Strangeness at the Beijing Art Gallery

I awoke on a beautiful Sunday morning around 10am. The sun was out, and there was a breeze in the air, which offset the recent heat wave just a bit. My roommate Jaeyhun, a Korean doing his MBA at Beijing University (the most popular of the dozens of uni's in Beijing), asked me if I'd like to join him in going to the art gallery. With nothing planned for the day I was thankful to be invited to something other than spending the day on the internet. So, packed my camera and left. The museum is only about half an hour from our apartment by bus, which by the way, costs me only 4mao (that's 0.4RMB, which is like 6 cents!).

That's Jaehyun in the red shirt.

Jaehyun was primarily interested in seeing the René Magritte exhibit, which was being advertised as the primary exhibit. So, I expected it to be on the first floor, but it wasn't. We had to work our way up to the fifth floor until we'd see Magritte. All the same, I'm glad, since in between there were some impressive paintings, as well as a host of modern art that just kept surprising me at every turn.

The first floor was entirely dedicated to a famous Chinese artist named Zhan Jianjun (詹建俊). He's been painting his entire life, and is now in his 70's. Much of his art depicts nature and minorities in exotic locations within China.

The first piece that caught my eye. Featuring Jaehyun in the foreground.

Close-up of the painting work from the above painting.

Some of the propaganda work he was commissioned to do by the Communist goveClosrnment. It translates into something like this: "We are the successors of the Communist deal".

Former Three Gorges Valley. Now flooded to provide back-pressure for the Three Gorges Dam, largest Dam in the world.

I loved the eyes of the woman in this painting. I'm assuming she's Uighur, a native of Xinjiang, the Northwestern-most province in China.

This piece is the only one in the area that had a reflective-glass cover, boo.

A well deserved close-up for this piece.

A summary of the Chinese artist's life

The next gallery was on the 3rd floor. This was where the modern art began. I found one of the artists to be particularly silly, and didn't take any pics of their art. Wish I had to show you what I meant. She painted cityscapes, with superimposed random household objects in different colour tones and perspective, and essentially just 'floating' around the image. Items included toilet paper rolls, little chairs, couches, lamps, people, naked people, toothbrushes... things like that. So weird. The next weird artist was very interesting though. He did a 3D image of an entire biblical-like scene, composed of dozens of the same man, naked, in the middle of different acts. Then, there were four large, backlit billboards on a plastic medium, showing the scene from four different angles. Add to that, there were sound effects, though mostly just of random men grumbling and yelling nonsensical things in what seemed like English.

This was the only picture of the weird superimposed items artist that had no superimposed items, and therfore, the only one I cared to photograph.

The next surprise was a paper-maché artist. This truly struck me as odd, but in a bit of time I could see the purpose. There were mostly large, tubular-like objects with a strange white and beige, gluey coating. These 'tubes' were arranged in different formations. All a bit strange, but pleasant to look at all the same. They had touch of HR Giger going on, since they looked spine-like. There were some other photographers there, serious photographers with serious equipment. One guy had a large-format camera!

The inside of the one of the "tubes".

Regular cameras use negatives that measure 35mm diagonally, whereas large-format use 128mm negatives. That's 8cmx10cm, just the negative. On top of that, large format cameras can utilize optical effects that are impossible to do with regular cameras. This is accomplished by changing the angle of the lens relative to the film. On top of the effects, the resolution of large-format is roughly 16times that of 35mm.

When we finally reached the Magritte exhibit, I took one photo before I was told that photos were prohibited. Even though I'm not using a flash!?! Total bullshit. Anyway, I managed to snap this one literally as the woman was talking to me. I snapped it in defiance, but then grudgingly put my camera away. To get a good idea of Magrittes work, just google-image it. He's was a french surrealist, with some pretty cool art.

I finished the day with a nice bowl of cherries and bay berries. That's right, bay berries, called yangmei (杨梅) in Chinese. I'd never seen them before I came to China. They're really good!

CCTV - The day I went to a Chinese TV Studio

On July 10th, I will be on TV in China. Unfortunately, that's where the glamour ends. I suspect I'll be shown for a total of no more than 20seconds, and truthfully, I have absolutely no idea what the show is about.

I found this job on an online classifieds listing, from a very popular site in Beijing (thatsbj.com). They also have personals, which can be fun to read (and most of the ads with cute girls are prostitution services). The job description was "Foreign actors needed. No experience necessary." Sounded good to me, since my experience in the film industry adds up to about 1 day of extra work 7 years ago. Also, I had a fair amount of free time and was looking for something random and new.

So, I emailed them with some photos, and heard back a couple of days later:
"You have been selected for the documentary.(British soldier)"

British soldier. Okay. I don't have a British accent (thank god!), but I suppose I can look British-y enough. I called them to make sure I needn't have to speak, and was relieved to find I didn't. So, it was a go. The pay wasn't much, but I really wasn't doing it for the pay.

I was instructed to wait at 军事博物馆 (military museum station) at 1:20pm on the first Monday of May holiday (a popular 7day holiday here). There, I was to rendez-vous with the one other "foreign actor", and be picked up by a vehicle with plate number TC1067. I was there on time, but neither the van nor the other actor were. The place was filled with people enjoying the first real day of the May holiday. Finally around 1:40 I noticed another white guy (not many in this area) wandering around, and figured it had to be the other actor. His name is Johnny, from Manchester I believe. He had been told he was playing the British officer. We looked around for a while, but still didn't see any vehicle with that plate number. Soon after, a random Chinese guy approached us and asked if we were the actors, in heavily accented Beijinghua. I'm glad I understood him, otherwise I'd have thought he was trying to rip us off in some way. Johnny was also glad I understood him, since his Chinese is still in the very beginning stages.

The studio was about an hour's ride straight south, into farmland. The degradation of Beijing pronounced as you leave the city. It's divided into 6 rings by massive ring highways around the center of the city, and the further out you go, the poorer and dirtier it gets. Then, it sharply cuts off into farmland, at least in the direction we were headed in the SW. Other directions, such as the SE, sharply cut off into very dirty industrial development.

This is what it looks like 45min SW of Beijing.

Johnny and I had a fair chance to get to know each other on the ride, and got along quite well. We figured that the English-speaking cast agent would be there to greet us and help us along in the process. After our arrival, it took no more than five minutes to learn that none of the directors there spoke any English beyond Hello. How they expected to direct us... I have no clue. Had I not been there, Johnny would REALLY have been screwed. Things aren't always thought out in great detail here.

We were first escorted to the change rooms, where some cute girls gave Johnny a mustache and selected our outfits. This was probably the funnest part of the day, seeing the outfits they had designated for us. We had no idea what the show was about, but could only guess by the outfits that we were supposed to be in the 19th century. The girls were friendly enough, and after struggling with Chinese for a while, it turned out one actually spoke beginner English. After that discovery however things quickly reverted back to Chinese, as she was too shy to speak the little she knew.

Johnny before and after. The mustache looked pretty real.

My cool "British soldier" outfit

Me being suited up.

The cute outfit girl. You're not Chinese unless you give the peace sign in every photo.

We were then brought into the studio. I'm not sure why we were brought so early. We had arrived at around 4pm, and it was now about 5. However, filming wasn't to begin until around 8! We sat in our positions for almost an hour while they fiddled with the lighting, and it still wasn't done when we were called out to eat. Dinner was pretty drab: two take-out boxes, one with rice (way too much) and one with a very plain, runny, Chinese cabbage dish (farmer food essentially). No glamour at all. [sidenote: when I did extra 7yrs ago, I accidentally ate the 'actors' food for lunch, roast beef and savoury carrots vs. pizza. I got in trouble and they threatened they weren't going to pay me, but I plead ignorant and no harm came from it].

This video was taken while eating dinner outside of the studio. We were very bored, and being stared at by all the studio workers.

Me and the rhino getting to know eachother.

Myself, the main Chinese dude, and ... I don't know WHO that other guy is.

After "eating" we were called back into the studio, where they fiddled with the lighting for another hour or so. Johnny and I were wondering what the hell they were doing, and didn't understand why it was so dim. Also, during this time, we were told what we would have to do. Johnny was to be explaining something to the main Chinese guy at the front table, gesticulating and laughing jovially, while occasionally looking at me for approval with some deceit in his eyes (yes, we managed to understand all of this). I was to look ahead sternly, and only blink my eyes and subtly nod my head in approval whenever Johnny looked at me. Meanwhile, the main Chinese dude was supposed to look very disappointed, sighing and dropping his head as Johnny continued to explain whatever it was he would be dubbed over saying.

The set.

Another shot of the set.

Waiting for them to setup the lighting.

I think the best part of the whole experience was that Johnny had to actually speak to the main Chinese guy, in English. They insisted he actually uttered words instead of just feigning to speak. He didn't know what to say, and the whole process of him talking random gibberish was really funny. So funny that I found keeping a stern face rather difficult. Nobody else in the entire room understood what he was saying, only him and I, and we were being filmed! Too strange! And I kept imagining what they'd make him sound like in the dubbed over voice, and what he was supposed to be saying. Basically, we were being made out to be the conniving, deceitful WHITE man, screwing the Chinese out of as much as we can. Maybe this had something to do with the Opium wars, I don't know. We never did figure that out. The only information we managed to gather was the the show aired on CCTV10, on July 10th. I don't even know what time.

The main Chinese guy, named DaiMing.

The other Chinese guys, whom I'm not even sure were filmed.

The filming ended around 11. The driver didn't want to drive back to Beijing, so they put us up in a hotel not too far away. It was pretty comfy actually. The only non-comfy part was waking up at 6 to be driven into Beijing. In traffic. And I had to work at 9. Boooo.

I will try earnestly to acquire video footage of the show, but I make no guarantees, since I have no idea what time it will air at or what it's called.