Chinese Art For My Love

This afternoon we went to see 798 Art Zone, or Dashanzi Art District, is a part of Dashanzi in the Chaoyang District of Beijing that houses a thriving art community, among 50-year old decommissioned military factory buildings of unique architectural style.  It is often compared with New York's Greenwich Village or SoHo.  Beijing 798 Art Zone gathers of number of celebrities of art and culture, art institutions and enterprises in fashion.  Many important international art exhibitions, art activities, and fashion shows are often held there, which attract many.

One thing I love to do is to see art with my love, Bill.  I thought of him the entire way through wishing he could be here to see it with me.  This post is for him.  Take a look at these Chinese creations.  I hope you enjoy what you see.

This man makes everything out of all sizes of gauged wire. 

This guy was about 9 feet tall. 

This was one of my favorites.  It was huge.

I was thinking this might upset Jenny, but not as much as the packaged chicken foot snack I saw yesterday.  Pictures will follow on another post regarding food here people.

Lots of art featured subjects and commentary about former Chairman Mao and communism.

There were many Chinese paper artists here.

This optical illusion had red lines that shot straight out at you and moved around every time you did.  Plastics.

I can't remember the name of the stone right off the top of my head, but large green chunks of it decorated the inside as you can see.

We saw many works of art that had small designs all over it.  The designs that cover this image of Buddha were small pictures of vacuums, irons, blenders, and other appliances of modern convenience. 

This is a new friend of mine, Lindsey.  She is an art teacher from Birmingham, Alabama.  She is my new friend for life.  All of the teachers we are traveling with have.  They are a cool crew.

Not sure what this is made of.  It reminded me of Legos and a special little man that I will be seeing when I get back. 

 Cactus art was awesome and a favorite of mine.

 Beautifully hand crafted and designed Chinese umbrellas.  You could purchase ones for as little as 180 Yuan - or 30 dollars.

 A lot of statues around the area displayed the same type of characteristics and reminded me of Soviet style monuments and statue art in Kazakhstan.

 Scooters are everywhere in China.  This one had stickers all over it.

 

 Buddhist art is prevalent here.

 Contemporary furniture was on display.  This couch goes for about 12,000 US dollars.  It can be moved in sections we were told.

Loved this collection of old toys.

Graffiti art covered a lot of walls here and was really vibrantly colored.

 This man was painting on the inside of the glass.  It was incredible to watch him.  He was using a very tiny paintbrush with bristles that were bent in an L shape, so when he put the brush inside the bottle the tip of the brush would make contact with bottle face. 

Some of his creations are above.

 The color literally glowed.  All exhibits are in old factory buildings, and there was a good balance of created & natural light that enhanced colors. 

 Love the name of this exhibition.

 Well Nicole Thomas, here you go.  Pug art.

 Scenes around.

Old art.  Not sure what was being done with it.  These were huge.

It is 5 am Beijing time.  The sleeping has been going well, but I wake up at about 4:00 am everyday.  I am feeling good though and hope it lasts.  We are going to see The Great Wall today. 

The Air Is Quite Hazy in Beijing

Hello from Beijing everyone!  We made it after what felt like a pretty quick flight.  Even though it was 13 hours of flying, it went fast until the last hour which dragged on like it would never end.
As we were landing, the air smelled differently.  You can tell you are about to land in one of the most polluted places in regards to air.  And they weren't kidding.  A haze could be seen over everything.
 

When we landed it was 91 degrees.  Very humid and sticky.

 Our Chinese hosts were at the airport to greet us.  Zhai Guanjun is the man on the right.  He is a middle school teacher of 35 years here in Beijing.  He works for a middle school that the teachers actually own and run.  They have 3,000 students grades 7,8 & 9.  It is a boarding school where kids go to school Monday thru Friday and go home on weekends.

Our other escort is Fan Zhonglin, she was also trained as a teacher.  She has taught English and has traveled quite a bit.  She went back to school to work on a Masters and is now back in Beijing.  She is in charge of everything that was scheduled for us here.

 Traffic here is just like anywhere else at 4:30 in the afternoon.  We immediately headed for our hotel to drop off some things.  Traffic rules seem to be optional.

Bikes, rickshaws, scooters, and pedestrians all share the road.  Oh, and the highway.  And places with green grass along the highway had people who were hanging out on it.  I do not believe a picnic is allowed on the greens of Rt. 295 in Maine, but due to lack of space for recreation here, I guess this is where families go.  They seemed quite unfazed by the traffic going by.

 Upon first look through really jet-lagged eyes, Beijing seems to be very modern in some respects and very traditional in others.  I will be exploring further in the next week.

 This is the view outside of my hotel room.

 I looked over and saw this cute kid staring at me.  Above the child is a fan that blows directly down.  One form of air conditioning.  Many cars however are very modern, and all have air conditioning.

 And just when I thought the last time I would see bean paste would be in Japan, I was surprised with it tonight at dinner.  Ahhhh yes, the bean paste is back.  And it tastes the same.  I wonder if I will bite into something everyday for the next month that has it.  Probably.

I thought this was mango.  I was wrong.  Bean paste.  Yep, here we go again. . . .

Tomorrow we go to see Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City in the morning and the Dashanzi Art District (798 District) in the afternoon.  For now, I am going to crash as I have been up for 27 hours straight.  Goodnight.  It is 8:30 pm.

Happy Fourth of July friends!

Airplanes, Tarmac Havoc, and Creepy Bunnies

I took off the other day for San Francisco for our two day orientation for the Fulbright-Hays Program.

Flying out of Portland Maine, I was delighted to see one of my former students. Come to find out we had the same first leg flight to Chicago's O'Hare airport.  She was on her way to North Dakota to see her sister.  I had a great time hearing her tell me about Ramadan while we waited.  

I had forgotten how much I hated Chicago's O'Hare airport. Until this day. 

We sat on the tarmac for over an hour. I nearly missed a flight that would take me the rest of the way to San Francisco.

I got to San Francisco around noon. Which is actually 3 PM my time. We met the other 15 teachers and a professor who will be accompanying us to China.

We were shuttled to our orientation spot at the Vallombrosa Retreat Center with the representatives from the National Committee on US China relations.

Our time is spent in this old mansion on the grounds listening to presentations about Chinese history and culture.

Topics of lectures.

We have Mandarin lessons everyday.  The language has five main tones, and if you are off even a bit - it could mean 5 million other things.  This ought to be interesting.

This cracked me up.  I have been on  a lot of tours with teachers.  If everyone stuck to these, we would have no problems.

Aside from the incredible lectures, and amounts of info we have received, I have had the chance to hang with cool teachers from across the US. They will appear throughout this travel blog over the next weeks. We sit, chat, crack up, exchange ideas and help each other.

There is only one thing I do not care for much here. There are satanic bunnies all over this place. They are a menace. They follow me and try to get into some of the rooms. One tried to lurch at me and eat my eyeballs. True story. Who knew California could be so dangerous. 

#jugulareater

#scoundrel

#goawayjerkrabbit