“You Are Welcome To Travel By Our Plane”

On May 7 I boarded a Sichuan Airlines flight headed for Chengdu and Chongqing. The trip was my second outside of Beijing to visit artists, art schools, museums and galleries in regions not usually visited by westerners or, for that matter, the Chinese art world. I landed in Chengdu and was met by Xiao Hu, my guide and translator. I had studied Chinese for several years before coming to China and can somewhat make my way alone, but it really helps to have a guide. Life is so much more enjoyable and productive and you can avoid ordering ‘dog’ on the menu when you have a native speaking guide traveling with you. After a day in Chengdu Xiao Hu and I boarded a bus and took a five hour ride through green hills and rice paddies to Chongqing where I was to meet the artists of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. Chongqing is in a beautiful mountainous region and is more lush and tropical than Beijing. I felt that I was in another world there, one with a closer connection to an ancient eastern culture. The Sichuan Fine Arts Institute is one of the five most prominent art academies in China and the only one in southwest China. Over its 65 year history it has produced a number of now internationally acclaimed artists such as Zhang Xioagang, Feng Zhengjie, Luo Zhongli, Zhou Chunya, Ye Yongqing, and He Duoling. I spent the first two days meeting the art faculty and art students, and visiting artist’s studios. Generally the studios in Chongqing are huge, beautiful, and really cheap to rent. These spaces would be impossible to find or afford in NY or even in LA. One of the most interesting studio visits I made was with Feng Bin, artist, professor, and the director of the Chongqing Art Museum, which is located on the campus of the Fine Arts Institute. He told me an incredible story about Armand Hammer and the influence Hammer had on young Chinese artists in the 1980’s . . .

HAMMER IN BEIJING 1982

In the spring of 1982 a groundbreaking exhibition opened in Beijing at the National Art Museum: the Armand Hammer collection of paintings. This was the first time that western art was exhibited in China. Before this exhibition artists and students were only able to see reproductions of western work in magazines and catalogues. Feng Bin, who was at that time a student at the Sichuan Fine Art Institute in Chongqing, was dying to see the paintings. At that time the Institute did not allow students to travel to Beijing to see the show. The Institute deemed the exhibition irrelevant to their studies unless the students were enrolled in the Oil Painting department. Feng Bin was a student in the traditional Chinese Painting department and was forbidden to attend. He was, however, determined to see the paintings he had heard about all his life but had only seen in poor reproductions. He and another art student friend decided to go anyway. They had very little money to get there and couldn’t even afford train tickets. But by altering their identity cards to read that they were from Beijing they were entitled by the government to buy half price train tickets to travel ‘back home.’ They told no one and left at night to begin their journey across China to see Hammer’s paintings.. It was a long trip from Chongqing to Bejing. They spent three days and two nights sitting on a hard train seat before arriving, for the first time, in Beijing. They found an underground hotel for 5 yuan a night. Today that would be about 75 cents. The room had 6 to 8 beds in it, but no bath, no sink, no toilet-nothing but the beds. This was their home for the next 5 days, but it didn’t matter to them. No hardship mattered to these artists, they were in the capital city and were going to see the Hammer collection of 19th c. western paintings. It was a dream come true. Feng Bin and his friend wanted to buy the exhibition catalogue but could not afford the high price. They spent the next few days repeatedly going to the Hammer exhibition as well as touring the city and going to the other museums of Beijing before they had to make the long and arduous journey back to their home in Chongqing.

Their escapade might have gone unnoticed, but when they returned to the school there happened to be a group from Chongqing’s only TV station filming a news article on the Institute. Feng Bin was so elated and excited by his adventure and the paintings he’d just seen that he could not stop himself from telling the TV crew everything they did. The show was broadcast with his full story and, of course, was viewed by the head of his department at school. The next day he and his friend were called into the director’s office, were given a bad report on their school records and told that they would be expelled if anything like that ever happened again.

A young Chinese student I met in Chengdu during this trip told me that he could not believe that I was able to see a Van Gogh painting everyday at work at the Hammer Museum. He told me that we did not know how fortunate we were to be able to see paintings like Van Gogh’s anytime we wanted. It is his dream to someday see a Van Gogh or one of the many great masterpieces of art in western museums. I think that we have had so much for so long that we have lost our ability to appreciate the privileges we have been so blessed with, such as having “Hospital at Saint-Remy” in our own backyard and not being ‘expelled’ for viewing it.

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Chengdu 8.0

James Elaine was in Chengdu, China, during the May 12th earthquake. He recounts the events of that day below. Also posted below is an excerpt of the Beijinger Podcast’s recent interview with Jamie about his earthquake experience.

I came to Chengdu to meet with the artist Chen Qiulin and to be introduced to many of the artists there. Chengdu and Chongqing are both home to many important and well known contemporary Chinese artists, but they are a long way from the art capitols of Beijing and Shanghai. After a day of sightseeing with my friend and translator Deng Tai (“Tai Tai”) we met with Liu Jie, director of the 1000 Plateaus gallery and Yu Ji, performance artist, for dinner on Sunday night. They took us to the most wonderful and beautiful Sichuan Hot Pot restaurant I have ever experienced. It turned out to be a very important meal. While ordering ten dishes, Qiulin asked me if I liked duck tongues. I stopped, thought for a second, and then elatedly turned to Tai Tai to tell him about my new Hammer blog and to translate to them my utter excitement about eating duck tongues for the first time. Although I’d eaten duck and a duck’s head, I had never eaten duck tongue. I told them how important it was for me to eat duck tongue since I’d named my blog after it. After dinner we retired to a beautiful tea garden where we met a few other artists and drank tea and beer late into the night.

The next morning I was picked up by Liu Jie. We went to 1000 Plateaus, a beautiful space and, in my mind, the only gallery in Chengdu with an important international contemporary exhibition program. Tai Tai joined us to translate and we began looking at Liu Jie’s inaugural exhibition catalogue. After about half an hour or more of drinking coffee and discussing what I was doing in China and Liu Jie’s vision for the gallery I felt a bit of rumbling on the floor. I thought at first someone was stomping up the stairs and shaking the floors. But the shaking persisted. I looked around to see if they felt any alarm. If we had been in NY it could have been the subway. But we were in Chengdu and the subway was not yet finished being built. All of a sudden the shaking became violent, the walls and floors were swaying and jumping, the gallery staff raced into our office screaming at us to get up and run. We grabbed whatever was next to us and ran to the stairs. The shaking got worse as we stumbled, almost falling, down the stairs and headed to the front door. Outside was total chaos, people were running, screaming, yelling. The quaking continued. The 1000 Plateaus building (maybe 10 stories high?) separated slightly from the building next to it, chunks of granite surfacing split and fell to the ground shattering as it hit near us. After a few minutes the rumblings subsided, people were frozen in fear, and then aftershocks followed, sending the masses into more panic. We began running for the middle of the nearest intersection, power lines swaying above our heads as we ran. People were ashen faced and in shock as they stared up at their buildings and searched for their families and friends. The buildings are quite old here and not earthquake proof. As far as I know there has never been an earthquake in Chengdu. And this one was centered just 60 km from the city, registering at 8.0 on the Richter scale, and was felt clear across China. As of my writing over 70 to 80,000 people have died and countless injured, the numbers increasing daily.

After a few hours of just waiting in the streets and feeling the tremors we all decided to try to make our way to our respective homes. A gallery employee drove me to my hotel. I should have walked as it took an hour or so to go a just few long blocks. When we arrived the hotel had closed and evacuated all of the guests who now were all sitting outside in front on the grass. This was not an isolated case: all hotels, businesses, shops, apartment buildings were emptied and tenants not allowed back in. Of course no one knew what was going on or what would follow or how long this would all last. There were people everywhere, on the sidewalks, in the streets, in parks and parking lots.the hospitals even had to move all the patients outside. Tai Tai did not abandon me, but stayed by my side the entire time to help me figure out what we could do next. The next day was like a strange dream. The weather was much cooler and it began to rain. Aftershocks sporadically continued. I was supposed to have traveled to Xi’An for meetings at Ma Qingyun’s new artist city XCOMA, but the airport was closed, everything was in limbo, breathless even, no one knew what was going on, only the horror on TV of 1000’s of people killed and hurt in the Wenchuan earthquake. We were so fortunate to be alive and well, so many people lost their homes, livelihood, family members, lives, everything. But in the heart of a disaster you can always find a love story. Everywhere I looked I saw people — complete strangers — helping each other, caring for the lost, living and sleeping together in makeshift tents all over the city. I can’t tell you how much I love this city now and this country. I feel that I have become one of them. I did not want to leave Chengdu for the relative safety of Xi’an, although Xi’an also suffered from the quake, I wanted to stay with my friends to support them in this time of uncertainty.

Jamie and Liu Jie outside of 1000 Plateaus just before the earthquake.