THE LAOWAI TIMES: 798

Alfresco dinning

Beijing's 798 Arts District is notable for being in a former East German constructed factory complex. The area continues to gain popularity as a tourist destination, particularly for domestic tourists from other parts of China and foreigners looking for a more laid back alternative to Gulou. I'll be blunt about it. If you only have a week in Beijing this place is a skip, but I have lived here two years and I am running out of things on my Beijing Bucket List at an alarming rate. The focus at the 798 is less on the art and more "looking cool for the outside world", but even this gives a great opportunity to enjoy and examine the "face" Asia's favorite one party dictatorship puts on for the rest of the world.

Businesses in the complex range from surprisingly good restaurants to expensive art gallaries without much in between. Either way, don't forget your wallet because you'll need to leave it at the 798 when you go home.

Steampunk before steampunk was steampunk

There's a lot of hype surrounding this place. Some people even go as far as to call it Beijing's Soho, though I'd certainly call this an overestimation. It took me nearly two years to get the motivation to visit the place. Most casual visitors to the capital skip it because of its distance from other attractions. No one will ever accuse it of being easy to get to the 798 because there isn't a decently close subway station. In fact 7.98 hours is roughly the time it will take you to travel to this place from central Beijing if you take public transport.

Hello! Anyone Home?

Most of the galleries are on the high end of the price spectrem. I also though the galleries themselves are few and far between in this massive compound. That's sort of the problem with having such a big, sprawling space, if you don't have enough things to fill it up it just looks empty. Many of the buildings I peaked into were completely empty. However the 798 has an abundance of cafes, bars, restuarants and stores selling knick-knacks.

A few stores in the 798 specialize in selling cheaply made pieces of Americana. These stores carry the same things that your local Cracker Barrel sells in the gift shop. This might seem odd if you visit China for a short time. I have come to expect this kinds of things here in the Middle Kingdom. When I asked the woman working if the items were made "here" she told me yes. Maybe she just meant made in China.

After two years I have begun to find China's embrace of everything culturally "non-Chinese" as troubling to say the least. Especially as the Chinese government's pension for nationalism abroad surges unchecked. As a result this post might come off as condescending. Though most foreign news sources actually do a wonderful job of covering China (though the Chinese government would certainly say the opposite), I increasingly feel the need to highlight cultural things overlooked in favor of politics and economics.

American culture and American art permeates the 798 for several reasons. For one, its simply too controversial in China to prop the wing of a PLA Air Force plane in a public place. Is it anti-military? Is it anti-CPC? There's simply too much ambiguity and symbolism. Two, everyone knows its easier to steal than create. And finally there frankly isn't a lot of contemporary culture unique to China. It's a dark thing to say and probably a controversial statement, but after two years in Beijing and trips around China and to several of the China's neighbors, I frankly just have to admit this fact publicly.

Wing and a Prayer

The scars of the Cultural Revolution and Maoism unsurprisingly run deep. Yes these catastrophic and important events might one day seep their way back into Chinese Culture and discourse, either when China begins to come to terms with its past or accept the things about the present it refuses to change. Until this happens you'll still find commemorative license plates from the film Pearl Harbor that people try selling to you as "unique" works of Chinese art. Either way the image of some party official's wife hanging a fake license plate with Ben Affleck's face on it and calling it art is simply too funny not to laugh about.

Be on the look out for my next blog post about the 798's mysterious North Korean gallery.