Living and teaching in Hangzhou

Last Days in China

chinaho — Sat, 2 May 2015 07:35:00 GMT

What an exhilarating moment on Thursday afternoon when the students installed their amazing bamboo pieces. Three distinctly different art works accomplished by 7 students: One drifting quietly in the wind hanging from a bridge, another describing relationships between a metal rectangle and a cascade of bamboo onto the floor of a courtyard, and the third a Chinese red spiral of angles describing an open swirl in a grassy slope. None of the students had tackled such challenges before and every one of them felt proud and grateful. Rob also felt that they had traversed new terrain of thinking about art, and in relating to art concepts. His way of teaching, discussing aspects of ideas and introducing abstraction and its expressive forms into their conversations was new for them. Form, volume, balance, proportion, space, movement and the other parts of visual vocabulary were tremendously difficult to translate both in words and in conceptual terms, but clearly, over 4 weeks much was communicated and experienced.

Our last day was a hot day with the worst air yet – PM2.5 and PM10s were in unhealthy zones and ozone was in hazardous numbers, but the breeze was present to help cut the heat. We had the unique opportunity to wander through the totally empty, not-yet-open art museum by Kenzo Kuma being constructed on the hill. Our student translator went with us, shimmering with excitement with each new interior view. The kid has a future in design for sure. From there we gathered at 8090 restaurant for a final lunch with the students – sweet and a little sad. The few remaining afternoon hours were spent wandering in local markets with our translator, heading into the underground shopping and places we had hesitated to go on our own, though they turned out to be much like the “old market” we had managed ourselves, a Chinese version of a segmented five and dime.

We took our first taxi, and had a most incredible feast at our host’s home, prepared by our host’s wife. A friend of his from Taiwan brought special teas and we began with that. Then one incredible dish after another appeared on the table, with French wines, followed in the end by the last most special black tea.

The rest of this physical journey will be through time zones and among strangers, but truly the essence of our trip to China will take months or years to absorb. It is possible that there will be layer upon layer of experiences here over time, as the College of Public Art here at the China Academy of Art seems quite interested in Rob’s return. For us, it will take time to figure out its place in our lives. Seeds have been planted, and there is no knowing what will grow.

Photos: Final Installations, Sharing Art

chinaho — Fri, 1 May 2015 09:50:00 GMT

Bamboo, student work, teaching art

Day 25: Good Friends, Warm Weather, Hard Work

chinaho — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 23:25:00 GMT

Our day began with a struggle to create an evenly lit space in which to photograph Rob’s final works. He will be leaving all the drawings here in China, taking his sketches and preliminary drawings back with him to New York. Our hotel room is fairly dark, and the best light is uneven through the window structure. We figured it out as well as we could, and barely finished in time for him to meet his students and tackle technical issues of construction and installation with bamboo. It will probably be a major task to figure out how to pound in posts to support the sculptures, or affix pieces to public structures. Yesterday a test was done, using a nearby rock, since there were no hammers of any kind to be found. We’ll see how final installation goes tomorrow. Here’s hoping that construction is finished and tools can be found!

Much to our delight, our young friend from the tea market invited us to lunch. We had been trying to figure out how to have an evening together, but every evening that we considered ended up swallowed by unforeseeable events of one kind or another. Our plans are pre-empted by other events, and when we think we have put something on the calendar, it slides off. The only time we stood up for ourselves in this matter was about getting away to Suzhou. All the little things tuck under the next wave and that’s that. So the plan to have dinner yesterday was hatched at lunch and pre-empted any possibility of inviting other people to join us for dinner! The feast we had was truly remarkable, being right near the famous Buddhist Lingyin Temple, originally founded 1600 years ago by an Indian “master monk” named Huili, as the story goes. Vegetarian restaurants surround the area, and pilgrimages are made. We traveled through a charming, but clearly touristic, tea growing area called Meijawu Tea Culture Village. It was lovely in early evening, the view of steep hills of row after row of now pruned back tea bushes, and nearly a teahouse in every house. We were told of a very expensive retreat hotel run by the monks (5000 Yuan a night), and were treated dish after dish under the canopy of the night sky. Local vendors came by with fresh fruits, Loquats and Mulberries were especially marvelous. We ate sliced lotus, baby cucumbers (so many it looked like green beans), eggplant, bamboo, peapods, sautéed melon balls, a whole small pumpkin, spicy sweet sour cabbage, tofu with fungus in spicy soup, fried purple yam fritters, a true “rice soup” and more! Plans were hatched at dinner to have supper the next night with our host at his home, but by mid day today those plans had changed.

Rob worked in the summer weather with his crew of students, two boys working on a big project originally requiring 300 pieces of bamboo cut into “random” lengths that are to be strung in a quasi-wind chime fashion under a bridge across a stream; a boy-girl team that is using the steel structure of the girl’s making and placing a bamboo structure mostly of the boy’s making within and reaching out of it in an angular way; and the final team of three girls who are creating a cage-like opening spiral of bamboo to be placed on what the students call “lover’s hill.” Tomorrow is the end of class. The smaller works will be culled and some placed in official cases along a hallway in the sculpture building.

This evening is being co-opted by a public lecture being given on the downtown campus by a visiting architect-artist, or at least that is what we can glean from what we’ve been told. Of course, we are going, with the flow (not sure who is taking us or when) and there will be dinner afterwards, in a restaurant. Upon inquiry I learn that perhaps the lecture is in English with Chinese translation, but even this is not certain. We just have to wait to see what the next two very full days hold. Tomorrow is a sure to be a big day of finishing sculptures, creating the exhibition, celebrating the class, giving a public lecture and probably another late night supper. Friday will perhaps be a daylong trip to Ningbo to see architecture and art there with our host and then the long promised dinner at his home. Saturday we depart Hangzhou, by means we do not yet know, and will find ourselves once again at Shanghai PuDong airport, simply American travelers, and no longer the visiting professor and his wife.

By Saturday morning we will have figured out the packing situation, but as it is, we now have a considerable, and bulky, collection of tea. This is definitely “the gift” of the region. We met our sweet tea vendor family very early in this adventure, buying their local medium grade Longjian green tea and a small amount of their premium early spring harvest Longjian. We were so pleased with this (see earlier post). Then our host took us for a studio visit and gave us more local Longjian green tea. When we went to Wushan Square market downtown we bought Fujian black tea. Then Rob’s students gave him more Fujian black tea! Our dear tea vendor’s son took us for lunch and presented us with two adorable tins full of their lovely Longjian tea. We do enjoy tea, and plan to share it when we get home, but packing this to bring home has become a serious question. Oh, I forgot to add in a box of traditional medicinal tea given to us by the father of Rob’s translator! Each comes in a box, some also in tins within a box, some in sealed bags. Some boxes are thin wood, some are bamboo, some are cardboard. Of course we have given the gifts we brought and had hoped that would make space in our bags, but this will definitely be a challenge!

I did the last laundry that I plan to do. Hand washing for two people all month has been surprisingly easy if I deal with it daily. We bought a great hanging gizmo at the grocery store that pivots open into 6 arms , each with 4 clothespins on them and accommodates quite an array of items. In combination with the plastic hangers from the grocery store we can handle almost anything. The hot weather, my yoga plus Rob’s working with bamboo and the dusty nature of cutting and splitting it, generates a laundry pile, but now that we are near departure, this task ends. Our toothpaste is nearly gone, our washing soap is nearly gone, and we are down to the last days of vitamins. I told the young woman at the hotel desk this morning that we only have 3 more mornings here and she looked so sad. I’ve been wondering how I can honor those relationships. I know that the staff has taken special note of us – seeing our daily laundry and fruit peelings, accommodating us as we come and go at strange times. Today they gave us clean sheets without being asked. Usually, we request clean sheets after a week., but we were away the weekend and now there are only 3 nights left. This hotel and its occupants are our closest neighbors, right down to the fish in the ponds we walk past several times a day. I do look forward to brushing my teeth with tap water, and eating fresh raw food. Rob reminds me that we will be home in time for berry season.

Photos: Day 25: Warm Day, Good Friends, Hard Work

chinaho — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 23:22:00 GMT

tea, feasts, local images

Photos: Line/Plane & Bamboo Projects

chinaho — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 22:30:00 GMT

final line/plane pieces, beginning bamboo site-specific work

Photos: seeing where we are

chinaho — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 22:30:00 GMT

CAA campus, Wang Shu architecture, trees

Days 23-24: The Last Week Begins

chinaho — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 17:00:00 GMT

Our last week begins with very warm weather, tough air quality, and a sense of familiarity tinged with that poignancy of approaching departure. It is a relief to be back in our hotel, doing laundry, and getting genuine greetings from the staff. Rob plunges back into the fray with the students, observing that for many of them the results of the plane and line combinations reflect a resistance to integrate line and a return to the construction of volumes. There are a few bright spots, and of course, several technical problems that demand his attention. Meanwhile, the students are deeply involved in model making and even construction for the final project: the site-specific bamboo pieces. There is a process required by the administration in order to put art pieces into the public space, so there are some invisible constraints that may pop up. Rob’s translator brings up an administrator’s concern about public safety, and Rob looks at these models knowing full well that they will not support the weight of a climbing child. So, we wait to see what happens next on that.

Tuesday morning our hotel room becomes an open studio for our host and his colleagues, a lacquer painter who is a professor at the Academy and the gallery director we had met before. Everyone is enthusiastic about the work, especially upon learning some background of how the forms evolved from Rob’s early work as a potter, his concern with vessel forms, and his conceptual interest in Duchamp’s piece in which he dropped three plumb lines and creating template forms from these random string shapes. He explained the process of making his 8 template forms, exploring the possibilities through drawings, and choosing and drawing finished works. He has been asked now to give a public lecture Thursday evening about his work. He is calling this new series of 18 or so drawings “Made in China” and will leave them here perhaps to be shown in venues in Shanghai or Hangzhou. We joked a bit about “Made in China, Stays in China,” but it really was meaningful to share the work and feel that there is now a deeper understanding of who he is, and what he is trying to communicate to the students in his teaching. It helped enormously to have a fellow artist with English skills who could communicate Rob’s explanations in Chinese, and reflect back any questions.

In exchange for this private viewing, we were taken to our new friend’s lacquer studio to see his work. The studio is three large rooms and one small one in an enormous apartment complex just 10 minutes from campus. Vistas on either side, and amazing light, there are old works, works in progress, and the first layers of lacquer on several waiting to be realized. We see Dubuffet’s influence and learn more about the lacquering process of layering, and the slow tempo of the work. There are some overlapping interests, and a relationship is cemented. Turns out this professor earned his MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago. Ahh, more intersecting lines as both my parents studied there. We have Fujian tea and dried dates, and then return to campus to visit the classroom, where one group of 3 girls is lashing together bamboo sections. Rob introduces a strategy for reinforcing junctions and extending longer pieces. It is obvious that the students want to accomplish this work and make their teacher proud of them. In fact, they present him with a classical tea service and a bamboo box full of Fujian tea. This is a black tea that comes from a neighboring province South of Zhejiang province. We are to go out again this evening, driven once again by our novice driver (who, by the way speaks Italian) to join in a group at a special vegetarian restaurant. We are told that tofu is used to imitate meat and fish shapes. It will no doubt be a special experience.

The students are showing some anxiety as they tackle their major construction projects with such a short deadline. The bamboo is interesting but also challenging, and the kids are really having their first experiences with this kind of construction. How well their ideas translate into this material remains to be seen, as they do not tend to experiment with the material to generate the ideas, but the other way around. Rob, too, is a little anxious for them, as our days are so limited now, and it feels as though the social elements will be demanding for us in these last few days too. Luckily for Rob, he had the foresight to put together images of his sculptural work and a bit of an explanation of his template drawing process, so he has little to prepare for his Thursday lecture.

Amazed at the heat here and wondering what summer would be like. We are told this 90F degree day is a beautiful summer day, where mostly it is hotter and more humid and much less pleasant. Many people walk with sun umbrellas , and even passengers on motorbikes cover themselves with lightweight fabric to shield themselves from the sun.

Weekend in Suzhou

chinaho — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 14:44:00 GMT

After three weeks of teaching and living in our hotel in Hangzhou, we splurged and went away for the weekend to Suzhou. This city is one of the fastest growing cities in this part of China, if not in all of China. The seat of local government in its province for centuries, and a center for commerce and the production of silk and brocade, it is now also a major center for contemporary industrial development. Because of its long history of prosperity, good South China climate, and canal system, Suzhou attracted wealthy families, poets, governors and administrators to build their personal retreats here. Homes within large walled areas were transformed by the most amazing craftspeople and artists into gardens, sometimes deeply contemplative, fantastical, family oriented or spiritual. Over the centuries (founded in BC), there have been destructive forces again and again in the city, but Suzhou retained its core historic district in downtown around many of these gardens. Some were restored a couple hundred years ago, others just in the last century. Some remained private up until fairly recently. Now they are open to the public, some for hefty fees in season, others remain just a $3 entry fee. A city built entirely with a canal system crisscrossed by streets, the old city remains a marvelous weaving of truly historic and newly emerging. The Suzhou Museum is a beautiful example of contemporary possibilities realized with a deep awareness of the soul within the Chinese cultural relics it houses. The first structure is in an ancient building, housing cultural folk life artifacts, and the second structure (separated by the Garden Museum) by I. M. Pei, (born in Suzhou but schooled in the US and a US naturalized citizen, 98 years old at the time of this writing) is a remarkable homage with contemporary spirit. The collection is precise, incredibly representative of some of the most ancient examples and exquisite.

To see all of this, we took the high speed train from Hangzhou station (returning to Hangzhou East station). It took less than 1.5 hours. For most of that time we were glued to the window, watching planted land zip past but mostly new housing districts from 40 years ago half demolished and replaced by 20 year old developments that are truly dwarfed by the new megalithic structures sprouting in large groups and clumps– as many as 20 at a time of each variety as far as the eye can see until they vanish in the hazy smudge of horizon. We have yet to fathom what this means, except that it clearly offers a lot of employment, and at some level forces people out of the small scale communities putting them into these new enormous stacked arrangements.

As soon as we stepped off the train we were amazed by the vastness of the station, the enormous number of people, the endless feeling of the place. We came into the main section of the station and were approached several times by people offering us boat rides and maps. We negotiated for a “map in English” paying 6 instead of 15, to find later that they sell for 2 in shops away from tourist areas. We headed for the 178 bus to take us to our hotel area, and luckily met a young English-capable electrical engineer waiting for the same bus. He said he was also going to the Museum area and would take us to our hotel using his Chinese map system. Truly, without Baire we would not have found our hotel, unless our own GPS was working and even that would have been tricky. He helped us check in, and we agreed to meet for dinner. Our hotel was not worth noting, except that it was part of a major chain of hotels of probably “economy” level, and ¾ of it was completely under construction/renovation. Our hall way was the only livable one, from what we could see, and perhaps 8 rooms were available before the curtain hanging across the hallway and the total destruction on the other side of that! We didn’t mind the noise since we immediately headed out to explore. It seemed a lousy hotel to us, but we got a feeling it might be a quite ordinary one for local tourists if it was intact. (We did actually sleep okay on a very hard mattress by putting one comforter over one mattress and sleeping on top of that. Perhaps it helped us wake so early, which was a good thing!)

A few steps and we were along a lovely canal. A couple blocks in another direction and we were at the very famous Humble Administrator’s Garden, and the Suzhou Museum. Every one else was also there, long lines, many groups with microphones, and again the approaches for boat rides and other tourist attractions. We turned and went back to the canal. Walking quietly along the streets that either lined one side of the canal, or crossing over them, we saw an ancient way of life happening in the present tense. A woman washing her hair in a basin outside in early morning, a man squatting on the wall by the canal spitting his tooth-brushing water into the canal, men and women hauling water up from the stone wells and washing clothing or shoes; mops being wrung out into the canal; clothes drying everywhere in the sun, across streets, strung on trees, hung from lines everywhere. Dogs, quiet and observant, here and there. A man plucking, draining, chopping and selling fresh chickens on one corner, a family setting up their kitchen to sell noodle lunches on the street. Tofu sizzling on open grills, and vendors setting up for the day.

Everywhere evidence of real people living real lives amidst the tourist madness just a few blocks away. Early in the morning, even those tourist streets had people hanging mops from nails in the trees, and hauling water from the sidewalk well as the bus came and went picking people up and dropping people off.

We decided to steer clear the first afternoon of the Humble Administrator’s Garden, imagining that we would go early in the morning; and spent the day walking. Dinner of authentic local noodles that Baire had researched, also known for their starchy kind of sweet that Baire called “cakes” though they were chewy glutinous substances bearing no resemblance to our cake. The next day we chose to go to the Couples Retreat Garden, a bit removed from the main hubbub, and walked around from 6:30-7:30AM until it opened A very beautiful place, with an East Garden and a West Garden, and special places for viewing the moon, for practicing the Tao, for study, or for serving guests. Each part containing scholar rocks (made in formations), special plantings, amazing stone worked grounds, incredible wood carved screens and windows, furnishings, marbles, paintings, everything genuine and intricate. Peering through from here to there, the views invited calm, a sense of peace. And then the tour groups arrived with there microphones! We were so grateful that we had a few minutes before they arrived and they moved fast, so we could tuck in somewhere quiet until they left an area, and pretty much have it to ourselves.

We left our bag at the hotel and went to the Suzhou Museum, the Cultural Life section in the old building and the main collection of artifacts – porcelain, embroidery, carvings of all kinds, paintings, etc. and a contemporary exhibition – in the new building designed by I.M.Pei. The structures are separated by the Garden Museum, an endless feeling group of rooms, courtyards, intimate spaces in various styles. We took it all in with great delight. Each part having something lovely and refreshing about it. We had seen a huge line to get in the new section of the Museum – all of this is free to the public – and decided to think about whether we wanted to go while we waited in line. It moved along fairly quickly and we were so glad we didn’t just walk away. What a wonderful experience of seeing the gardens, then the incredible materials and human skills present in this place over the centuries, combined with the architecture of the old and new. Pei’s sensitivity to light, space, and movement of people and view is truly perfect in this structure.

We squeezed in a little shopping before collecting our bag, meeting Baire for a quick lunch and bus 202 back to the train station. The silk shops were beautiful, some schlock but also some truly gorgeous. And we found a small artisans shop of father and son, the father a master brush maker for ink painting and calligraphy, and the son following the tradition of maker but in the realm of fan bones (the bamboo or wooden parts of the fan). This was so delightful, and truly artistry in present day that reflects some part of the core of Chinese art.

We left our friend Baire at the train station, where he was meeting a friend before his own return to Shanghai where he had just started working as a project manager following his many years of undergraduate and graduate work in England. He urged us to see his hometown of Xi”an if we return, saying that it is quite famous for the Terra Cotta Warriors, but that the air quality is also not very good.

We watched on the train, again stupefied by the intensity of the development going on in China, mixed with a few sections of older farm land, half demolished housing, and larger scale farms and nurseries for the incredible quantity of landscaping materials – shrubs and trees – that we see along nearly all the main streets of Hangzhou. It struck both of us how often we saw a solitary figure in the landscape – walking a road, in a field, in a side vegetable garden, working on a construction site. We also watched the interactions on the train, where it seems some people have assigned seats and others don’t. (We did.) So people sit in any vacant seat – or take a seat next to a friend regardless of their assigned seat. Then, someone with that seat gets on and there is a steady shifting and negotiating, with no malice or ego. Either the usurper simply won’t move and tells the rightful ticketholder to take their assigned seat somewhere else in exchange, or, if they don’t have an assigned seat, they rise and float looking for the next available space. Several people floated for the whole trip, sitting and rising again and again – even a family with a very young child floated like this. A young woman sells Haagen Das cups of ice cream up and down the aisle, and the train personnel push carts with expensive beverages along as well.

What a great weekend! It was warm and sunny, with the clearest sky we’ve seen yet, and we managed to wander, self-sufficient for the most part, and enjoy everything about it. Met at the station in Hangzhou by one of Rob’s students and one of our host’s employees, we were informed that we were having dinner with our host. Our plan had been to take these two young guys out to dinner at a local place, but we wound up once again at a large round table with lots of vegetable dishes provided among the fish dishes, and a little bit of English provided by a former student who would be driving us home. Mostly, we sat a bit glassy eyed listening and watching the play of Chinese social life among two gallery managers, and two art professors. Our driver turned out to be a novice, and it was fortunate that one professor came along with us and coached her the whole way. We also nearly ran out of gas (!!) but she managed that too. We were so grateful to get “home” to our little corner on campus. Tomorrow it will be our laundry hanging out to dry.

Photos: Suzhou Weekend

chinaho — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 13:15:00 GMT

old town Suzhou, Couples Retreat Garden, Suzhou Museum, I.M.Pei Suzhou Museum, canals in Suzhou,

Photos: A local day

chinaho — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 19:35:00 GMT

shops, scenery

Days 18-20: A local teacher’s life

chinaho — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 19:15:00 GMT

Morning walks to run errands, which might be buying a hatchet for splitting bamboo, or looking for wire cutters, often end up at the early lunch in the faculty cafeteria. This is located in the public services part of the hotel we are staying in. There is a full-scale restaurant, a cafeteria that the school uses, a tea house, meeting rooms, and some sort of conference facilities. The actual hotel part is fairly small. In fact we think we might have the only room with a second space. We are just above the “Western Restaurant” section, where our breakfast buffet is offered every morning, and then it is set up with forks and knives for lunch and early dinner. The staff literally stand around there all day long, waiting to see if anyone wants to eat there. Today there were mobs of 20-somethings as part of some organized lunch, but usually they would be lucky to have two or three separate customers.

The cafeteria has been a nice way to eat lunch. It is noisy, full of people eating and talking and smoking in a space that is all hard surfaces, heavy chairs, and large tables. We sign in, pick up our trays, get a blob of rice from a lovely woman smiling at us from behind her face mask. Then there are the trays of food: the first section of which is all meat and fish mixed with various vegetables, and the second is mostly vegetables mixed to some degree with meat (or in one dish, congealed cubes of duck blood). So we choose carefully and by now the lovely women who serve the food onto our molded tray cum dish know that we go for the high octane veggies. No one really speaks to them except us, our Niha (hello) and XiaXia (thanks) again and again usually in that order but not always. Sometimes we “hello” when we mean “thanks,” but we are met by those masked smiley eyes every day.

Rob has now completed a few cycles of presenting assignments, watching the first explorations, seeing the excitement then the confusion, feeling a bit deflated by the work he sees, and then interacting one-on-one and seeing steady progress towards understanding, and a more coherent piece of work in a day or two. I’ve gotten used to this too. He comes in after class dubious and concerned, or anxious to show me the photos of the progress. I get to preview the slide shows, which helps him hone in, cull out, and prepare generally simpler language so his translator has a better chance.

Time is short now. After we visited the Bauhaus collection, Rob took his students in the other morning that it is open. They then worked that afternoon on putting together their ideas of plane and line, much to his disappointment. But by today, Friday, they are showing promise, refining things, figuring things out – just like they did with the rectilinear and the planar works. They also saw images of site-specific works and bamboo pieces that seemed to truly interest and inspire them. They watched Rob splitting bamboo so that they would have little pieces with which to begin making models, and he showed them how to use the zip ties and how to lash together bamboo pieces. It was also cookie day. Since the first week, Rob has brought cookies in for them on Friday. They’ll miss him when he’s gone.

Certainly the main impact of this month of “Abstract Modeling” will be the introduction to the conceptual frameworks that Rob has been consistently offering to the students, but there has been so much more going on. Rob has showed them some ways of problem solving, of assessing and using materials, of reconsidering a design and drawing something more out of it. Not inconsequential were his personal attributes, climbing into the classroom through the window just like the kids do when the door is locked and making them clean up the studio space, as well as ventilate and vacate when using spray paints and toxic glues. Perhaps the most surprising parts may be introducing them to the Bauhaus collection right on their own campus, and to working with bamboo, an indigenous and ubiquitous material in their world. It will be wonderful to see what comes of all this as the planar-line pieces are finalized and the site-specific bamboo pieces are formulated.

We will be up early tomorrow and on our way by train to Suzhou for the weekend.

Photos: Assignment Two: Planes

chinaho — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 17:40:00 GMT

One page sheet constructions

Photos: Day 17 Solo Downtown

chinaho — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 13:30:00 GMT

West Lake, Downtown Hangzhou

Day 16: Assignment Two from Rectangles to Planes

chinaho — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 13:15:00 GMT

16: Transition from Rectangles to Planes to Bamboo Poles

It rained like the dickens for part of the night and our waterway is back to muddy greenish. For the past several days there has been more English speaking at breakfast than ever before, with the Bandung Conference going on all weekend. People representing various other countries are here discussing the 60years of this “Third World” collaborative organization. It is interesting to contemplate what “Third World” means from a hotel in China. The original Bandung Conference was held in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, as a gathering of Afro-Asian nations to form cooperative economic and political relationships and stand against colonialism. The major gathering was held in India this month, at which they re-affirmed their support for Palestinian independence, according to the Jakarta Post. Here, on the campus of the China Academy of Art, we see a smaller gathering of familiar and unfamiliar faces that look a lot more like our New York City home style, but the English is precise and fluent in ways that most in our nation do not speak.

Walking in the drizzle this morning, we had the mission of finding a pharmacy that could provide Rob with more of his saline rinse combination, since our mixtures of baking soda and non-iodized salt seem to irritate him. We had luck finding the pharmacy, and even managed to get our meanings across, but no luck on finding the powders in the measured form we sought. Back to trying our own mix.

A pleasant lunch with the company of another sculpture faculty member, and then Rob scooted off to class. The students are having fair success exploring how to make fascinating sculptural elements out of one sheet of heavy paper by scoring, cutting and folding. It is remarkable how diverse their ideas turn out to be once the students begin applying the principles for their own purposes. Rob is fairly sure they will be glad to leave the paper behind and experiment with 3-D lines in metal wire, though he isn’t sure there will be time enough for them to make constructions that combine the planes and lines. There has been some organizing necessary over all the materials, which the students turn out to have to buy for themselves. The bamboo for the final project is estimated at some serious expense, and Rob asks the administration if the school can cover some of this. The answer is “yes,” they will chip in half. The bamboo will be lashed together in site-specific structures next week. At least that’s the plan.

See the gallery for images of student work. These will be loaded once the students develop their completed forms of the project

Day 17: Intrepid New Yorker

chinaho — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 13:10:00 GMT

We finally gained access to the Bauhaus Collection here on campus. It took a couple inquiries to find out when, if ever, the place actually opened to the public and if there was anything in it beyond time lines and photographs. Turns out that a small portion of the enormous number of items recently purchased are on display and a whole new museum structure is being built to house the entire collection. Even this tidbit was delicious – the beautiful design of the household objects, a few of the toys and a quick sequence of furniture – occupying us for an hour and a half. No photography is allowed, yet many take snapshots with their cell phones. Rob has decided to take his students in to see this, since it is part of the architecture school and the public art students really do not know about it, nor have any of his class members ever been to it.

We went our separate ways after lunch, he to see the final results of the exploration of plane and introduce line using metal wire, all part of assignment 2, that will be unified in the next coupe of days into pieces that integrate line and plane before starting the final assignment. I took my place at the bus stop and started out on my first solo trip downtown on the #4. It was a very crowded bus all the way down. So I stood near the back door, moving out of the way each time the door opened towards me. There were several admonishments by the driver as we stopped and more people squeezed on. It seems easy to imagine he is saying, “please move to the back,” or something like, “there’s a bus right behind this one.” But I really don’t know. Lots of noise from the assembled crowds waiting at the bus stops too – and sometimes a sequence of running towards the bus coming in behind ours.

I got off earlier than I had thought I would, just because it was so hectic as we neared the downtown Lake area. The one thing I know for sure is that if I follow the outline of the lake, I won’t get lost. My orientation is to West Lake and the route of the #4, both familiar to me now. The major shopping/business streets that run N-S and E-W are also fairly predictable, huge new construction sites mixed in with very large blocky buildings (all from within the last 20 years I would guess), and the occasional alleys and smaller streets with the earlier form of large apartment building – which can’t hold a candle to the enormity of the new ones, but clearly are packed with residents by the look of the laundry hanging out over the balconies. One local described the different between the new apartment buildings and the new office buildings as “the residences have balconies.”

Thinking that Monday would be a quieter day than the weekend days, I started my plotted route, imagining that I could walk to the upper edges of the Lake and perhaps walk on the Bai Causeway or meander among the paths leading to sites in the park. The crowds were incredibly thick, though, and progress was slowed by coagulations everywhere around singers with microphones and many areas of public dancing. This is not the performance style dancing, but a stylized ballroom type of dancing that seems to sprout up with a boom box and a willing spirit. Sometimes 10-20 couples will be gracefully sashaying around a section of sidewalk. It makes a steady pace of walking impossible. So I walk slowly, halting and dodging as everyone takes their selfies and portraits of each other “at the Lake” and with this or that pose. By the time I approach the Bai Causeway, I’ve pretty much had it with waltzing in the crowd and can see that the Causeway is no different than the sidewalk, totally jammed with people. It’s like waiting in a crowd that slowly moves along. Not for me. So I head away from the Lake, thinking that perhaps being closer to the Silk Market, I might ask my blistered toe to put up with a little more walking before heading back for the bus. Well, I wander through a section that is “women’s fashion area” on the tourist map. My character is not changed by my location, and I feel no less impulse to walk into those stores here in Hangzhou than I would any where else. I’ll stick to the very small, personal, low key shops near the campus if I do any more shopping. A couple of girls wearing black and white outfits stopped to look in a window full of more black and white outfits. I, however, walked on. When eyes meet a shop clerk standing in a window dressing a manikin, we both smile, she waves enthusiastically, and I wave back. This is my contact moment.

By now I’ve reached the vast roads of huge buildings. I know that it is nearly an equal walk to get to the silk market area, and taking stock of my feet and the time of day, I decide to turn towards the bus rather than keep going even further afield. Another day, I think to myself. The great pleasure of getting on the bus at the start of its route is that I get a seat the whole way back – which is just over an hour’s ride at this time of day, not quite the rush hour time yet.

Rob arrives just minutes after I do, saying that one of his students is playing in a basketball game right now and we have been invited to come. I pull my just-elevated bare feet back into shoes and we head out. What a blast! It is a school-based competition of two teams, both seemingly from the China Academy of Art. “Our” team – the one with two students known to us – is ahead, and stays ahead. There is no hollering or kibitzing or sighs of disappointment or words of encouragement. A very quiet audience except serious applause after shots – once even for a 3-point shot made by the other team but only once. Twice a call and response cheer breaks out over the course of the game. Meanwhile, Rob and I are trying to follow along, not making too much noise – but an oooph here at a missed shot, or a “yeah” there at a good steal can’t be totally squelched. Congratulatory noise among the team mates at the end of each quarter – and then the game ends. Rob’s student invites him enthusiastically to attend the Saturday night game – but we will be in Suzhou. Oh, sad face, but then there’s another game, perhaps Friday night we can make? We’ll see.

We trawl for supper near the grocery store – avoiding the two noodle places we have already tried. Bold as usual, we walk into a nearly empty place thinking it could be a total strike out, just two men drinking some kind of fruit blenderized drinks, and a mom and kid eating rice with meat in it. Turns out they have an extensive menu of drinks and dishes, some of which are entirely vegetable – no, really, entirely! The young man who had been standing in the doorway to invite people to enter, uses the word for vegetarian that really means like religiously vegetarian. So Rob gets out his scanning phone and we see cabbage and other vegetables. Dinner is simple and quick, though the ambiance is a little strange – a poster of Santa Claus is on the front window, and there is definitely a red/green theme, plus a goofy floor tile pattern. But hey, for 22 Yuan ($4) we’ve had supper. We top off the evening with a stop at the grocery store to pick up wine and beer since we are meeting a new person for dinner tomorrow and believe it is BYOB at the restaurant we have selected.

I am surprisingly worn by being out all day in the world. Everywhere I go, I feel the way people glance at me, and make a conscious effort to keep my face arranged in a friendly, open aspect. I stand with an emphasis on balance and ease, hoping that I am doing the American people proud, while at the same time giving off the message that I am approachable and not lost. Only once, on the bus coming home, do I have a moment of doubt that perhaps I am not actually on the right bus, since the signage at the front of the bus flashes the time and such correctly, interspersed with the number “25” and that concerns me. So I type into my translator phone,” Is this the #4?” and show it to the young woman standing next to me. A small sharp nod. All is well. Another contact moment.

Photos: Day 15: local wanderings

chinaho — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 20:55:00 GMT

scenes, community, alleys, merchants

15th Day in China: Bad Air, Good Day

chinaho — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 19:20:00 GMT

The day begins with the bad air headache, windows closed, yet a good sleep. It is obvious that people here have accommodated the shifting quality of the air they breathe, just as they accommodate the smell of sewage, the new towering buildings and disintegrating neighborhood streets. So we learn to put aside our Western images of how buildings or shops ought to look, and continue to wander the neighborhoods all around campus. When we show images to, or ask questions of, the students they have not seen these places. Many of them are here from other parts of China and they stay on campus, or within the area that the circles of their social activities take them.

Today was warm, and the families are on campus. Even with the bad air (I am wearing a mask) even the smallest children are out, unprotected. People on motor bikes and bicycles tend to wear masks more than others do. After morning studio time, we head out to explore an area that we only glimpsed from the bus as we returned from downtown yesterday. We walk down a formal divided road with the most organized plantings, all the way to the even bigger elevated road. Under the road overpass on one side is a public park area, seating and spaces organized for play and visiting, and a planted waterway along the side. Incredibly wonderful in some ways, this area is also coated in dirt on every surface. Families are indeed here, one parent reading a newspaper, a child holding on to the bench and jumping up and down. On the other side of the road we are walking is the parking and a public restroom. We proceed past this into another alley populated with a string of tiny eateries on both sides, along with garbage collection piles. This alleyway leads to another main road, with bodywork shops, a metalwork shop, more eateries intermingled, and an intriguing stairway leading up the hill behind. Laundry is hanging on a line strung between the trees across the divided road. There are people all over here, working, backing cars up along the sidewalk to get to the body shop, and laundry hanging, even shoes propped up to dry.

We decide to retrace our steps and try one of the eateries. Our criteria: there is no garbage dump immediately next door, there are pictures of food in which we can see some vegetables, and the clincher- there is a table of young women already there. So we use our phone dictionary and show the word vegetable and vegetarian. The woman, who is clearly in charge along with her husband who is in the back room cooking, nods, smiles and in Chinese tells us that she can offer us all kinds of good things, and shows us a multi-page menu, no pictures. So I pull out my phone again, and look up the photos I took of the meal we had for lunch yesterday. Okay! She disappears into the kitchen and we sit down. This is made to order food, and we wait while a few other dishes appear for the girls. Then our cabbage arrives (with lots of pork rind – a kind of translucent sliced bacon). Next comes the homestyle tofu dish – beautiful with peppers and carrots and a few bits of pork (for flavor no doubt). Rice and beer and we have a most wonderful meal for about $5. The girls loan us their bottle opener, and a driver of a van pulls up, says “hello” and then parks his van and comes in. He hovers at our table, peers at our tofu smiling, and I show him the word “vegetarian” to which he smiles even more, nodding. He sits in the next room and we watch the woman grab a live fish from a bucket and carry it into the kitchen. It will be his lunch.

From there we return to the shopping area we know, passing a sweet plant market on the way. Rob is on a mission to help me find some clothing, since I’ve been hankering after the lightweight loose linen/cotton style I see around me here. Eileen Fisher stand back! The tiny shops mostly carry similar items, and the girls working are very encouraging, “Try” they say. I look diligently. Shopping is not my pleasure, but with Rob by my side, I can tolerate a certain amount of it. To my surprise, I find a dress and over-wrap that makes sense to me. Then we go to the art supply store on campus to buy Rob’s paper, and I see clothing there too. A dress is particularly interesting – homemade, no label. I try it on and it fits! So I approach with the question, is it for sale? No. But she can make me one, in a different fabric. 200 Yuan (about $34). Then she tells me to go upstairs, among the linens for paintings and rice papers for calligraphy, and find fabric I like. So I do, and when I bring it to her, she changes her mind and sells me the dress. It took 4 different students in the store to help with the communication, and even then it was amazing we figured it out.

We are using the most basic activities to peel off the first few layers of this place and feel the genuine life here. Of course we are staying in a “fancy” hotel in a “public park” of a campus. That, in and of itself, separates us. We stop and look at the clothing hanging in the alley, with the older woman and her sewing machine right there. No sense of design, and fabrics of any old kind of material, turned into blouses, dresses, little pouches, shopping bags. We’ve seen her there day after day, sewing. We’d love to buy something but cannot. The materials feel like polyester, or of such garish color combinations, and in fact, are made slapdash. This is not unlike some of the student works. Earnest and intent, but messy. Rob encourages them to hone their skills, mind the quality of the craft, but that is not where their attention goes, except for a couple.

Yet we speak to each other of how little we can rely on what we think here. Rob’s translator for the lecture mentioned the complexity of translating from the Western words to the Asian mind. “Asian mind” has come up several times. The questions and responses that echo back to us seem at times to reflect a completely different conceptual orientation. I cannot say that this is more or less functional, or valuable. I can only pry open my own patterns of thought to make new spaces. It is like absorbing meaning in poetry, or from any art form really, in that specificity is present but not a defining or limiting feature. We accept the situation that both parties in these interactions may turn aside scratching their heads in an effort to make sense of it. It is frustrating for Rob in his teaching role, since he so wants to communicate what he has brought to offer the students, but he is also witnessing what they are getting from him, and of course, it is not always aligned with what he thinks he is teaching. Some of it is the mere fact that he stays with them throughout the working period, that he meets with them one-on-one and discusses their ideas, that he will sometimes make work right alongside them.

Our evening ended with a nearly disastrous noodle dinner, again requesting vegetable and ending up with “special beef noodle dish” with an egg in it. Luckily the broth was actually good, the noodles, also, and there were a few pieces of bok choy and dry mushroom in it. The beef was minor, and easy to avoid. We then went to the grocery store and bought tiny speakers for Rob to play music in class. 39 Yuan got us the better of the two cheapest sets. We chose it after amusing the clerk by plugging in the shelf model of both and trying them! What will the kids make of this? After silent classes, they will have Stee Winwood, Led Zepplin, Ali Farka Toure, Neil Young, Nora Jones and BB King, and who knows what will happen?

We are aware that our time here is like the movement towards fall, ever shortening now. Checking the weather for the week, planning how the class will go, thinking about lengths of time for assignments, and seeing this as our last whole weekend in Hangzhou. Next weekend we will go to Suzhou on our own, by train. Then it is our final week. Our treasures come in small ways. I’ve been hand washing our clothes nearly every day, hanging our drying clothes in the room where the staff has shown us, by moving our hangers the first day from where we put them to where they dry better. We are learning about generosity and graciousness in so many ways.

Photos: Downtown Hangzhou: Wu Hill & West Lake

chinaho — Sun, 19 Apr 2015 16:40:00 GMT

Wushan Square, Wu Hill, West Lake, Crowds

3 Busy Days, 12-15, Downtown Hangzhou

chinaho — Sun, 19 Apr 2015 16:15:00 GMT

The public lecture on American Sculpture was well attended. From the number of cell phones out taking pictures of the images, it seemed there was real interest or at least curiosity about some of the art. The relaxed atmosphere at dinner afterwards was delightful, all enhanced by the translations offered by the young woman who had been by Rob’s side throughout the lecture. She had studied in London, and had only been in Hangzhou for two weeks herself, so she was also enjoying the company, talk of art and slightly spicy food. We walked “home” together in the same direction, as she and her boyfriend are living in the apartment complex past the big grocery. He is a freelance cartoon illustrator. She comes from the North of China, he is Cantonese, from the South. Rob spotted a frog heading out towards the road and immediately picked it up and put it on the grass in the direction of the water. Our companion couldn’t get over that. She admits that she eats all kinds of animals, but is quite squeamish over live frogs and mice.

The students had a serious critique on their first sculptures. Rob mentioned that there was much agreement on what might need doing to strengthen the works, but little energy put towards making those changes. He later asked that they spend time over the weekend on this, and he will take final photographs of the works on Monday. They then set about starting on the second assignment, one that investigates the relationships of form that can emerge from a single piece of stiff paper, when scored, cut, folded, propped, and otherwise manipulated. So far it seems the students are engaged and coming up with interesting experiments. Once these basic principles are explored, a larger scale will be produced.

Air quality changes quite a bit here. On bad air days we can feel a dry burning sensation as we breathe. I begin with a headache almost immediately. I can taste it and smell it, a chemical overtone, while Rob tends to feel constriction in his lungs. I bought a local cloth face mask, which comes with 2 removable filters that screen out the PM2.5AQI. We have an app on our global phone that monitors this, along with PM10AQI, Ozone AQI, Nitrogen Dioxide, Sulphur Dioxide and Carbon Monoxide. There have been bad Nitrogen Dioxide days when the PM2.5 was moderate. But lately it is unhealthy range PM2.5. This is a step higher than “unhealthy for sensitive people.” There are two other ratings even more hazardous which we have not yet encountered. This real-time air quality index is available through aqicn.org for China, available worldwide if you check for your local city. It’s strange to walk around in a mask, but we do see others doing it, and I feel a distinct difference when wearing it. Today, I even closed our windows and am wearing it inside, as I woke up with the headache, and it is definitely in the “unhealthy” range.

We made our way into Hangzhou downtown on the #4 bus on Saturday, getting out at the original campus of the China Academy of Art. The place is more austere, with one open gate, and several locked ones. This inner sanctum of art education in the heart of the ancient city has a groomed and elegant quality, and though the large buildings are dimly lit inside, they have presence. We tried to get in to the art museum that obviously has entrances on the inner campus, but all doors were padlocked until we literally walked out the security gate and entered from the street. The exhibition was 100 years of Ling Feng Mian, the “father of modern art education” in China. Two large halls were filled with chronological narratives by other artists, describing his youth, his early study in Paris, his break with tradition, his trouble with authorities, his rising above all that and becoming the venerated artist/educator. Stylized paintings portrayed the styles of painting from early times through the beginnings of modern techniques. It was an interesting combination of historical story telling, a history of Western influence on Chinese painters, and also just the way this concept was portrayed. We didn’t see any work by Ling Feng Mian, also known as Feng Ming. That in itself was interesting.

The next part of our wanderings took us to Wushan Square, the new open market area at the foot of Wu Hill. We interacted with vendors, bought some tea, and some polished targa nuts, which we picked out as rough shapes, and the merchant ground off the outer layers to show beautiful patterns and colors. From there, we took on the “historical” area that is set up like a gigantic tourist mall of shops, reminding us of pedestrian shopping areas anywhere really. Discovering the authentic from the mimics was hard enough. Here a man beating silver into bracelets, there a man grinding and sanding horn into combs but what is sold next to them could be plastic. Escaping the fray, we tucked into a tea shop that had beautiful tea cups in the windows. The ones that attracted us were 1800 Yuan, so we turned to look at others, and ended up buying two cups and sitting for a pouring of a 20-year aged black tea. Each pouring brings out different tones in the leaves. Strong, bold at first, becomes delicate floral by the 4^th pour, and in the 6^th it is an aura of rose petals, which was where we left it.

Enticed up the hill towards a towering temple, called City God Temple, we climbed stairs, and wound around the hill until we came to the ticket booth. Nope, not doing that for a Temple built to the City God in recent decades, so we continued wandering in the direction of signs for a “vegetarian restaurant.” It is hard to describe how there began to be these areas of tables under umbrellas crowded and boisterously active with older people, families, card playing men and women, gender separated, with their own snacks, and clearly many people who had acquired restaurant food of all types, but from where? We saw no servers, no central hub. Some of the food was clearly vegetable, where others were whole fish or meat bones in piles. We found a Temple to the Medicine God (a huge gilded male figure originally provided by two wealthy doctors several centuries ago), and then another lovely courtyard drew us in (where a grandfather was sweetly being led about by a darling little child). Leaving there by a side door we were in another eating area. This time we saw people bringing out food, and clearing away food, so we took two tea cups and a thermos of hot water and sat down with a found menu. Rob used his amazing scanning app (only available to us because we are using a stealth program for our VPN) and we were able to find sweet and sour cabbage and a home made tofu dish. What a great meal in an amazing place.

We are both struck by the social nature of life here. The crowded tables are active and vibrant groups of people eating, playing cards, talking and engaged with each other. Ages range from mostly middle age to much older, some young families or several grandparents with grandchildren in tow. They are there for a long time, eating and playing and sharing the day. All over this hill are settings where people are jammed in, gathering and sharing. The feeling of it is warm and collective, no sense that they mind bumping elbows or sitting cheek by jowl. The crowds down in the marketplace are similar. Crowds crossing intersections, crowds in the Apple Store (the largest one in Asia, I was told by a local), and crowds waiting for buses. Crowds walking along West Lake paths, which we would enjoy in a solitary way, but these are clearly not solitary people. Relishing the group, playing to the crowds, interacting and enjoying the place as it is, populated. Women seem to dress up more for this, and certainly the photographing of self and others never stops. It wears us out a bit, but we sit on a bench to watch it all a minute.

West Lake is body of water that has been maintained as a municipal treasure, so there is no fishing or swimming in it. Ringed by hills that are traversed by myriad paths, among which are hidden many special gardens, Temples, and pagodas, this area is considered to be one of “the most beautiful places on earth” according to Marco Polo. On a bad air day, in Saturday crowds, he might not have felt the same way, but with a little imagination we can easily see where he got that idea.

Photos: Day 10-11 Puzzling Pieces

chinaho — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 12:15:00 GMT

walk on the wild side, West Lake, country dinner