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 ARTICLES Shanghai  |
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The 1,000-days-countdown to the Olympics began the day I was leaving Beijing for Shanghai. The Chinese organizing committee launched the 'Five Friendlies' - mascots of the Olympics - in the Worker's Stadium, which bear an uncanny resemblance to the BBC's cuddly aliens for children. Each mascot has a rhyming two-syllable name, the traditional way of expressing affection in China. Beibei the Fish, Jingjing the Panda, Huanhuan the Olympic Flame, Yingying the Tibetan Antelope and Nini the Swallow represent the five elements of the sea, forests, fire, earth and sky, and underline the country's multi-ethnicity and philosophy of harmony between humans and nature. They also represent big business. In one day, 1,000 customers spent 300,000 yuan (US $37,000) on mascot products in one shop alone. "This was beyond our expectations", the owner said in the understatement of the year. Everyone seemed to be en route to China or already there: other than me, 'Governator' Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver had just arrived in Shanghai, "selling everything from California…vegetables, fruit, wine…things that will help the Chinese people", he was quoted in the China Daily as saying. I'm not sure the Chinese people need much help in that department, but no matter; Schwarzenegger brought along a delegation of 75 business leaders, including officials from Sunkist, Walt Disney Co. and Miller Brewing Co. They were not the only US politicians in China that week - Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was already there, and President Bush arrived the next day in Beijing, first leg of an Asian trip. Shanghai is Manhattan on the Yangtze, more adventurous architecturally than Beijing, particularly in pre-communist times. Beijing has caught up, but Shanghai still has the edge with its sky-line. Like a dazzling necklace at night, it is especially beautiful seen, as I did, from the terrace of the Bar Rouge, the current night-spot of choice. In the last 10 years this city's financial district of Pudong has developed with dramatic speed, sky-scrapers jostling for position across the river from the Bund, the colonial-era quarter of banks and offices which looks like a throw-back to a European capital. It's well worth seeing what US architect Michael Graves has done with his transformation of Three on the Bund into a hot shopping mall and art gallery, where I saw an installation called Fashion Guerrilla by the female artist Yin Xiuzhen. Indeed spaces to show art are mushrooming in Shanghai and Beijing, 'almost too many', the artists complain, 'there's not enough time to fill them all'. There was also not enough time to fill my stomach, as Shanghai's famous street food beckoned. Every morning there was an enormous queue outside my hotel for the local dumpling man, who operated with a colleague from a minute cubicle with three large wooden steamers positioned on the pavement. The hands-down winner is Anchun Jiaozi, a snow-white 'pigeon egg' dumpling I became addicted to. These soft little buns (price 1 Yuan, less than 10 p) are stuffed with various fillings, red bean paste, chopped vegetables or pork, wrapped in transparent cellophane and off you go. In my case, off to the local contemporary art museum for an appointment with Gu Zhenqing, chief curator, who told me what was at stake. Cultural regeneration is alive and kicking, as the Chinese government has worked out that art attracts foreign investors and visitors. By 2010, when Shanghai hosts the world expo, the local city council wants to build 30 museums. In China overall, 1,000 museums are scheduled to be built by 2015; the only question is what kind of 'software' to display inside. This challenge was even the subject of a conference at last year's Art Basel, organised by itinerant über-curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist, about to become co-director of London's Serpentine Gallery. Obrist co-curated (with Hou Hanru) the second Guangzhou Triennial, last stop on my China trip. Guangzhou is a sobering place after the razzle of Shanghai. Dirty communist-style high-rises with hanging laundry lines, external air conditioning units and satellite dishes dominate the cityscape, and the Pearl River's dark-brown water does not live up to its magical name. One of the three art locations our group visited showed the contradiction between the old and new face of China. Our mini-bus took us to the Xinyi International Club, a building on the site of what had once been a women's prison near the waterfront. The approach was via the poorest slums imaginable, shacks on either side, workers dressed in rags staring at our vehicle. By contrast, the club looked rather swanky, with a jazz band and a groaning buffet for a large crowd of mostly Chinese visitors. There is something brutal about the speed of transformation in China, and the resulting anxiety is a steady partner to the excitement one feels. All artists I talked to were affected by this ambivalence and it showed in their work, whatever the medium; but all of them were also entranced by what is happening in their own country, to the extent that none of them want to leave, like they wanted to in the 80s. Judging by the 40 or so studios I visited in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the future looks bright for Chinese contemporary art. Artists like painters Zhang Xiaogang and Shi Xinning, photographer Miao Xiaochun and performance artists Song Dong and Cao Fei combine rigorous technique learnt at the art academies with an entirely fresh perspective on a country with a 5,000-year cultural history, something all of them mention with pride - not a few added that the US 'only had 300 by comparison'. Nonetheless there is something makeshift about China, a quality expressed by Obrist and Hanru at Guangzhou by installing the art in spaces resembling building sites. Scaffolding climbed up walls and wooden planks were positioned on floors: "Richard Hamilton once told me you only remember exhibitions if you invent a display feature", Obrist told me over breakfast at the lugubrious Sheraton Hotel, but he might have been talking about the country as a whole. China is memorable, with contemporary art as its latest display feature, but unlike an exhibition it is here to stay. © 2005 Bettina von Hase |
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