weibo, courtesy of Zhenkai, Chengdu local B-Boy

I cannot understand everything on Weibo upon first glance (not by a long shot) so here’s what I do: tap and hold to copy something I want to translate to the clipboard. Then pop over to Pleco (the best Chinese-English dictionary app) and paste the contents into the pasteboard reader. Any words or characters that I don’t understand and are likely to be used within the next 6 months get added to my flashcards. Using this technique alone I’ve added 500+ new flashcards to Pleco that I’ve stumbled on in Weibo. Since I don’t have much time to sit down and read Chinese books for hours at a time, collecting and recording these bite-sized pieces of vocabulary works great for me.

Registration & Weibo Clients

After you head over to the Weibo site to register your account, you’ll receive some suggestions on who to follow. If you aren’t interested in following Mainland pop stars and celebrities, I suggest you find at least a single friend who’s on Weibo so you can get connected with people you actually know. If you get connected to a few people that you know from the beginning, you’re likely to stumble upon more people that you know or are interested in. I’ve found a handful of local artists, musicians and photographers who I’ve met (so to speak) through Weibo.

Once you’ve got that covered, you have just to select whether you’ll be accessing Weibo from a computer or a mobile device. Here are your options:

Web interface

The traditional method of accessing Weibo is through their website at Weibo.com. The interface looks virtually identical to what Twitter.com looked like before it’s redesign about 6 months ago. It’s a 2-column chronological listing of posts by people you’re following. You can hover over usernames to see information on their account like where they’re located, who their following and so forth.

iPhone & iPod Touch

Although there’s an official Weibo client (developed by Sina) which does the job perfectly well, there’s a superior third party alternative called Weico (App Store link / official site). It has virtually all of the same functions as the official client but is better designed and includes several different themes which you can toggle in the app settings. I’m using the Graphite thing which works well and looks great (pictured at right).

Android

Similar to the situation on iOS, there’s an official Sina client as well as Weico. The Weico app on Android is still in beta but is available for free download just as on iPhone and iPod Touch. I haven’t used either of these apps (I don’t have an Android phone) but expect them to be virtually identical to their iPhone counterparts in function and design.

Personally I much prefer accessing Weibo from my iPhone since it perfectly fills idle moments throughout the day: waiting in line, taking a taxi from here to there, etc. If you have a smartphone with 3G access (either an iPhone or Android device), reading and posting on Weibo will be especially quick and convenient for you.

Join Tom Cruise & Bill Gates on Weibo

Since going through the paces of registering an account on Weibo and locating friends, I barely even bother with QQ anymore. Although I was never a fan of QQ to begin with, it was the connections it provided – to virtually everyone in China – that were really valuable. Since Sina’s Weibo network has been spreading like wildfire over the previous year, I can retain all of the same connections on a service that’s much less intrusive.

If you haven’t already, it might be worth your time to check it out and see what it can offer you. If you do, send me a message and say hello!

Commemorative “Red Songs” Website Hacked, Defaced

Two college students tried to cash in on the current Red Song craze by building a website (reportedly spending 300,000 RMB) and were promptly hacked and crucified by the Chinese web, which left the message at right behind. While Red Songs are playing on every radio and television station, once again tech-proficient Chinese youth demonstrate their prowess and will to subvert. This particular stunt has attracted a lot of attention from both supporters and critics and underscores the difficulty that the Party has guiding the internet toward its own corner.

The message left behind by hackers mocked the creators of the website and was retweeted on Weibo (the Chinese Twitter) thousands of times. The message, roughly translated:

Ouch.

A Patriotic Staple Gets Reworked

A spoof on the classic Communist Party theme track, “If it weren’t for the Communist Party,” uses Tom, the talking iPad kitty (Youku clip embedded below), to change the lyrics from “If it weren’t for the Communist Party there would be no new China” to “If it weren’t for Kang Shifu there wouldn’t be any instant noodles” . The song is one of the most popular and most revered of all Red Songs; spoofing it with an iPad app is tantamount to sacrilege.

A Tale of Two Cities, Chongqing and Guangzhou

An image (at right) showing the headlines from major newspapers in Chongqing and Guangzhou the day of the Party’s 90th birthday are making the rounds. The headlines on the top are from Guangzhou and all carry the following three lines:

“Don’t allow loud spectacles and clapping to drown out the voice of the people (不要让鲜花掌声淹没群众意见)

Don’t allow congratulatory statistics obscure today’s problems (不要让成绩数字掩盖存在问题)

Don’t allow development and growth numb our vigilance (不要让发展成就麻痹忧患意识)”

The headlines on the bottom are from Chongqing and read:

“Red song sung across China (红歌唱响中国),

Red Song’s praise the Party, sung across China (红歌颂党 唱响中国),

Glorious dancing and singing in respect for the historical achievements of the Party; Raise the flag and on to future glory! (歌舞热烈，礼赞历史功绩；旗帜高扬，引领未来辉煌!)”

For netizens this is a clear and easy to understand comparison of sell-out vs. righteous one and no one receives more love than he who has the courage to stand up to power.

Although this variety of patriotism is common in Chinese newspapers, the 90th is certainly a orgiastic explosion of giant, bold red headlines.

Foreigners Join the Party

Further evidence of widespread Da Shanism, the Red Song craze as also managed to rope in foreign Buttkissers: Five well-dressed Russians singing Red Songs; an African guy in his bedroom with Mao’s Little Red Book (embedded below) and Laowai rappers Mading and Anton with their rendition of a classic Red Song, Yingshan Hong.

The Mighty Unification

Don’t underestimate the power of the Party to bring about the unification of all world religions. A photo of representatives of world religions gathering in Xichang to praise the Party is being passed around the web for everyone to laugh at, which has also managed to skyrocket this Red Song, sung by nuns, to new heights.

Conclusion

Every day brings new laughs. We at Chengdu Living salute all those striving for the Motherland and we wish you the best of luck in the (Red) years ahead.

Disregarding self-aggrandizing lunatics like Zhao Bandi, the discussion online (where discussions are their most “public”) revolves around a few questions:

Let’s take a closer look at these questions below:

If You Have to Ask …

For many commentators, the answer to the first question is simple. Censorship, rote learning and a politicized movie industry prevent great works with international appeal from coming out of Mainland China — Farewell my Concubine being one notable exception. Posts like this on Douban are representative of this view:

There are other works which follow the same theme, like writer NanQiao for the Oriental Morning Post’s, “A Look at How Hollywood Plays the ‘Chinese Elements’ Card,” which also goes a bit deeper into the issue. He begins by asking the question that every Chinese engaged with this topic is asking:

It seems that “stealing culture” is not the only thing that galls. When Hollywood (i.e. foreigners) can profit off of stealing culture, then the discussion becomes heated and a solution must be found. NanQiao is not the only one mentioning the profit issue. Virtually every discussion mentions that “they’re making money off of us” — this is a very important aspect of the discussion because the importance of profit can come from a few different points of view:

1. They’re turning our culture into a product to be packaged and sold!
2. They’re making money off of us! It should always be the other way around!
3. Not one Mainland Chinese movie has come even close to making the same amount of cash that Hollywood movies have made in the Chinese market
4. Movie tickets in China aren’t cheap. An average ticket for Kung Fu Panda 2 costs more than 100RMB, while the average salary hovers around 2,500 per month for young people. Going to the movies is a luxury for the average person.

NanQiao answers his question by discussing “cultural strength” (文化强势) and the ability of Hollywood to recognize and synthesize (what Americans feel to be) worthy cultural elements into a seamless narrative and the inability of Chinese films to do the same:

For NanQiao, a clear and confident idea of what is culturally valuable determines a culture’s strength vis a vis another, therefore America’s clarity and China’s confusion lead to an imbalance in cultural strength ie much higher profits for Hollywood movies.

Chengdu in the Limelight

For the answer to the second question, lets first take a look at Chengdu’s reaction to the movie. The first Kung Fu Panda movie came out in June of 2008, not even a month after the Wenchuan Earthquake. At the time Chengdu was very worried about its image and as tourism numbers fell to 2003 levels, they were looking for something to help reverse the bad press.

So they extended an invitation to Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and his team to come out to Chengdu and see what a real panda looks like. Katzenberg immediately agreed and took a trip out to the Panda Breeding Center (who promptly named one of their pandas after Po). During the making of Kung Fu Panda 2, the municipal government again extended an invite and the whole film crew including art director Raymond Zibach visited the city.

They stopped at Kuan Zhai Xiangzi, Qing Cheng Mountain, Dujiangyan and Jinsha (slurping up some noodles and hot pot along the way). The story was already done by the time the team arrived in Chengdu, but their experiences in the city inspired them to re-do some of the animation and insert dandan noodles, elements from the breeding center and Kuan Zhai Xiangzi and a lot of the scenery from Qing Cheng Mountain.

Qingcheng Mountain, located an hour outside Chengdu, is a center of Daoism and host to countless temples

The city of Chengdu practically gloated over this “free press” — in an article written for China Business, Peng Ge and Pei Yu elaborate on the efforts by the Chengdu Municipal government to get elements of the Du into the movie:

The authors go out of their way to show that the government did not spend a single penny on the “free PR” they received from the movie, despite mentioning a “person in the know” who said that the cost for this PR was around the RMB3million mark. It is safe to assume that the government expected to pay for having parts of Chengdu’s culture portrayed in the film, because Hebei Province happily invested in the movie Aftershock, about the Tangshan earthquake of 1976. So when Katzenberg said that he would put scenery from Chengdu into Kung Fu Panda 2 “as a gift to the children of the disaster zone” and when Zibach gushed that “I was so delighted and moved by Mt. Qingcheng that I insisted it be a major feature of the sequel,” the city of Chengdu was taken aback:

For the Chengdu government, Kung Fu Panda and it’s sequel are direct representations of the culture and beauty of the city. The pandas, the mountain scenes, all of the streetside vendors — according to their PR releases, these were directly inspired by Chengdu. The government’s goal was PR and ultimately profits, so for them the elements of China within the movie were not only adequate, but outstanding (in part because they “didn’t cost a penny”).

But for many netizens, including NanQiao, Kung Fu Panda 2 is very much an American movie and lacks the strong ties to Chinese culture that the first installment had. The jury is still out.

The scenery and setting were very Chinese, but the main character Po is very American. The peacock and the Master are quintessential Chinese characters, but the heroic stand at the end is considered an “America! F*ck Yeah!” type of moment, even though Po used Qing Cheng Mountain Tai Qi. All across the web there are comments that range from “They know us better than we know ourselves!” to “It’s an American kid dropped into the middle of China!”

As we can see here, there seems to be a disconnect between what is and is not Chinese culture and what is and is not valuable. For the city of Chengdu and Hebei Province, PR and the possibility of increased tourism adds value to the cultural elements within a film; for the average Chinese netizen, the answer is still unclear.

Asking the Wrong Question

For years Chinese have been told that their culture is not only unique, but that nobody else out there can really compare with or even fully comprehend the depth of China. When Chinese find out that, actually, some things are universal and that, yes it is possible to understand the deep values of Chinese culture precisely because they are universal then a whole new round of soul searching ensues.

Laughter is universal. When I watched the movie last weekend, I laughed my ass off and so did everyone else in the theater. Even when the jokes were pure-Jack Black slapstick.

Pain is universal. When Po’s mom left the little guy and he said “mama?” the whole theater fell silent and I felt the tears come. Somebody nearby was sobbing.

Inner peace is universal. When Master Shifu catches a drop of water off of the cliff face and guides it intact onto a leaf, demonstrating the power of inner peace, I knew exactly what he meant, even though I am neither Taoist, Chinese nor a Tai Qi master.

These elements were placed within a Chinese context and nothing more. If anything, the scenery itself helped bend the American cultural elements within the film, not the other way around. As I left the theater last week, I asked one of the ushers if he had watched the movie and he said of course several times. Then he said:

I could only smile at the irony there.

Kung Fu Panda is a movie that is first and foremost a Creation, inspired by the very best of China. Perhaps the discussions the film has engendered across the Chinese blogosphere will lead to a clarification of what is truly valuable about Chinese culture.

The following essay is from contributor Elias Witman, who spent an extended period aiding reconstruction efforts in a village devastated by the 2008 earthquake.

Village Awakening

I awoke to the sound of a rooster call on a cold November morning in Jing Jia Cun, a small mountainside village in Beichuan County, northern Sichuan. Below my blue government-issue emergency tent, fog lingered in the valley, forming an eerie haze over the leveled remains of what was once the Qiang minority’s (羌族) regional capital. The municipal city of Beichuan bore one of the highest tolls of fatalities in the quake of May 12, 2008. Earthquake-induced landslides and flooding entombed 20,000 people in the mountain valley, including 1,000 students who were attending class at Beichuan regional high school.  I was staying in one of the few standing homes, here to help out any way I could.

Beichuan before the 2008 earthquake, nestled in a valley between towering mountains on all sides

Our host was cooking rice porridge and spicy vegetables to fuel us for hours of cutting bricks. Today we would continue chiseling away bits of housing debris and mortar from the brick rubble of the Dui family’s former home.   Too poor to buy new building materials, the Dui family, like millions of others in Northern Sichuan, had to rebuild their home from the pieces of what the previous year’s earthquake had left behind.  We worked to the rhythmic echo of chisels, sometimes in sync but often in discord with the sudden clang of metal against stone, metal against plaster, metal against concrete: the sound of progress, the rebuilding of homes and reclaiming of culture.

Distant Minds Meeting

This was my first trip to Beichuan, and over the course of the next two years I became well acquainted with the mountain town of Jing Jia Cun and the broader post-quake region. This particular trip was small in scale: I was the lone foreigner, accompanied by Yezi, our driver and two female students from the South-West Finance University in Wenjiang, Liu Yaqing and Li Jiehao.

Yaqing, Jiehao and I established rapport by sharing college stories as we chopped through rubble for 9 hours. When asked about my undergraduate studies, I discussed my passion for environmental studies at the University of Vermont and shared various anecdotes of tent city living and hunger strike protests for social justice.

Oh “fumengte da xue” (Chinese pronunciation of the University of Vermont),” Yaqing said knowingly. “They have a strong environmental program.”

“You have really heard of my school?”

“Yes, University of Vermont,” she replied knowingly. “I learned about the tragic murder of Michelle Gardner-Quinn. Her story and vision of a peaceful planet inspired me very much. I wrote a long letter to her foundation.”

My thoughts spun around the fact that two people from two vastly different places were inspired enough by the compassionate visions of Michelle and the horrors of her death to travel to Beichuan and sift through rubble for hours on end.

Rebuilding from Rubble

Replenished from our breakfast, the four of us walked out from our blue tents and down the lone mountain road to our work site. Motorbikes and tractors grumbled past and the occasional Dongfeng dump truck bumped along, hauling bricks at a snail’s pace. Jiehao fit the profile of a young journalism major in her argyle sweater, green knit cap and sharp orange-rimmed glasses. She held a cigarette in one hand and clicked on her cellphone with the other. Yaqing peered out at the scarred slopes of the mountains, her brown wool coat speckled with gray dust.

We reached the new work site, a rooftop undergoing reconstruction, and received our orders, to clear the old tiles and mix cement.  Gradually the sun poked its head out from the blanket of clouds in the valley.  We stood three meters high on a wooden plank wedged between the house and the hillside. Yaqing handed me a bucket of old tiles and I passed them down the line to Jiehao — together rebuilding this ruined house piece by piece.

With each cyclic pass, I came to think of us as small links in a chain connecting Han Chinese, China and the US.  I thought how privileged I was, to have freedom over my life and the ability to choose how I spent my days, in sharp contrast to those whose lives were destroyed by the earthquake.  This “tile brigade” showed solidarity, support between Chinese and foreign college students, city-dwellers and villagers, an act of bridging cultures in the aftermath of the disaster.

The Fall

Then disaster struck.

I heard the crunch of splintering wood and a piercing scream  “aiiiiiyeeeaaa,” as Yaqing fell four meters through a hole in the roof, landing on her back as she hit the concrete floor.  Jiehao and I dashed over the wooden plank and down into the kitchen of the house below.  Yaqing was unable to speak and lay moaning and motionless on the ground.

An older woman in a maroon coat and white arm warmers came to her side.  Jiehao and I were in a state of shock and terribly worried about Yaqing. Was she paralyzed? Did she have internal bleeding?  I offered my water bottle and but my hand was batted away.

“Cold water isn’t healthy” barked the woman in arm warmers.  She brought a thermos of hot water to Yaqing’s side.

I retreated to the doorway and Mr. Dui, the scruffy homeowner, beckoned me back up to the roof.

“It isn’t too high,” he remarked, looking down the hole in which Yaqing fell through.   He sparked up a cigarette and handed me the shovel and pointed to the pile of wet cement.

“Keep working, we aren’t doctors.”   He took a long drag and exhaled in my direction. I was shocked by his stoicism, but after all he had watched his whole village crumble just a few months ago.

I mixed cement with water and plopped the gray mixture from one side of the roof to the next. I tried not to look down the square hole at the scene below, but unlike the man on the roof, I was deeply worried about my injured companion. Jiehao was tending to Yaqing and the tenants had called a neighbor to take us up the road to alert Yezi, our driver, to ready our van for departure.

We rushed up the hill to pack up the tent while Yezi revved up the van. Yezi gunned down the road and we carried Yaqing into the back seat. I called a director at the NGO I volunteered for.

The Leigu Refugee Camp

My co-worker at the NGO tried to calm us down and  confirmed that we should to take her to the hospital at the Leigu refugee camp by the gate to the ruins of Beichuan city.

After a frustratingly slow traverse across broken roads and rubble and through “earthquake tourist” induced traffic jams, we finally drove under the red and yellow banners of Leigu refugee camp.   Jiehao and I helped Yaqing into a wheelchair and rolled her inside for a MRI and an X-ray.

As a male I was instructed to wait outside, so with nothing else to do, I set out to explore what lay past the hospital. When I passed the local high school I noticed that the school and adjacent dormitories appeared to be a merger of standard urban architecture with the traditional stone masonry of the Qiang.

Qiang towers and white stone-tipped houses show an immediate sense of “otherness”, a strong contrast from traditional Chinese pagodas or urbanized concrete apartments. The aesthetics of these buildings allow the viewer to assume differences about their inhabitants without ever setting eye on the people themselves. Was the Han-Qiang hybrid school a message from the authorities: we are all the same? Did the earthquake bring people together? Is that what shared sacrifice does?

Such sociological concerns stormed through my head as I stumbled about the temporary shelters at the Leigu camp. For now, it is funds raised from earthquake tourism – solidarity or voyeurism combined with a certain sense of anguish – that provide a livelihood for many Qiang and rural Han families.  I passed long aluminum buildings that housed hundreds of families. Shop owners stared at my presence.  I felt guilty for not spending hundreds of RMB on earthquake souveniers. The selling of 5/12 memorabilia serves as the economic lifeblood for these people while also serving a constant reminder to the empty chairs at mealtime.

Then, Jiehao emerged from the hospital, pushing Yaqing in a wheelchair. She stood up, flashed a faint smile and said she’d be okay.

Later in the week I received an email from her: