A small village located near the Miaofeng Mountain 50 miles outside of Beijing, Jiangou is an emerging tourist destination. While the temples on the mountain are used by religious pilgrims, Jiangou caters to a different kind of pilgrimage, those individuals who want to feel more connected to their communist roots. Red tourism is a subset of cultural tourism and has been supported by the government since 2005. Many red tourist sites are found in eastern China and are in rural or poor areas of the country. By celebrating the historical routes of the party, many villages have seen economic growth due to an increase in tourism.
During Japanese occupation, Jiangou had a secret communication station for the Communist Party. Radio transmissions as well as other supplies such as food and medicine were transferred from Jiangou to Beijing. The site of the communication station has now become a museum where visitors can learn more about the site, its historical significance, and celebrate their communist roots.
While visiting Jiangou, the ChinaVine team had the opportunity to meet and talk with Mr. Zhao, now an interpreter at the Pingxi Transportation and Information Museum, who told us more about the history of the village and his work with the then emerging communist party in the 1940s. Mr. Zhao spoke of his personal involvement with the communist party, acting first as a messenger for secret messages sending them to nearby villages and secondly, escorting important figures outside of Jiangou. He talked about the harsh conditions villagers experienced before the building of new China and the level of secrecy that was needed in order to perform their mission at the communication station. While many red tourism sites have centered around Mao Zedong, Jiangou was home to other key figures of the red revolution including the foreigner Michael Lindsey who helped educate villagers on radio transmissions.
Unlike other red tourism sites, Jiangou is in its initial stages of tourism development but has seen an increase in tourism to the village. While we were at the museum, we witnessed a group of people who rented out the hall the museum in order to sing traditional communist songs. Our field school residency occurred just after Foundation Day, celebrating the 90th anniversary of the party. It is interesting to think about the shift of opinions younger generations have about the CCP and Mao opposed to earlier generations and how there are represented in what the team experienced both in Jiangou Village as well as in the city of Beijing.
”Very few works speak to social problems. Chinese contemporary art doesn’t make people understand. It has lost its function and its very important social, avant-garde, and revolutionary features.”- Zhang Jianhua
Zhang Jianhua is a contemporary sculptor known for being controversial. The subject of his work often involves poverty, exploitation, and death. Through his four sculptural series, Zhang brings to light many social issues China would like to forget.
Before attending the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Zhang grew up in a small village in the Henan province of China. His urge to be an artist started when a teacher praised him on his calligraphy. In his life time, he has worked as a farmer, a miner, and an artist assistant before attending university and starting his own artist career. The main body of his sculptural work reflects his own life and depicts many individuals he has come in contact with.
His first series, the Zhuangtang Village, focused on rural Chinese peasants. Using his own home town as a model, featuring actual villagers in his work, Zhang depicts the hardships facing farmers today. When asked in an interview why he sculpts peasants, Zhang replied “The problem of how to deal with the countryside is China’s most challenging social problem. I detest corruption, and peacefully use sculpture to express my contempt and to present a reality more real than reality.”
Zhang’s second series, Coal-the black Gold is about the strife of coal miners in China. To prepare for this series, Zhang visited coal mines in Henan and Shanxi provinces, working and living with miners, even experiencing a mining accident where some of his friends were injured and killed. This series includes sculptures of miners alive and dead and comments on this exploitation from miner owners as well as the public at large. Adding a performance aspect to this series, Zhang would often dress up in typical miners dress and lay with the dead miners in his installations. This performance aspect will carry onto his third series, The Night Jasmine.
After exploring farmers and miners, Zhang turned to another social problem, prostitution. As with his previous series, Zhang gives his own commentary on the often neglected issue of prostitution. Here Zhang created a complete environment with an illegal taxi in front of a store front where prostitutes are waiting inside. Further back, there are a series of rooms graphically depicting what the customers are paying for. Zhang also wrote a performance piece to accompany his installation where the actors perform on a stage mixed in with his sculptures blurring the lines of reality.
His current series, City Monument, Zhang focuses on urban development and modern philosophy and religion. Hundreds of small figure sculptures are placed within a decaying urban landscape featuring prominent Beijing architecture such as the Bird’s Nest and CCTV building.
Zhang has worked in the 798 artist district in Beijing, and his work has garnered international attention. The ChinaVine team interviewed Zhang in his studio where he is currently working on City Monument in the Song Zhuang art district outside of Beijing.
The temple above Jian Gou, a village outside of Beijing, is a location of significance for Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Until 1986, when a road up the mountain was built and the restoration of the temple began, the only way from the village to the temple was by pilgrim trail on foot. This area first attracted scholars in the 1920s when they visited the Miao Feng Shan area to document the temple. The temple has, and hopes to continue, supplementing the documentation and photos with the materials collected by these scholars since the temple was partially destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. The village of Jian Gou has links to the temple, red tourism and roses cultivated in the area. The village attracts tourists interested in all three areas. The temple site is accessible from the village on foot or by vehicle. Red tourism sites are located in and around the village and rose cultivation sites are also accessible by car in areas around the village. In this area, roses were first cultivated as decorative flowers before they were used to make tea and food. In 1997 farmers began developing their farms in the area to grow more roses to make into tea. Mr. Wu, the owner of the restaurant we visited for lunch and interviewed, told us that currently sixty percent of the village grows roses. Since 1997 the number of restaurants in the village began growing due to increased visitors in the area. Since that time, Mr. Wu has noticed an increase in foreign tourists, including French and American tourists who began visiting the area. The growth of foreign tourism in the area is noticeable since signs in the area which direct to specific attractions are in English, such as directions to the rose valley national forest park. However, the lengthier interpretive signs and those with historical information are not available in any foreign languages. Furthermore, the number of farmhouse style restaurants in Jian Gou grew from three to the current twelve as the region became more popular for tourists.
The fieldwork team ate lunch at Mr. Wu’s restaurant along with a courtyard full of tourists who arrived at the location in two groups of about twenty people. There was a parking lot across from the restaurant on the main road where large tour buses could park and the drivers of the buses could wait for the large groups. There were also several stands in the bus parking lot, of which three were open, selling rose jam, rose team and other gifts such as fans. We also noticed several smaller groups of one to four people who rode their bicycles up the road the mountain and were resting along the main road in the village. The fieldwork team’s lunch included a fried type of pancake made with roses from the village inside of it. The team was also served fish, vegetables, stewed chicken and rose tea grown in the area. Dishes were brought out as they were ready to be served. After lunch, Mr. Wu, the owner and cook at the restaurant, led the team to a bedroom to conduct the interview. From within the bedroom, which was set off from the courtyard where lunch was served, the toasting of the tourist group enjoying lunch and drinks could be heard. The bedroom contained a prominently placed poster of Chairman Mao positioned over the television set. The prominence of the Chairman Mao poster was apparent in the kitchen of the restaurant as well and in the government offices we visited in the village. The room we interviewed Mr. Wu in also had a kang in it, which is a bed historically used because it can be heated from beneath in the winter. Sounds from cooking in the kitchen while lunch was made for the employees, employees cleaning up the dining area and a radio could also be heard. Even though the bedroom was chosen because it was detached from the restaurant, the sounds of restaurant business activities could still be heard. During this interview Mr. Wu described the importance of the local cuisine he prepares to the fieldwork team. He explained the types of dishes available in the farmhouse restaurants in Jian Gou village are notable because they are available nowhere else in China. However, he also noted that over time he has made innovations to the dishes he cooks. As long as the customers accept the innovations he continues to use the change in his cooking. Although tourists come to this area to see certain sites, and also to partake in this type of food which they can only find here, there is some allowance for innovation in the cook’s style of preparation. He also tells us the increase in tourism in the late 1990s is due to the road, which previously had been made of sand and was unpaved, becoming a paved road. In his opinion, this accessibility lead to increased tourism and drew local residents to become involved in the farmhouse restaurant businesses in town instead of working in the fields.
Both the tourists and the restaurant employees were interested in viewing the materials collected by the fieldworkers. The group of tourists, from a company in Beijing, who were enjoying themselves in the courtyard during our interview with Mr. Wu took photographs of members of our team with members of their group. We also documented them eating lunch in the courtyard and waving to our cameras. Mr. Wu documented the fieldworkers videotaping his kitchen and interviewing Mr. Wang, a prominent folklorist, to be included on the website of his restaurant. During the interview with Mr. Wang members of our fieldwork team focused on Mr. Wang, while Mr. Wu was taking panning shots of the entire team and surrounding as well as Mr. Wang during the interview. While we were videotaping Sam, our videographer, was able to put his camera in the hands of the employees and also share his footage with them. The fieldwork team was interested in documenting Mr. Wu’s restaurant to present to visitors to the ChinaVine site and Mr. Wu seemed interested in portraying this interest in his place of business to visitors to his website. While we documented the kitchen and the adjacent room where food was prepared to be served, Mr. Wu videotaped our group moving through the space.
When the fieldwork team visited Jian Gou it took approximately one and half to two hours to get to the village by bus. About half this time was spent climbing the winding mountain road to the village. Accessibility has influenced the popularity of this region for tourists. Mr. Wu stated the paving of the road was instrumental in increasing the number of tourists visiting the village and increasing the need for farmhouse restaurants for them to eat at. This location’s proximity to Beijing allows it to be easily accessed for day or weekend trips. We noticed a much higher number of visitors on the weekend who were taking day trips to the area or riding their bikes up the mountain road for exercise when they have the whole day on the weekend. The amount of vehicle traffic on the road up the mountain to Jian Gou was noticeably higher on the Saturday the fieldwork team went to the village. There were also fifteen to twenty bicyclists on Saturday and only one or two on the Thursday the team visited the village. This increase in popularity has benefits for the residents of the village who seem to have been able to find employment for some of the younger residents of the village since their businesses are viable. Accessibility figures in to this popularity since tourists can easily reach this site by vehicle from Beijing and other surrounding areas. Accessibility can have benefits for an area since it allows for increased tourism. Can you think of areas for which accessibility has been problematic for an area in terms of increased tourism and numbers of visitors? Furthermore, Mr. Wu demonstrated to us that he has a certain amount of control over the food he is producing since he can introduce innovations to his cooking. However, can tourist’s expectations of receiving a certain unified type of experience or product be detrimental to cultural practices because this type of innovation is no longer possible? Think of a recent experience you had as a tourist and examine how you accessed the experience or site. If it had been more or less difficult to get there would this have changed your experience? Were your expectations met and if they were not how did this make you feel as a visitor?
Field Work Team
Rosalynn Rothstein – Coordinating Field Worker
Samuel R Gehrke – Videographer
Jo Guan – Interviewer and translator
Yuting Han – Interviewer and translator
The fieldwork field school met several artists living in Song Zhuang, an area outside of Beijing where contemporary artists have congregated. This area has been developing as a popular artist community over the past twenty five years. The local government now estimates the area attracts approximately 500,000 tourists a year who visit galleries and artist’s studios. Wei Ligang is a painter and calligrapher who lives and has his studio in Song Zhuang. The area where his studio is located is surrounded by other completed studios and finished houses. Other areas of Song Zhuang are being developed and artists live in studios and living quarters that are under construction. Many galleries and buildings are being built to accommodate Song Zhuang’s popularity and continued attraction to artists and visitors. The local government has ambitious plans to develop Song Zhuang further as an arts area. Representatives of the local government presented these plans to the fieldwork team. We met them in a building constructed to house the government in the last year. This new building incorporates a large sculpture of a life-sized carousel in a central courtyard and 2-D work in the hallways and conference rooms. Government representatives presented a highly produced video narrated in English spelling out the government’s plans for development of commercial arts areas and public transportation. The video suggests development of the area will help artists “pursue artistic ideals” and develop a “well known cultural brand.” However, the government also plans to preserve the buildings in the village where artists first congregated when the area was farmland and artist’s studios were located on farmer’s property. The government will add amenities such as improved water and gas services to existing structures. The representatives we met with also stated they would be setting aside land for individual artists to build on. Wei Ligang told us he was attracted to Song Zhuang and moved to Song Zhuang in 1995 from the 798 Art Zone located in Beijing. The 798 Art Zone houses a concentrated number of galleries and studios including Iberia Art Center, Beijing Tokyo Art Projects, Pace Beijing and numerous others. Wei Ligang states he moved to Song Zhuang in the earlier stages of its development because Song Zhuang was contributing more to Chinese art than the 798 Art Zone.
A tour of his studio before the fieldwork team interviewed Wei Ligang gave us insight into his personal artistic practice through the materials he surrounded himself with. Materials, finished works, works in progress, pieces from other artists and bookshelves of art books about other Chinese artists were in the studio. There were collected items and photographs from the artist’s travels, his assistant’s studio and a tea set with electric kettle in the living areas. The studio and living areas consisted of open modern architecture and the studio on the first floor was visible from the open balconies of the living area. Images of Wei Ligang’s finished pieces illustrate the influence of both Chinese calligraphy traditions and Western practices of abstraction on his work. Bai Qianshen writes about Wei Ligang’s work in an introduction to one of the artist’s monograph: “…adding cursive techniques to such already complicated structures made Wei’s work increasingly illegible. Yet, even as he departed from the standard form of written scripts and legibility, the concept of calligraphy as an art based on square characters was not diminished but enhanced and intensified.”1 The illegibility moves the forms of the characters used to impart meaning in written language towards abstract images. How might a viewer who is mostly familiar with Western traditions of abstraction interpret these pieces differently than a viewer mostly familiar with Chinese calligraphic traditions?
An introduction to another monograph of Wei Ligang’s by Robert Morgan a critic and artist illustrates the lifelong commitment an artist must have to in order to progress in the study of brush painting. First they must learn the stroke order. Then the amount of pressure applied to each stroke. Then the artist must learn the appropriate timing to illustrate rhythm and finally how to mix water and ink in the proper amounts.[2] The process of lifelong learning is connected to the historically practiced methods of learning calligraphy. In this same introduction Robert Morgan also compares Wei Ligang to Jackson Pollack. When comparing Wei Ligang to Pollack, Morgan comments, “Wei holds the capability to respond to the moment without forgetting or ignoring the lessons of history that empower his incredible dexterity and conceptual manner of intuition.”[3] Although Morgan notes that Pollack’s method of painting, which is highly physical, is different than Wei Ligang’s more reserved style, there are similarities in their artistic products context. Yet the process of creating and historical practice of calligraphy is not the only influence on the artist’s style.
In the excerpt from the videotaped recording with Wei Ligang we have included with this post he discusses his personal artistic style. The interview took place in the artist’s studio on a balcony with chairs, couches, a table and materials for making tea. During the interview Wei Ligang’s assistant and student Mr. He provided tea for all present. Pots in the tea set were decorated with gold markings similar to marks made in Wei Ligang’s work on paper. The work he discussed with us includes both purely abstract pieces and pieces with strokes that are more referential to written characters, although they might not all be legible. Wei Ligang tells us that he incorporates his background in mathematics with his study of contemporary calligraphy and calligraphy traditions to achieve a new style. A member of our fieldwork team Yuting Han, who is from Beijing and practices calligraphy says “I think the biggest reason why Mr. Wei’s product is so special is because he cannot get rid of the influence from his background in mathematics.” Mr. Wei notices that different types of backgrounds and upbringing will cause an artist to create a different product but the product which resonates most with the audience is successful. Wei Ligang’s position on the influence of Western culture as well as the differences between Western and Eastern culture develops his personal position further. This leads him to advise his calligraphy students to absorb the positive aspects of American culture. Wei Ligang, illustrates the importance of Western influence on his personal practice along with the historical context of calligraphy practice in Chinese culture. The materials and tools the artist uses demonstrate the confluence of these traditions. Wei Ligang discussed the importance of the use of ink in art and painting in China. Furthermore, with the development of China and the globalization of the art world Chinese artists merged ink painting with oil painting and this lead to a fresh style which Wei Ligang thinks can raise the artist’s position in a global art market. Wei Ligang’s materials include both inks used in calligraphy practice and acrylic paints and brushes used for calligraphy and Western styles of paintings. Click on the pictures below to enlarge it and examine the materials used by Wei Ligang. Pictured are materials that are unique to China, but others which are very familiar to artists in the US. What materials do you recognize and which materials do you not recognize from an art store or materials you have used yourself to create artworks? Given the influence of western art on Wei Ligang it is interesting to consider that influence in relationship to how it is expressed with Chines materials – for example brushes. Our interview with Wei Ligang also raises comparisons between the development going on in Song Zhuang with the problems of gentrification associated with artists moving into certain areas which are more affordable and the trajectory of artist’s moves from cities, like what is occurring in urban areas in the US. The ambitious plans to develop Song Zhuang into a globally recognized location for creative production also has parallels to certain types of development in the US but also differs because of the high level of involvement the local government has in facilitating this and preserving the certain parts of the area which existed before development began.
[1] Qianshen, Bai. Wei Ligang: Wei Zhou Armoury. pp. 3
[2] Morgan, Robert. Gold Collect: Works Collection of Wei Ligang pp. 3
[3] Morgan, Robert. Gold Collect: Works Collection of Wei Ligang pp. 3
Field Work Team
Rosalynn Rothstein – Coordinating Field Worker
Samuel R Gehrke – Videographer
Jo Guan – Interviewer and translator
Yuting Han – Interviewer and translator
Works Cited
Morgan, Robert. Introduction. Gold – Collect. Works Collection of Wei Ligang Print Catalog.
Qianshen, Bai. Introduction. Wei Ligang: Wei Zhou Armoury. Ed. Zhang Zikang. Chengdu: Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House, 2006.
We’ve finished the fieldwork/residency phase of the field school, and rather successfully at that! Now we move on to various locations: Shanghai, Tsingtao, other parts of Beijing, or all the way back to Oregon. We will reconvene at the beginning of August—from wherever we all are—in order to process fieldwork materials into ChinaVine content (initially available via Vine Online). Continue checking this site for updates from the teams and ongoing conversations about culture, heritage, fieldwork, and interpretation. Great job and happy travels, everyone!
During the past two weeks of our residency our group has discovered many new insights into the art and culture of China. Focusing on two villages, our group (Nan, Jeanette, and Megan) have focused on two cultural elements that we would like to share with Vine Online. The first is our exploration into red tourism in JianGou where we visited a former communist communication station that is now a museum. We also had the opportunity to talk with Mr. Zhao, who grew up in the village and gave us insight into the importance of this site for the communist party.
The radio used at the communication station
Our team at work
While visiting Song Zhaung, we profiled the artist Zhang Jianhua, a sculptor who works in the village. He is currently working on his fourth series “City Monument” when we interviewed him at his studio which creates a landscape of human and architectural features that comments on modernization, wealth, and belief systems. What is striking about his work is the level of research he puts into each of he sculpture series, an idea we hope to covey further in our Vine Online post.
Mr. Zhang's Unfinished 4th Series – City Monument (Ai Weiwei)
Preview of Mr. Zhang's 2nd Series – The Coal Miners
Check Vine Online soon for more information on these topics and more.
Our group from the field school, which includes Sam, Jo, Yuting and Rosalynn, will focus one of our upcoming posts on cultural tourism. We will examine cultural tourism through a restaurant in JianGao which severs traditional farmer’s food from the area to cultural tourists. Jiangao is a tourist site due to its religious significance, associations with red tourism and rose tea production. The increased popularity in these types of tourism is evident in the village, especially since the number of restaurants in the village serving food from the area to tourists has increased from three to twelve in the past ten years. We will specifically focus on an interview with the restaurant owner Mr. Wu. Our interview with Mr. Wu, the owner of the restaurant the field school visited and had lunch at, will offer some insights into the role cultural tourism is playing in this community and the relationship community members have to visiting tourists. We will also produce a video portrait of the artist Wei Ligang, a contemporary calligraphy artist. We interviewed the artist in his studio in Songzhuang. an artist’s community outside of Beijing. We will pull out excerpts from an lengthy interview with Mr. Wei where he develops his personal practice of calligraphy in the context of the contemporary art world, his relationship to Western artistic practices and his relationship to the fast developing Songzhuang area. Through this portrait of an individual artist’s practice we can examine the role of traditional Chinese art forms in the international contemporary art market. If you want to see some more of Mr. Wei’s work, start with this link to a gallery which represents him.
Finished work at Mr. Wei’s studio.
Materials in Mr. Wei’s studio including calligraphy inks and spray paint.
A group of tourists approaches Mr. Wu’s restaurant.
The new issue of CultureWork explores the evolution of the ChinaVine project and its online interface, ChinaVine.org. ChinaVine.org site is an interpretive online space allowing for contributors from around the world to present ideas, images, and interpretations of China’s cultural heritage. In this article, faculty and former graduate students at the University of Oregon, coordinators of the site’s development, introduce the visioning behind the process and the ways in which challenges have been met for transferring a diverse and vibrant culture to an online medium.
At this point, we are more than halfway through our Beijing-based, ChinaVine-driven field school, and everything is moving along according to—and in many ways, exceeding—our plans. As co-directors, we spent many hours planning and imagining the experience we’d like students to have in Beijing, the whole time realizing that, ultimately, much of the experience would be in their hands. And, luckily, they have taken that responsibility on and have worked with us to successfully conduct rewarding fieldwork and engage the tasks of documentation and interpretation with an enthusiasm that has made our jobs easy.
The results of their work will be visible on VineOnline (and our course site) toward the middle of August 2011. Each team of student field workers has been tasked with producing two posts for VineOnline—one for each site we’ve visited during our time in Beijing. The first site was Jiangou, a village to the north west of Beijing where we focused on cultural tourism (including “red” tourism efforts that explore the history of Communism), pilgrimage traditions, and rose cultivation. The second site was Songzhuang, to the east of Beijing. As an “artists’ village,” Songzhuang has grown in the past twenty-five years from a place where a handful of artistic pioneers sought affordable work space distanced from the urban renewal of Beijing to a home for over five thousand artists and the site of a “cultural and creative cluster” promoted heavily by regional government. In each site, the students have listened, interviewed, photographed, and otherwise documented the cultural practices and traditions we have encountered. They’ve also eaten, and the image at the top of this post represents a meal cooked for us by artist that ChinaVine has worked with for the past three years: Mr. Her Xue-Sheng. He graciously hosted us during our time in Songzhuang, preparing fresh noodles in the style of his home in the Ningxia region.
So, in the coming weeks be sure to check the VineOnline site in order to follow up on the work produced by the field school students. Their posts will be rich, multimedia explorations of the artists, places, and cultural practices that pull together documentation and interpretation in a manner that extends the mission of ChinaVine. In the meantime, be sure to poke around in this Flickr set highlighting some of the sights from our weeks in Beijing.
