Prophecy
Mou Sen predicted that people born in the 1960s would become the masters of the first decade of China’s new century. His predictions are not outrageous. The Alibaba empire created by Ma Yun, who retired at 54 years old, has dominated the Chinese peoples’ spending habits—which may be beyond the scope of Mou’s imagination. Indeed, in the first decade of the new century, we read books written in the 1960s, watched movies made in the 1960s, and even saw the youth of the 1960s in the movies, hearing their declarations and prophecies.
When I was in college, more than a decade ago, I watched “Bumming in Beijing”. We laughed at Zhang Xiaping and said that “selling cunt rather than art.” At that time, the galleries in 798 had been opened one after another. The first rich artists ran to Xiaping’s hometown of Yunnan to purchase real estate; the old generation of ‘young people’ saw getting married to foreigners as a means to escape. They had a strange reality of the West. Whether it was the hutong bungalows that have disappeared, the red and white striped bus or the rough home-video camera quality, the film feels like a distant memory of Beijing, and our current life, our future imagination has a strange texture; those characters and their ideals are also full of drama because of their ‘backwardness’, almost like the roles in a Mou’s play, and they are exaggerated.
The next storyline is logical—a new generation devotes itself to the practice of the future, experiencing its history from prophecy to new history. The buildings in Beijing change, are more densely populated, and the edge of the city is farther and farther away from the center. The development and expansion of the city is like a race. The people who bought houses in the fourth ring, before the house prices surged, are deemed winners of life. And, at this speed, the 1988 images, which were not very clear, are but a memory. The impact of this reality constantly refreshes or paralyzes the senses and the ability to predict what will come is more and more like the privilege of the ‘mainstream.’ It is said that in 2035, China will realize ‘socialization modernization’, and economists further infer this, which means China will “steadily enter the ranks of developed countries”. If these claims are too abstract, by 2035, my college classmates working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should have become ambassadors to a certain country in Africa. My former roommate who works at the National Development Bank should also purchase a second house in a desirable school district in Beijing. For the future, I am more and more unable to find the basis for prophecy.
When I saw the faces and living conditions of the people in the film again in 2018, it was like I was watching a group of mirrors—not only because I once thought that the absurd, ridiculous manners and words had produced echoes in myself after many years, but also because of the feelings at the moment. Beijing seems to exist in a reversed way to ‘that’ Beijing.
Blind Stream
Gao Bo likes to use the word “blind stream” to define the identity of himself and his friends—there is no Beijing hukou, no fixed occupation, fixed income, and no place to live. Why choose such a life? Zhang Ci described his days when he was an editor of “Ge Jiu Literature”. “Every day is like going through the desert.” Repetition and closure also give the impression of the end of collectivism. The loosening of the air begins with the political center of the country, so those who are ‘sensitive’ and ‘brave’ leave their homes to find water.
Unlike the young people who dared to break away from graduation assignments and seek independence and free expression in the late 1980s, when I graduated from college, Gao Bo’s ‘freelance’ had become fashionable, effortless. The atmosphere of 2008 was not reminiscent of “Bumming in Beijing” — that year, from the beginning to the end, the motto was “Beijing Welcomes You.” The words ‘fresh’, ‘mixed’, ‘excited’ and ‘daring’ are full of optimism and were used to describe the state. The closeness to the city also stems from a romantic and naive illusion: Beijing is already an international new city, and openness and flow are sufficient to support the floating of various forms. The “blind stream” life itself was once comfortable: living in the old residential buildings built in the 90s on the edge of the Fourth Ring, the new neighborhood next to the high-rise buildings full of foreign tenants, cafes and premium swimming pools. Twenty years ago, Zhang Ci used Peking University as a canteen and a bathhouse. For us at that time, the “Park Avenue” next door became our office and living room. From Haidian to Chaoyang, the change of that time seems to have brought us to the other side of the spectrum of the hierarchy. Then one day, someone heard a knock on the door in the dream. The census staff, in one big stroke, swept everyone back to the “foreign migrant workers” column. The words “original” and “hukou” began to feel the weight slowly: the problem of the house, the problem of social security, the problem of medical treatment, the problem of children entering school, and the problem of parental care. Resource allocation is getting tighter and the sense of security is getting thinner. Everyone around is talking about more and more outrageous rent, more and more maddening landlords and more and more close to the temporary spot of the Sixth Ring.
Zhang Xiaping in 1988 said that she was most afraid of having everything. Nothing means freedom and resistance. By 2018, nothing can mean that action is limited, expression is blocked, meaning: “you feel hate but can’t live without it” or, you have to leave – Gao Bo uses the word “blind stream” with a strong self-deprecating meaning. The term blind stream can be traced back to the 1953 “Instructions to Perceive Farmers to Blindly Flow into Cities” and the “Instructions on Continually Advising Farmers to Blindly Flow into Cities” in the following year. But this ‘blind’ trend has never been persuaded. However, it just changed the way of title and disengagement. On a winter night before the arrival of 2018, they were called the “low-end population” and were removed.
Selling Paintings
Zhang Dali feels that selling paintings is shameless, but it is difficult to make a living this way. His attitude towards this matter is closer to the development of the later story – after some time the painting can be used to maintain a livelihood, and then may become a source of wealth. Some people say that the 30-year history of Chinese contemporary art is an ugly history of selling art. I laugh at this, and I feel that it is not unreasonable to be partial. Commercialization is a topic that has not been circumvented in the past 30 years. Although the term ‘ugly’ can be used to sum it up, it is far more than the “Chinese Contemporary Art” field. Mou’s Grotowski was overwhelmed by urban white-collar dramas. The film circle began to invest hundreds of millions of dollars until hundreds of millions of dollars couldn’t even consider itself ‘underground’ movies. The word underground has almost completely failed. The most ‘underground’ Yuanmingyuan and Dongcun artists were on the cover of fashion magazines. Art has become a “genuine way of life”, it is different from Grotowski’s “pure” declaration, also against Mou’s appropriation in the simple theater of Beijing in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Art seems to have left a system and entered another system. The influence of the ‘institution’ has not been abandoned. It is just a way of being present. The marginal industry, where the capital flow cannot compete with technology or manufacturing, is inevitably embedded in the overall economic environment. But, our expectations of art are different after all. Art is not really a shelter and refuge, but it should not be drifting.
When people talk about the 1980s, they often use idealism to sum it up, saying that it belongs to the age of poetry. It is passionate, sincere, full of vigor, and there is a kind of remembrance of the past. In the 1990s, which was followed by such things as “going to the sea”, the stock market and material desires, the tone of the cultural world began to become full of ridicule and cynicism. I have not experienced the turning point of that era. When I started working in this industry, markets, capital, neoliberalism, etc. were a common topic. And, commercialization does not seem to annihilate idealism, it just creates a new situation for it. Interestingly, in the field of contemporary art, the new ‘idealism’ seems to return to social issues and participate in layers of obstacles, looking forward to using the imagination of art to transform society, and in the process to generate new language. This can almost respond to the artistic ideals that occurred in this country more than half a century ago.
Going abroad
Zhang Ci went abroad and married an older man—rich, an American ‘uncle’. Everyone reacted differently, and Gao Bo was at a loss for words. Mou Sen felt that no matter what method, the goal was good. Zhang Xiaping, also a woman, felt ‘uncomfortable’. Beijing was still not far away and not charming enough. Zhang Ci said that the United States was the center of world culture, but she was going to Hawaii. In the second decade of the new century, the “Second Generation of Artists” also went abroad—the fathers of the artists born in the 1960s finally had the ability and courage to send their daughters to the UK to undertake courses in classical studies. The tradition of going abroad through marriage was not broken, though. This time the older American man, the ‘uncle’, is replaced by an ambitious young boy. You will soon see his exhibition in North America and his critique (or complaint) about the Chinese government from outside the wall. The meaning and form of the “outbound tide” has changed.
Zhang Ci’s perception of the United States was that she could have a stable home, a stable career, and some money in the bank so she could concentrate on writing. I don’t know much about her writing career after she went to the States, but her story reminds me of the 1994 TV series “People in New York”, which was popular all over China. Jiang Wen plays a guy wearing artist-like pigtails. He had played cello in the National Orchestra in China, and later made money running a sweater factory—that was my first impression of going abroad and immigration in the early 1990s—I only saw them go and never come back. The contrast between imagination and reality in the TV series also seems to reflect the long psychological shadow of a poor and bullied country in history textbooks of primary schools from the beginning of the last century. By 2013, “Beijing Meets Seattle” tells the story of a rich man sending his “little three” out of the country to give birth to their children—American identity is the insurance that the first to become rich will buy for the future. More people cannot afford such insurance or do not feel the need for it at all, and the news is very good. People have a kind of strange and ulterior motive which has mixed feelings of exaltation and increased sensitivity and doubts. The “Chinese Dream” has replaced the “American Dream.” What is the “Chinese Dream”?
One of my artist friends boldly predicted that the biggest cultural product that China will export in the future will be the drama of “Three Births, Three Decades, and Mahogany”. The historical background of such ornamental plays is empty, pushed to the void, and there is no need for any cross-reference with real life. In this immersive closed world, movement is no longer geographical, but more of a radical free movement on the time axis, straddling tens of thousands of years. But, even in such a frenzied setting, the logic still exists, and there is no challenge at all. This kind of experience of time only applies to noble gods, and flesh is still short-lived.
Crazy
Zhang Xaping was sent to the Anding Hospital. The hospital used to be a joke, going there meant you were mad and sick. However, in recent years, more and more people have begun to enter and exit such hospitals for mild or severe depression. My young colleague concluded that depression is a “condition of the times.” Everything around us is so depressing. Everyday news suffocates us, people are being hurt; they are mad, they die and information and ideas are deleted and covered up so quickly, tragedy cannot be properly mourned, scars accumulate one layer after another, and eventually lead to chronic illness that cannot be cured.
In 1990, Zhang Xaping wept in front of the lens. Soon she “got through,” and again she “went mad.” In a series of splicing shots, without even a change of scene and or clothes, as if a deliberate stage effect – ‘crazy’ is like a fictional result, responding to a plot that does not appear. Gao Bo sang Cui Jian’s song under the light of the newly changed light bulb once again identified that it was indeed 1990. It is 1990, ‘after the revolution.’ I have never learned to talk about it normally.
My memory of 1990 is the Beijing Asian Games. Schools let families go home to watch the broadcast on TV like it was a holiday – the same treatment as major festivals. In 2008, before the countdown to the city finally came to zero, the memories of March in Tibet and Sichuan in May were filled with ups and downs, disturbing contradictions and doubts that had been put on hold. Over the next decade, two clues emerged, both in China—the chimes often sounded at the same time, like the mobile news I subscribed to—about Liu Xiaobo’s death and Xi’s new constitution, while the media said sixty billion dollars of aid funds, click to watch the new annihilator take off. This “China” is depressed and exhilarating. It is “empty within two days” and is also a “millennial plan.” Some people choose to believe that this is a disease of the times, and some people cannot choose a belief. Seeing these peoples’ trivial, facial expressions and tone of speech after twenty years, I am particularly curious about how one person spends his day in such an era of being too big to control and too close to having nowhere to hide.
“Only the time to swim is time, and the rest of the time is torture,” my friend who lives in Beijing said. She went to the pool twice a day—I guess this action is both her escape and her self-help. The time to float is the time to wait.
(The original text was published in Giloo’s documentary, commenting on Wu Wenguang’s “ Bumming in Beijing “)
* This essay is supported by The Visual Art Critic Project, sponsored by National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan, Winsing Arts Foundation and Mrs. Su Mei-Chi.
