Mongolian sartorialists and military simplicity in an avant-garde collection

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An encounter with Beijing’s taxi drivers before the Olympics, a dialogue peppered with many anecdotes and personal life experiences; a view from lower down, from a travelling car’s window, to face the latest dream of today’s China. 
The taxi drivers’ world as seen through the camera lens is an entire universe, a life spent within a car’s narrow confines, but it is also a view of what they themselves glimpse snippets of reality on which they reflect and find their own interpretations of. The eye follows the images on the windows a screen on which daily life and changes are reflected.

Here’s a short preview:

]]> http://www.alessandrodetoni.net/2012/04/02/beijing-taxi/feed/ 0 http://www.alessandrodetoni.net/2012/04/02/daode-documentary-project/ http://www.alessandrodetoni.net/2012/04/02/daode-documentary-project/#comments Mon, 02 Apr 2012 11:35:34 +0000 admin http://www.alessandrodetoni.net/?p=128

Synopsis

The film tells the story of a pure man’s achievements. Guoqing arrives in Italy on a personal mission to spread in Europe the ancient tradition of Chinese reflexology. He pursues his aims by a strict discipline and a simple life. As a taoist monk of the old times, “he knows the Path” and his life itself embodies the principles of Chinese medicine: body’s health relies on a physical and psychological harmony which can be achieved only by a daily discipline. Guoqing works hard to build his balance, in the same way as the therapy he practices and the knowledge he spreads aim to bring harmony and balance in his patients’ body.
Guoqing lives under the guidance of firm principles, and free from the distractions and the complexity of the world, that often appears foreign and inconsistent.
In his daily medical practice this complexity turns out to be the inner cause of illness, the key factor which prevents body from following its natural path to health. In spite of this, creating simplicity in a world which is often unavoidably complex remains an impossible challenge for most of the people, and Guoqing’s path toward the achievement of self-realization, both in Italy and in China, is a journey taken in solitude.
The knowledge of the way and the virtue, which means to respect what is necessary to do, is the only way to reach one’s aim and it’s also secret of a healthy life.

Structure

Guoqing, physician and immigrant: in its first part, the documentary tells about his medical practice, his ups and downs, joyful and hard times. By dint of his hands’ strength, his convictions’ firmness, his every-day life’s discipline, he succeeds in getting the residence permit. The voice-over of his close friend Alessandro dots the story, marking its turning points till the regularization of his staying and his return to China.
The documentary begins when Guoqing is getting a good reputation. His clients are increasing. Reflexology is being appreciated. Money is no more a problem. It seems that the residence permit is the only thing missing. Meanwhile Alessandro’s voice-over runs again over Guoqing’s journey and over their friendship’s story. After much suffering, Guoqing gets the permit. He has been able to build every thing all alone, with his thin body and his strong hands.
The time has arrived to go back to China, to greet his family and to Lhasa, to thank the monk who predicted his future in Italy.

In the second part of the documentary, the story-teller’s voice is that of Guoqing himself. He thinks over the experiences and the meetings that brought him to find his balance in a foreign environment. The images show his return to Tianjin, his home-town. It’s the first time after five years spent in Italy. At the railway station, in the midst of an alien crowd, Guoqing faces the shock of a changed reality: a thick number of new skyscrapers stands out, beyond the Haihe river, surrounding what remains of the former Italian concession, full of his childhood memories.
He meets the old mother; he’s welcomed warmly by relatives and friends alike. He has come home as a winner. Invited to dinners and suppers, he shares a life from which he had emancipated himself, which had left behind since long. He can’t really take part in the leisure hours, around a table, in the comforts and the safety feelings of his friends now, as well as he couldn’t at the time when he decided to desert them to test himself out in Europe.
He’s not going to stop in Tianjin. This is only a leg of his journey, a tribute to his beloved ones and to his own past.
While in Italy, he was able to achieve his professional aims; now he feels it’s time to do something for his own spirit.
He leaves home, comforts, safety, once more, to realize his personal dream.
He sets out toward Lhasa and the mountains of Tibet, far away from everything, close to the source of wisdom which supported and still supports him, in his journey.
The people he meets in this new leg of journey, stir up memories of the past experience in Italy. Gouqing’s voice tells how he became an emigrant out of choice and not out of necessity. He recalls Italian friends and discloses his deep beliefs; he weighs how far he’s now from his country and from his past, as well.
Under the blue sky of the Tibetan plateau, Guoqing pushes his way through the pilgrims’ crowd, climbing all alone the stairs of the Palace of Potala.

Notes of direction

The film macrostructure is made of two symmetric parts: a first part in Italy, and a second part in China.
In the first part, Guoqing’s life in Milan is commented on by Alessandro’s voice.
In the second part, taking place in China, Guoqing himself provides the voice-over. He recalls his family life before emigration and his Italian experience.
The voice-over and the images do not correspond directly: the voice doesn’t describe the scenes, rather it relates to their meaning references, which are made outspoken.
The voice function is more a connotative than a denotative one.
The symmetric structure of the documentary corresponds to the protagonist’s inner balance. It works both with the moral-tale approach of the film, and with the parallel between Guoqing’s life and the reflexology’s principles.
The point of view of the documentary coincides with that of Alessandro, the first voice-over and the second leading actor. His outlook is that of a westerner, who is certainly sympathetic but, at the same time, is unable to get rid completely of his own skepticism. Sometimes the fact that is impossible for Alessandro to comply entirely with his Chinese friend’s firm beliefs, breeds an ironical distance.
Such a perspective implies a movement of approaching and of departing between Alessandro and Guoqing, between the film and his hero. This allows to vary the narrative tone, from drama to comedy.
The visual approach is based on the “scene” (Guoqing at his client’s; G. on the mountains, G. talking with Alessandro) shot in a way similar to that of a direct movie: hand camera, closeness to the filmed subjects, camera’s invisibility.
The default situation lies in the dynamics of the relationship between Guoqing and Alessandro: the first, intent on showing “the way and the virtue”, mainly setting himself the example; the second, both actor and narrator, both involved and detached, implicitly acting as a mediator, as far as the audience is concerned.

Guoqing’s introduction to Chinese reflexology, a brief introduction about Chinese reflexology by Dr. Li Guoqing

“Sire, I am from the other country. We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun […] The districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of diverse feelings that one encounters by chance in everyday life.”
Ivan Chtcheglov

Urban wonderlands 

How many times while wandering in the city we discover unusual places, surreal corners of reality, weird combination of past and future, old memories side by side with modern buildings, abandoned monuments along with brand-new residential areas.
As Alice in Wonderland we often cross the thin border of a dreamy world, as if we passed through the doors of different and far dimensions. Everyday life is so quick paced and distracted that we can’t even notice the environment we move through. But Alice can. She’s able to stop the frenzied rhythm of daily routines and to look at the world as it unveils itself to the eyes of a stranger. Through her eyes, the city becomes the playground of imagination and the exploration of the city becomes an aesthetic and anthropological experience.

Urban visions and architectures tell us the contrast between different worlds of significance, show us the physical oxymorons made by time and development.

We seek an exploration of the city which is concerned about architecture and anthropology, about buildings and human landscapes living inside and around them.
The aesthetic of urban spaces and the psychogeographic observation tell us about dreams, contradictions, life, change, about the transformative relation between man and his environment, about individual and society.

Our visual project

Following the clear eyes and the voice of a child, just like Carroll’s Alice, we aim to build a series of 5’ portraits of urban districts whose focus is a new way of observing and experiencing the city. It’s all about sensing places, shapes, lines, people as if it’s the first time, like lettrist psychogeography used to do in search of the emotional effects of the environment.

Each episode describes a district, a corner of the city, a discovery which goes beyond the narrow visual field of everyday itinerary. Experimental music along with Alice’s candid voice guide us to the suburbs of perception, to a kind of oneiric vision of places where time, life, thoughts, ideals, problems, assume the consistency of buildings, squares, parks, residential and commercial areas.

Milan is our starting point, an economic capital city with a fuzzy architectural identity which embodies the élan toward development and prosperity as well as the contradictions of a metropolis. But the project aims to involve more cities, to push our audience to help us producing imaginative journeys, dreamy portraits of their own environment wherever in the world they live.

We’d like to spread a new way of observing the city, we propose an encounter between urban geography and inner feelings, places and imagination. It’s an experiment we’re involved in but we’d love to share it with a broader community, therefore video-makers, visual researchers, architects, musicians, are welcome to contact us, to join us, to share visions and to submit materials for online publication.

To watch all the videos, visit: https://vimeo.com/channels/aliceinthecity

Nestled in a wood, Liyang Library is a corner of peace in a small village of Huairou, on the outskirts of Beijing, just two hours away from the capital’s busy urban life.

Designed by Li Xiaodong Studio, the library is a modern complement to a countryside village. In a booming country where rural life often means backwardness, lack of cultural resources and invasive agriculture, the idea of building a small reading place in such a setting, has the clear programmatic purpose to revitalize the idea of countryside itself.

The library is not located in the village center, but a five minute walk away, which brings you to a site nearby the mountains. While you leave the village behind, you someway also leave behind the daily routines of rural work, you clear your thoughts and you find the time to admire the surrounding beauty.

The building blends into the landscape through the delicate choice of materials and the careful placement of the building volume. The entire structure is covered in the same firewood local villagers pile around their houses and use to fuel their cooking stoves.

The inside of the building has a very expressive character; its interior is spatially diverse by using steps and small level changes to create distinct places. It frames views towards the surrounding landscape and acts as an embracing shelter. The building is fully glazed to allow for a fully daylight space.

Itʼs a very good example of a new Chinese identity in architecture, which beyond the madness of national monumental projects, focuses on a reconciliation between contemporary design and the value of harmony in traditional culture.

Architect: Li Xiaodong Atelier

Location: Jiaojiehe Village, Huairou County, Beijing

Floor area: 175 m2 client: Jiaojiehe Village

construction period: Mar 2011 – Oct 2011

Construction cost: RMB1050,000

Commissioning Donors: Luke Him Sau Charitable Trust and Pan Xi

Lin Tianmiao’s presents a thread-covered apocalypse at Beijing BCA

European luxury and traditional Chinese craftsmanship in a Shanghai boutique

In 1998, when I came to study in China for the first time, I felt a little bit lost in translation. At that time, my guides to the Beijing experience were “Gubo” and “Palanka”, two Canadian guys who were the main characters of an 80s Chinese textbook, named “Practical Chinese Reader”. Thanks to them, I learned to go to the Fragrant Hills on the outskirt of Beijing to see the “wonder” of autumnal red leaves, I got my kaoya at the oldest and worst serviced Quanjude in town, I learned how to say “four modernizations” before being capable to say “how do you do”. Anyway, what Gubo and Palanka never told me was that one of the most typical delicacies of the capital is a 56% vol. spirit which tastes like metal scraps. A schoolmate and I soon discovered this precious elixir: Hongxing Erguotou. After a day of intensive individual Chinese lessons, we used to spend the evening chatting and drinking a small bottle of Erguotou. When the bottle was emptied, we had the ritual to light it up and check for how long the blue flame could last… If I remember well, the record was around 60”.

Back to nowadays, I recently found a box of a Erguotou in the hallway of my office. Although Baidu.baike, the Chinese Wikipedia, describes it as “rich and mellow, with a silky fragrance”, this pure, transparent, 56% vol. potion usually doesn’t suit foreigners’ taste. When I kindly ask a colleague if they’re arranging a mass suicide ritual, he kindly informs me that in the warehouse everybody really appreciate Erguotou, apparently it’s awesome to clean cables. Obviously my colleagues – who haven’t neither had the privilege to know Gubo and Palanka – don’t even know that RED STAR Erguotou is part of Beijing history!

Red Star Erguotou is one of the Chinese “old trademarks”, usually called a laozihao, which means a well-known brand with a strong tradition of excellence behind. Erguotou is a kind of baijiu, a distilled liquor and a common lubricant of relationship building in China, which is mainly made from sorghum. It’s a typical product from Beijing but it’s also widespread all across China and its production dates back to the Yuan dynasty (around 1680).

RED STAR was founded in May 1949 and it was the first brewery created by the Chinese Central Tax Office. RED STAR’s birth is closely related with the foundation of the People Republic of China – if you prefer “Red China” – and the bottle of RED STAR erguotou itself can be considered a kind of revolutionary icon: the alcohol of the People, the national brand, a tradition of excellence brought to the industrial productions by the working class for the working class (a 500ml bottle is priced 5-7 yuan, when a 330ml Coke is 3 yuan). Nowadays, you can find it almost everywhere in the capital: convenient stores, groceries, supermarkets, restaurants. A “xiao’er” is the small bottle, a “da’er” (da = big) is the 500ml one. Otherwise, real aficionados call it “small consolation” or “big consolation”, referring to its “medicinal” properties.

Since the product can be considered a national heritage, It also had to face the threat of fakes. As for its luxury brothers Maotai and Wuliangye (the two most upscale spirits in China), outside of Beijing you can never tell if you’re drinking a real or a fake bottle. An old man once showed me the trick to check the authenticity of a bottle of RED STAR erguotou. On the cap there’s a drawing of Qianmen Gate (also called Zhengyangmen, is an old city gate in Tian’anmen Square) on a yellow background, if by heating the cap with a lighter the black lines fade into the yellow background, then you have a real bottle of RED STAR in your hands!

RED STAR’s biggest challenge though, was not the proliferation of fakes. Since the flooding of new products and foreign brands, the last two decades have put in danger the predominance of old traditional trademarks. The laozihao are most of the times unable to rebrand themselves, to renovate their storytelling and to add some sparks of vitality to a tradition which is risking to relegate products to the role of dusty icons of the past. Although urban consumers might still weigh the importance of tradition, they’re also lured by contemporary communication strategies, captivating packaging, new slogans and new media. The appealing of a tradition is often overshadowed by competitors and new-comers, by means of better branding and more effective storytelling. Wealthy Chinese classes drink XO, fuerdai mix Chivas with green tea and RED STAR erguotou risk to become more and more a drink for poor people, old beijingers, foreigners’ one-time-only experience of Chinese edible oddities.

Apparently at Red Star, they became aware of that, and recently a new bottle of Erguotou made its appearance on the shelves. I know all Beijing’s hardcore fans will be against this last piece of tradition torn down, but at least in terms of packaging, I think at RED STAR they know what they’re doing. The new design is clean, simple, transparent and pure as only pure baijiu can be, and… a big revolutionary red star shines on the frontside of the bottle. Not any Chinese fret or flying phoenix in the graphics, but a contemporary identity, which at the same time recalls the spirit of chairman Mao: he personally supported the foundation of RED STAR because he wanted good baijiu to be affordable for every Chinese family. While icons of old communist China fade away, nowadays a lot of consumers have a vein of nostalgia for the old times, when life was simple, people were honest, and the revolutionary spirit was pure. It happens for the elders who have been living in Mao’s era, but also for the post 80s, who often dig in their childhood memories to find peace from the frenzy of booming metropolis.

RED STAR ERGUOTOU’s new packaging adapts the iconic elements of the product’s traditional identity to consumers’ demand for a new experience, for new shapes and contemporary aesthetics (for the first time, the English brand name is visible in striking Impact font). Theoretically this blend seems successful, but only time will tell if the new packaging will become as iconic as the old “xiao’er” among future generations of drinkers.

The new version is less alcoholic (only 43% vol!) and therefore probably bearable for a broader audience – 150ml bottle. The “xiao’er”, the old 100ml, 56% vol.

BRAGGING TIP: When you drive around Dawang Rd, in CBD (the main financial district in Beijing), and you want to brag about your knowledge of the capital, you can tell friends and clients: “You see there, this place once was named Bawangfen and RED STAR BREWERIES used to be there, decades before these skyscrapers were built!”

Wang Wei, chairman of the Chinese Museum of Finance, wrote: “In a society with an authoritarian political system, monopolistic business environment, backward-looking culture and prevalent technology theft, talking about a master of innovation? Not a chance! Don’t even think about it.” Lee Kaifu, former head of Google China and founder of a start-up incubator called Innovation Works, said: “It’s not that Chinese are not smart or don’t have the potential (to become Steve Jobs). Look at Jerry Yang of Yahoo and Steve Chen of YouTube” (Both were born in Taiwan and immigrated to the US at young ages!). Chen Zhiwu, a finance professor at Yale University tweeted: “the first thing the teachers do (in China) is to rub down the edges of those students who are different from the crowd.” Chinese scholar Wu Jiaxiang wrote: “If Apple is a fruit on a tree, its branches are the freedom to think and create, and its root is constitutional democracy,” and again “An authoritarian nation may be able to build huge projects collectively but will never be able to produce science and technology giants.”

While I was pondering about creativity, paradigm breaking thinkers and the bindings of a society where the individual is often a potential threat to collective harmony (the infamous “river crab”), I bumped into a passage of “Family”, a novel written in 1933 by Ba Jin, widely considered one of the most important Chinese writer of the 20th century. For some aspects I find its story very modern. As it happens in contemporary Chinese education system, kids are trained since their early stage of life to conform to a model, instead of getting capable to criticize it and develop their own identity.

The Family focuses on three brothers from the Gao family, Juexin, Juemin and Juehui, and their struggles with the oppressive autocracy of their family. The idealistic, rash Juehui, the youngest brother, is the main protagonist, and he is frequently contrasted with the weak eldest brother Juexin, who gives in to the demands from his grandfather and carries on living a life he does not want to live.:

“为什么你们都不说话？……你们，你们都该诅咒！”众人惊讶地望着他，不知道他为什么缘故大叫。 

　　“为什么要诅咒我们？”觉民阖了书温和地问：“我们跟你一样，都在这个大家庭里面讨生活。” 

　 　“就是因为这个缘故！”觉慧依旧愤恨地说。“你们总是忍受，你们一点也不反抗。你们究竟要忍受多久？你们口里说反对旧家庭，实际上你们却拥护旧家庭。你 们的思想是新的，你们的行为却是旧的。你们没有胆量！……你们是矛盾的，你们都是矛盾的！”这时候他忘记了他自己也是矛盾的。 

　　“三弟，平静 点，你这样吵又有什么好处？做事情总要慢慢地来，”觉民依旧温和地说，“你一个人又能够做什么？你应该晓得大家庭制度的存在有它的经济的和社会的背景。” 后一句话是他刚才在杂志上看见的，他很自然地把它说了出来。他又加上一句：“我们的痛苦不见得就比你的小。” 

“Why doesn’t anyone speak up? …you should all curse this kind of life!” The audience stared at him, shocked, they didn’t understand why he was screaming like that.

“Why should you swear at us?” said Jue Ming closing the book, and he quietly added: “We’re like you, we just try to go through in this big family”

“That’s the thing which makes me swear!” said Jue Hui still full of resentment. “You always swallow, you never rise up. How long this is gonna last? You speak about rising against the old family patterns, but in reality you do support them. Your way of thinking is new, but on the contrary your behavior is old. You have no guts! …you are a contradiction, you live in a contradiction!” At this point he forgot being himself in a contradiction.

“Younger brother, calm down, what is the purpose of quarreling like this? Every thing has to be done step by step” Jue Ming still calmly said, “What can you do about it all by yourself? You should know that the big family system has its roots in the economic and social background” He had just read this very last sentence on a magazine and he spontaneously said it out. He then said: “Our sorrow is not smaller than yours”. 

I think that culturally speaking, we sometimes can still consider China as a big oppressive and autocratic family, where individual thinking is often seen as an unacceptable threat to status quo.

The national museum, one of the main building on Tian’anmen square has re-opened its doors after 4 years of renovation. Its total floor space is around 200,000sqm, over 3 times more than the Louvre. In the frame of a bilateral cooperation between Germany and China, for the grand opening almost 600 art pieces have been transferred from three major German museums. The theme of the exhibition is the Age of Enlightenment… or in Kant’s words “Mankind’s final coming of age, the emancipation of the human consciousness from an immature state of ignorance and error”… now in Beijing, at China National Museum!

I was working for a sponsor of the exhibition, and since I was helping for the video coverage of the opening, I was there with a German client. When we got to the entrance hall, a bust of Kant welcomed us with the motto of Enlightenment: “Have courage to use your own understanding”. My client felt a little puzzled: “use your own understanding??? I thought we were in China?!” Actually me too I was a bit surprised myself, I rather expected something about harmonious enlightenment, harmony through knowledge, joyous society etc. Anyway, I told him that in China, when you talk about Art, there’s more freedom than in other domains, probably because the message conveyed is not so obvious as it is in other media, and for a Chinese common visitor is not so immediate to switch from the philosophical perspective of Enlightenment to the political implications for nowadays China.

During the pre-opening, we saw hundreds of faces seamed by years of hard work, people from the countryside and from the city’s lower classes. These are the usual visitors who join tours organized by local party committees and the first ones to pay their tribute to all the symbols of Communist China (the posh/wannabe crowd prefers a Martini in 798 instead of Mao’s stuffed corpse). Honestly, in those visitors eyes I could hardly see any concern about the incoherence between Enlightenment message and Chinese regime…

Then the press conference came: all the usual blabla about intercultural love and friendship, and the announcement of a series of cultural dialogues between East and West, which will be side events of the main exhibition. By the end of the conference, a journalist from German National tv asked the Chinese organizers how could a dialogue be possible when Chinese government put people under arrest for thought crimes and harshly limits citizens’ freedom. The reply was pretty simple and straightforward: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re sorry but we’ve run out of time and we have to close the press conference”. Disappointment, giggles, murmurings, everybody left the hall.

In the last few years, my overall opinion about Chinese leadership was positive. I’ve always been thinking that the way a country has to be governed depends on people’s level of education and ethical growth. When you educate a kid you can explain him why he should or shouldn’t do something, but you can only do that within the limit of his understanding. Whenever an explanation would exceed this limit or a situation of urgency or potential danger occurs, you need to be more authoritative and impose rules by means of a strong leadership. However, I believe that a benevolent leadership should protect people but at the same time educate them to protect themselves on their own, nurturing their knowledge, and providing them tools to have and use their own understanding, as Kant said. I feel that Chinese authoritarianism goes far beyond situations of emergency or situations beyond common citizens’ understanding, and at the same time, I can’t really see citizens’ emancipation as a Party’s main goal. On the contrary, when I heard the awkward reply during the exhibition’s press conference, when i think about CCTV faking news about Libya, when I know that my access to google is slow because someone is silently e stingily trying to limit my freedom of choice, well, I someway become blind to all the undeniable improvements the Party brought to common Chinese citizens’ life.

I feel that my idea of a long educational process, carefully leaded by the Party toward the possibility of a Chinese democracy, where people are able to do responsible choices, it’s just a personal utopia. When you come to facts instead of leaders’ statements, the ultimate goal is still controlling knowledge, preserving ignorance, easing rulers’ life, and once in a while throwing a sop to citizens. They say “It’s a process”, another political mantra like “harmonious society”.

Am I too critical and/or impatient?

PS: And now Ai Weiwei, one of the most brilliant Chinese artist and political activist, was arrested and now he’s missing.