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Letter From Beijing
Yesterday, as I took the train to work, there was a peasant on the floor crouched
in the traditional Chinese stance, looking at a magazine about diamonds. It
was bizarre scene to watch, as most likely he could not read, and more puzzling,
browsing on such a commodity light years beyond his means, and I wonder what
he was thinking…
Beijing after the 2008 Games, has definitely changed, with more extreme signs
of extravagant wealth from the elite living side by side with the absolute
destitution of the common people, lao baixin, wondering in the streets with
hordes of migrant workers now camping under bridges in sheer misery.
Early this week a friend of mine spoke to me that she was also in financial
distress and I asked her why since she was a doctor. She basically told me
that she was fired from work after her local Leader contracted cancer in his
kidney, and in order to find an organ, they asked the justice department to
seek through the inmates list a suitable donor. Not surprisingly one twenty
four years old man was soon after found guilty in a Provincial court, sentenced
to death, and executed. All in one week with his organ conveniently donated
to the Leader. Apparently this organ market is highly lucrative and prosperous
in China now controlled by private hospitals and corrupt officials. Presently
China executes approximately 10 000 individuals a year. She mentioned that
she just could not bear witness to this on going criminal practice and as she
tried to complaint she was summary fired. Anyone who knows China understands
that it is easier to prove that pigs can fly then to find any evidence to this
effect on this secret markets and corrupt practices in the new market economy.
The black markets, being for human and organ traffic, unlawful use of land,
and even to produce energy are right in the centre of the so called economic
boom.Today’s NYT article on these numerous “official crimes” highlights
this endemic corrupt nation state; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/world/asia/11coal.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=global-home.
Conveniently no western government has ever raised questions, on the legitimacy
of a Government that has consistently looted, oppressed and slaved its own
population with absolute impunity. It is probably all acceptable, in the eyes
of the West, as long as the Regime keeps buying the US debt and keeping Wall
Street happy. Eighty per cent of Chinese energy comes from coal, a monumental
environmental catastrophe and a colossal human cost, so factories in Guandong
( mostly owned by the West ) can carry on producing cheap commodities with
cheap energy and more importantly using the only true made in China product
; cheap slave labour.
Its endless the now distressing signs of two conflicting China’s living
in absolute extremes, feeding on each other as the great Lu Xun once wrote;
China a nation where man eats man.
Yes, the glitz it’s now all over the main centres in urban China, Piaget,
Gucci, Rolls Royce, the smiling faces saying in broken English like robots
Hello, and the sadness behind the plight of the helpless people like my co
passenger, known as Da Gong, with his ragged plastic suit case, wondering in
the streets of lavish Beijing. The unspoken, undisclosed sacrifices and tragedies
behind the New Social Political Wall erected with cement, glass and steel,
forged by the misery of millions that hallmarks modern China.
This dire dichotomy may be enlightened by an old Chinese proverb from a Buddhist
Monk named Hongyi Fashi, with his last words : Bei Xing Jiao Jia. Sadness mingled
with Happiness.
Perhaps this is the real Chinese supreme enlightenment to this world.
Beijing 11.04.09
Silent Witness
Chinese Classical Neo Realism
by Lei Zi Ren
The term modern evokes transition; a fashionable state which is bound to
pass and cease to exist. LZR’s art is not modern; it is not fashionable
or trendy. His art is truly a reflection of the present Chinese reality;
it is China in its own colours and shades, in its own forms and content in
ways hardly perceived by non-Chinese. It is as enduring as it is extremely
relevant today as it will be tomorrow. It seeks inspiration into the
ancient calligraphy and watercolours from the Qing, Song, Ming and Tang
Dynasty as it penetrates deep in the present hedonistic and often amoral
zeitgeist of the new emerging petit bourgeoisie. It is post the modernity
of a time when China has seen so many foreign invasions and centuries of
humiliation. It is unequivocally with traces of the ongoing clash between
one ideological past and a materialistic present, a veiled social-cultural
clash between East and West, which is so much part of China today.
In the artists word’s : As in China, my paintings have so much happiness
yet so much pain, so much hope and yet so much disappointment so much past
and so uncertain future. A country now sunk in a moral vacuum; a state
where all around us seems to slowly neglect who we are as humans as
individuals, as a people and more importantly as Chinese. My paintings are
an evolving mural, where I have tried to express my doubts, my sorrows as
well as my attempt to understand this incredible, admirable and gigantic
civilisation of which I am so proud and happy to be a part. I look around
and sometimes wonder … but fortunately, I can always look inside myself,
at my past and that of China and find myself.
After the end of Cultural Revolution (1976) and the subsequent death of
Mao China entered into a series of social cultural attempts to find its new
identity; one that would reflect the ideals and ideas of the self imposed,
new architect of modern China, Deng Xiao Ping, sadly highlighted with the
tragic outcome at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
It is impossible to grasp modern China, without considering this major
axis of influences in the Chinese psychic and way of life followed with the
embrace by design of Western capital and cultural influences. Just like
during the New Republic, post the Qing Dynasty in 1911, modern China had
one clear objective; to become one open market to please and attract
Western capital, and modern art was no different. Of course, Tiananmen was
not a topic that particularly captured the interest of Westerners and it
was, a no go area for the followers of Deng that had the ultimate say in
what could and could not be considered modern art. Tiananmen was too
bloody and kept until this very day as a state secret.
The Cultural Revolution was indeed a subject matter that had the foreign
cache and commercial preference. After all new China was all about the
market, so artists studied carefully western modern art, with the mild
blues, greys, pinks and yellow tones within multiple commoditised visions
of the Cultural Revolution that are now the basic motif of the so called
contemporary Chinese masters. Modernity construed to please and sell the
westerners, with not much Chinese in it, or for that matter local interest
if any. This was purely commercial art made in China for export, to satisfy
the new foreign buyers, many part of the .com boom. Ironically, one might
say exiting one boom to create a new one.
In the 1980’s and thereafter, Chinese Modern Art, reflected the social
and cultural ideological emptiness that engulfed the mainland where thought
and criticism became the true foreign elements, excluded and forbidden in
all walks of society. Yet again, to comply and submit was back in fashion,
and fashion itself became the ideological paradigm of the culture, the
slick, the passive and westernised look, the worship of consumption and the
new found God; Money. A time when the only new Chinese symbols or for that
matter ideals in the so-called modern era were found in the endless adverts
and foreign signs; McDonalds, Visa, KFC, Nike, Chanel, Gucci and the other
usual suspects. It was just natural yet again; to please the West, and give
what was wanted; trendy, superficial Cultural Revolution imagery and more
of the foreign logos that now are the face of modernity in China. LZR did
not follow or accepted this ideological imposition and yet again invasion
of Chinese culture and art.
LZR, believed and committed himself to find inspiration in China and in
what it is Chinese, in its thousands years of history, in its indelible
capacity to resist and rise again, in the deeper roots and unique
spiritual social fibre that kept the country together. He looked straight
into its problems and qualities without fear of self-criticism, more
importantly he did not attempt to please any foreign or local master. He
followed his own path, his creativity to create one of the most formidable
and unique collections of art. Trained in traditional Chinese art, he has
moved beyond, breached barriers and taboos, liberated himself and to
certain extent art, raising it to a new plateau that could be described as
Chinese Classical Neo Realism.
Asian Art in London 2008
Lei Zi Ren Solo Exhibition
77 Kensington Church Street
London W8 4BG
01/11-09/11/2008
Chinese Modern Art,Views of a Master
by Chen Danqing
Chen said:there is no public place in China.
What Ifeel deeply is: we are all slaves, slaves without end.
In China, we haveLao bai xing, (common people) but we do nat have
individuals ; we have apopulation, but no concept of modern people. The
relation between the classesare all delicate, close relation between slaves
and masters. Master areoriginally from a slave class and slaves hope one
day to become master.
Revolution: Oil by Chen Danqing 120x70 cms
Youthink it is over, don’t like this system… I have no hope about
the
system can changeor not.
We all live like this, you can’t change it easily. But I never
feelhopeless about talented people, they are always there.
I won’ttake part in education activity, if the system cannot be changed.
Now, maybequite some lucky artists are counting money, but I know, real
artists are notdrinking coffee everyday. Real artists are all workaholic,
especially workalone.
Theproblem is, in China,we accept too many western standards to judge
ourselves and our values.
China is still not a country withfreedom, most of Chinese only know how to
quarrel, to brawl, but don’t know howto argue, to debate.
I don’twant to think about sort of these questions: How do you feel
about Gai GeKaifang, (market reform) in the past thirty years. I won’t
think this way. Of course China is underchange.
Many things become like something, but much more other things becomelike
nothing.
I tell you, the ability to thinkindependently of young people in Wenge
(Cultural Revolution) are much morestronger than today. Today’s
circumstances are apparently open, relax, sotoday’s young people would
have more independent thoughts, but no, it is notlike this. That is why I
hate even now we still have politics exam in ourschool.
The society is walking forward, market-oriented, but when you run
intocampus, the whole education is just like the old one.
No, not only in China,but also in the whole world, there can’t be a
literature master. Maybe there isa Nobel laureate, but no master. Because
this is a consumers society, after weenter into commercial society, all
these ideas are killed.
The whole Asia ‘s modern culture can be defined as “ copy-pirate
culture”. China iscatching up quickly, pirate copies in a super scale,
in
every aspect you can’timagine. Like Ai Wei Wei, like me, all our things
are the Western things, notour Chinese things. but the important thing is ,
despite it all we are Chinese…andthis is good.
Chen Danqing
12. 2008
-
ChenDanqing,born in 1957 is one of the most accomplished and well
respectedartists in modern China since the earlies 80's. He lived in the
US for many years, and has now returned to Chinawith works in many Art
museums in the US, the EU and galleries across the world.
A Letter from Beijing
Shenzhen, in the morning of 10 December 2008, the Chen family with their
eleven years old daughter went shopping, when a fifty-eight years old man
snatched Xiao Chen, and raped her inside the bathroom of a hotel nearby.
A few minutes later, she reappeared running away from the same man, when
Mr. Chen, asked:
What were you doing with my daughter?
man replied
Yes, I did it.
I am a High Officer of the Party.
How much money do you want?
I am a powerful leader from Beijing.
Yes, I did it.
How much money do you want?
This incident was recorded on camera and quickly reached the internet. CNN
did broadcast for a few hours, and then not surprisingly shamefully removed
it. [http://news.21cn.com/guangdong/shenzhen/2008/11/01/5412127.shtml]
http://news.21cn.com/guangdong/shenzhen/2008/11/01/5412127.shtml
This is not an ordinary man.
He is Lin Jiaxiang the secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Marine
Bureau in Shenzhen, and Head of the Discipline Inspection Group in the
city, founded by Deng Xiao Ping, the architect of the New China. Jiaxiang
publicly confessed the rape in broad day light. From his arrogant demeanor,
he knew that despite his criminal behavior, he was immune from prosecution.
This is not one isolated case. This is not an accident. It happens every
day, everywhere across the land. In modern China, justice and social
responsibility simply do no exist, while oppression and relentless abuse on
the helpless is common practice. Slowly and surely, Deng and his followers
have decimated any trace of moral values, sense of self or mutual respect,
human decency among the new society forged on his spurious principles such
as: It does not matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches
the mouse. He deliberately unleashed the Law of The Jungle, which he named,
Gai Ge Kai Fang. Translation, everything is now for sale, quickly
commoditized at the mercy of the highest bidder, irrespective of any
present or future consequences to the nation, environment or the welfare of
the people. Foreigners are welcome in China to spend money, invest,
including to traffic humans. Parents now sell their own children for $500,
a man can buy a women for $1000, or with just a promise of marriage.
Privileged people, instead of shopping for a new IBM or a Sony home
entertainment system, often prefer to purchase their own personal Chinese
for domestic use. Also available in all major cities in the West, with
compliments from the Regime.
In the last three decades, the only principle that has been developed and
promoted by the Government was ; How much money ? as they say in Chinese,
Duo Shao Qian? The very same words uttered by Jiaxiang immediately after
the rape of Xiao Chen; along with the new national Chinese greeting , Hello
within the official dissemination of English to facilitate trade, slavery
and corruption. An absolute social - cultural vacuum, a colossal
intellectual emptiness filled by this materialistic idolatry of the new
Chinese God, Money. A nation with a fifth of the world's population now
reduced to a commoditized mass manipulated and transformed as disposable
screws in the Chinese economic machine to serve the New Mandarins of China
financed and supported by the West.
Xiao Chen is just one in the millions of innocent victims, at the mercy of
the Regime; used and abused, literally when sadly the world and CNN,
chooses to look away. Has Darfur, Burma, 20 000 students killed in Sichuan
this year... all been forgotten? How convenient and profitable.
While being raped, Xiao Chen served as a disposable human repository for
Lin Jianxia's urges and sperm, highlighting the very same brutal oppressive
attitude and absolute absence of any respect for human life that hallmarks
the plutocracy that he represents. Her pain and shock was no less dramatic
then the present misery inflicted by the Regime in the millions of innocent
victims, wondering and repeating the national mantra; Mei Banfa ; No way
out.
I am sure, many will criticize and question, the point of raising this
individual case when China has 2 trillion dollars in the banks, while the
world is on its knees in light of the present financial crisis. Lin Jianxia
is de-facto immune from his crime as most of his comrades in power; they
can buy CNN's silence and most media, they can buy the West connivance and
political support. Yes indeed, they can for now. Yet, I look deeper into
the admirable Chinese people, their ancient history and culture and find
that, they cannot buy legitimacy, respect or the future of China.
Eventually the people will realize the true nature of the present Leaders.
Sadly, Xiao Chen and her family have already seen and experienced the
painful brutal thrust of the Regime's nefarious character in the most
appalling circumstances.
Chinese history and civilization are much greater and it will rise again
from the present challenges. Despite these dire moments, pain may be a
catalyst for change, perhaps inspired by a popular Chinese proverb:
Sometimes we must do the impossible even knowing, it is impossible.
Silent Witness
Beijing
19.12.08
Letter from Beijing
Project119
Thecrowds are cheering, the lights are flashing all across Beijing; the
people arefollowing the Games as the rebirth of the Nation, in line with
what the Regimehoped and meticulously planned in the past 10 years. Even
the applause and the cheering arecontrolled, directed by a “crowd
leader” not quite like the festive Americanversion, cheerleader , but
a
well-rehearsed patriotic mass wave being transmittedin the airwaves,
through radio, TV and the net to every region, and individualin China.
Winners are immediately paraded on national TV with thepolitical
Leaders.The general population have little idea whichnations the athletes
are from, and for that matter not much interest or understanding of sports,
except for ping pong and badminton. Yet they all cheer ; Chinais number
one, number one - Fight for the Motherland.
Froma distance, watching this heavily handed State sponsored spectacle, it
feelsvery little just a sport event but a far greater national endeavour.
Officially, this is known as Project 119, aState controlled and financed
project to win medals in Beijing 2008.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/sports/olympics/16relay.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/sports/olympics/16relay.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin(
NYT ) . A monumental socio-political, economical, and cultural national
effort,which easily could be construed as a social mass engineering scheme
on levelsunseen by human kind. An on going long term process of
alienation,exploitation, and manipulation of the people that I suspect will
make Hayek, Marxand Orwell shiver in their graves. No doubt, this will be a
subject matter ofresearch in mass control and social engineering for many
years to come; acolossal paradigm and means to perpetuate a political farce
to the masses. As Hayek wrote, “social engineering is theroad to serfdom
and tyranny”. Sadly, these two dire concepts are already very well
established in the New China.
This late designedtransfiguration of China, by the followers of Deng,
supported by the transnationals and the West hascreated an Orwellian
society of extremes. Yesterday, papers published that winnersof gold
medals, will receive each more then 3 000 000 rimimbi per medal, or £220
000 pounds sterling, from the Regime. The equivalent to what a worker
wouldearn during 355 years.One athlete who won three gold medals will earn
in a day what a workerwould earn in 1000 years. Not a bad day’s work,
in
a so-called communistnation.
Theworrying question is; how many more mass social engineering projects
areunderway? For what purpose and more importantly who is in control ? in a
nationwith one fifth of the world’s population. The answer to this
question we maynever know, but one thing is certain, Beijing 2008 is not
about the OlympicSpirit or sportsmanship, translated in the words of Pierre
de Coubertin, who founded the modern Olympicmovement in 1894, explaining
that the joy of effort to compete is moreimportant than the thrill of
victory.
Thecheering, cameras and flashes will continue for another week. Yet we
mustremember that; the same bright light that shines and flashes across the
steel andglass structures also serves to blind our vision and understanding
of afar greater reality. Once the Games are over, what will be left for the
common people excludedfrom the gold and celebrations? In many ways, they
are indeed the ultimatelosers in the 2008 Beijing Games and the so called,
Project 119.
Silent Witness
August 17, 2008
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the links below to view the livewire archives:
Archive
page 1 (several articles)
archive page 2 (art in Chinese Politics),
archive 3 (Cultural revolution and art),
archive 4 (several articles)
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