I once worked for a man whose mantra was “It is what It is”. It was his way of dealing with anything out of his control when he and his team had done all they could, but things still worked out other than the way he was hoping for. This is also a good mantra for China where “letting it flow” is a necessary survival tactic.
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Last night I had dinner with some friends. We hoped to catch up on the last month-and-a-half; to share stories of travel and experience. After talking for quite some time – one of my friends leaned in and said “so, I can’t get a read on this – What did you think? Did you like Beijing?” I had to be honest. She was reading me correctly, and I had to admit that I wasn’t sure how I felt about my visit to the “Wild Wild East”.
Beijing, itself, being so different than any city I had visited; and the AIR residency being such a different situation that I had ever found myself in, as well… I think I still need more time to process.
As it turns out (not to be too dramatic) I find myself in some kind of confucian rabbit hole – hurling into a socio-philosophical conundrum where I can’t seem to reconcile what I learned and saw with the reality of my life. I seem to have no current choice other than to divorce myself from the pursuit of understanding culture and comparing values at all, and keep returning to extreme base principals of human to human interaction as the only thing tangible and true. Even so, my instinct is to share with friends and family the stories that both affirm cultural assumptions and satiate the mind just about as much as Travel+Leisure columns. It is easier.
But I feel like you, my readers, can handle this challange, so here are just a few of the contradictions and juxtapositions that are fighting over space in my mind: (more to follow, some images borrowed from co-residents via facebook.)
One of many 798 "white box" style galleries; Girl from adjacent Village whose play ground is the dirty street which leads collectors and tourists to similar art spaces
2 Chinese paintings derivative of European art history
local Cao Chang Di chaotic construction practices; and Ai Weiwei's clean architectural design
Polluted skyline; crisp national gallery presentation of history re-telling rather than arti-fact