First there was Yuanmingyuan, then Songzhuang and later, the 798 Art Zone. As urbanization spreads, artists'villages are being forced to newer locations. Zhu Linyong reportsYi Ling, 49, widely acknowledged as head of the Yuanmingyuan Artists' Village of the early 1990s, Links of london Discount likens artists to nomads. "They are always hunting for new pastures to satisfy their hunger for inner peace, personal freedom, and a sense of achievement," says Yi who has witnessed the dramatic turns in the development of China's artists' villages.In 1983, the self-taught writer and artist quit his job at a textile factory in suburban Shanghai, to embark on "a journey without a clear destination", that lasted five years.
He traveled to many parts of the country, with help from warm-hearted strangers, wrote a stack of diaries, and produced numerous sketches of the nation's ethnic groups scattered all along the route - from Shanghai to Yunnan, and from Sichuan to the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region."Doing something unusual offered an alternative for young men like me to affirm that life was meaningful," explains Yi, who failed the national college entrance exam but refused to be called a loser.Yi ended up settling at Beijing's northwest corner near Yuanmingyuan, the ruins of the Links of london UK Old Summer Palace in 1988.While doing odd jobs to support himself, Yi joined art classes, attended guest lectures at Peking and Tsinghua universities, and read every book on art that he could find.
"The 1980s was an exciting time in China," Yi says. The end of the chaotic "cultural revolution" (1966-76) and the beginning of reforms opened the door to a whole new era.Like Yi, an estimated 400 to 500 young people - mainly painters, poets and rock musicians - came from all parts of the country to settle in villages near Yuanmingyuan, leaving behind their families."They attracted huge attention with their bohemian lifestyles," recalls Yi, who first painted on cheap, rough paper, and later, on wooden dippers he bought from the ethnic Miao people of Guizhou."The artists' village opened up the possibility of finding like-minded people, cheap and Aerowatch Replica Watches quiet living, and a gentrified camaraderie", says Yang Yingshi, a Beijing-based researcher of contemporary Chinese art.It threw up some big names such as Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, and Yang Shaobin, whose commercial successes have garnered huge attention.
However, life was hard for most artists. "If we compare the group of artists to a pyramid, the well-known and successful ones were but the handful occupying the tip," says artist Wang Qiuren, an early inhabitant of the Yuanmingyuan Artists' Village.