Martijn de Waal

In the spring of 2004, TimeZone8 published this book on Factory 798, an artist enclave in an old Bauhaus-industrial complex near Beijings 4th ringroad. I contributed an article about the symbolic status of the Chinese Cities and its art districts.

Not long after the revolution of 1949, partyleader Mao and then mayor of Beijing Peng Zhen climbed the rostrum of Tiananmen square and gazed at the horizon of the city that now was theirs to transform. Imagine, the chairman had pronounced with great enthusiasm. ‘We’ll see a forest of chimneys from here!’ The city, in the eyes of the communists was an ugly place. A capitalist stronghold, whose inhabitants pursued decadent bourgeois lifestyles. That, they decided had to change. Cities would no longer be places of consumption. They would be turned into places for the new working class. As cathedrals for the new era, factories with their tall chimneys would be erected all over the city. As a matter of fact, they would hardly remain cities at all. The society would be organized in small autarkic units. Each factory would be its own microcosmos, a place – usually a walled compound – where the proletarians worked, lived, ate, recreated, loved, and participated in party activities . In theory there hardly was any need to leave one’s own danwei (work unit). Thus the city, that ugly site of consumerism, would dissolve in a fragmented pattern of very loosely connected places of production.

Now the tide has turned once again. In grand redevelopment schemes Chinese cities are quickly becoming nodes in a globalized consumer society. In the post-Mao era the industry is moved out of the city to outer laying areas. New industries are concentrated in the so called development zones. Large plots of land inside the city are being redeveloped. The cityscape is turned upside down. Old buildings are being demolished. City-planners and urban developers are weaving a new fabric of broad boulevards aligned with modern buildings. Of development zones and suburban settlements. Of new highways, airports and busy shopping malls.

On my last trip to China, I encountered two different visions on this new urban china. The first I found in a pack of postcards that I bought on the observation desk of the Shun Hing Square in southern Shenzhen, with its 386 vertical meters the 6th tallest building in the world. It was a vision that neatly coincided with the city’s newly minted official slogan: Welcome to Shenzhen, marvelous city of joy.

The representational space of the postcard was evenly divided between the skyline of the city and the modern means of transportation. The background shows a dense constellation of rectangular and soft colored buildings. Low, with a high density on the right. Higher and more outspoken in architectural design on the left. It is immediately clear: this is a city where people do not earn their living in dirty industry, but with the white collar work of the lucrative service sector.

The foreground was completely taken up by a grand clover leaf of a highway intersection. The shoulders of the freeway were turned into lush parks, painted dark green, with small trees, planted in a orderly and regular pattern. The roads were dotted with exactly so many cars, that it was obvious that this was an affluent city, whose inhabitants could afford to own their automobiles. This without causing the ills of modernity such as traffic jams and constipated highways that would deter the quality of living.

It is a powerful vision of the city that is represented here. An almost utopian tribute to new modernity that China awaits now that the country has opened up. After decades of urban decay and negligence, the city will be revolutionized, modernized and once again rise as the center of Chinese culture and commerce. This is how at the beginning of the new century Shenzhen – and possibly the whole of China – likes to represent itself: urban, energetic, striving forwards, modern, willing to succeed.

A second vision on the new urban China I found while leafing through the in flight magazines on a domestic flight within China. It included a large array of advertisements for new living communities. They carried melodious sounding names, such as Venice Water Townhouses, Beijing Gold Island Garden, Moonriver Resort Condo or Merlin Champagne Town. Some of these showed the lavishly decorated insides of the urban towers presented on the Shenzhen postcard. But most promised a totally different vision of the city. Or rather of an anti-city, that resembled American style suburbs. Themed single family houses were dispersed in a very low density through rolling green fields. Walking paths would meander along romantic canals. In one example a European style windmill functioned as the identity marker for the small community. Also these pictures had an almost utopian promise. They showed a gentle country land, lush as in a Roman elegy. They did not promise the dynamic of city life, but presented themselves as quiet havens where all is at peace. A refuge from an implied overcrowded city. It is a vision that can also be found on large billboards in cities like Shanghai and Beijing.

What struck me was that neither of these visions include references to the past half century. The new China seems to be a tabula rasa, optimists would argue, a place were utopian cities can be constructed out of nothing. Or, according to critics, a mere export zone for the sterile western concepts of the horizontal and vertical: the skyscraper and the gated suburb.

In both cases, the chimneys, that Mao and mayor Peng were hopefully anticipating, and effectively built, have been erased from these visions of the new urban China.

This brings us to an important question. What to do with the old factories? Will they all be knocked down, to make room for new developments, be it postcard style modern glass pastel colored boxes, or deluxe themed suburbs?

Learning from Shanghai
The free markets generally don’t diddle over historic sites; they demolish, they drive fresh piles and churn out glossy towers; they especially do not diddle when the site in question does not possess the hallmarks of the “genuinely historic”, when there is no fear that a bit of tradition may be expunged. A fairly savage horde, to be sure, that razes to the ground all that does not yield profit, or the hope of profit (the speculative kind), the sort of short-sighted endeavors that often leave a trail of JunkSpace — as the dutch architect Rem Koolhaas terms the environs of such structures left to languish in obsolescence and disuse once the brief cycle of their opportunistic existence has passed.
In a small museum at the Shanghai Bund the capitalistic West is reproached for doing exactly this. ‘Since the fifties’, it reads on a small sign accompanying a series of pictures of a yet untouched pre-1990 Shanghai skyline, ‘in the west many historical buildings have been torn down to make place for modern buildings. But here in Shanghai the historic architecture of the Bund is preserved.’ The implied message of course is: see how the communist party has been able to prevent the creative destruction of capitalism and cares for the historic heritage.

The sign of course must have been painted before the start of the nineties, before Shanghai started rebuilding itself on a large scale. It is estimated that since the mid-nineties in almost two thirds of the city the old houses are torn down and rebuild by developers. More than a million people have been displaced by this gigantic operation. Yet save the objections of a handful of mostly foreign expats, there were hardly any complaints about the loss of historic architecture. ‘The Chinese have built, destroyed, and rebuilt their cities for thousands of years’, writes Ian Buruma. ‘What matters is not the actual age of a building but the location. A new temple on an ancient site is considered old or at least historical, it is the association, the genius loci that counts.’ Or, as a local – expat – architecture critic has told me: ‘the drive to modernize is so enormous that it overwhelms the notion of historic preservation.’ Developers and buyers are longing for a vision of the city that corresponds with the Shenzhen-postcard. They want to build a new society, a modern place, preferably from scratch. ‘We don’t care about history’, a young collage graduate told me once. ‘Here in China right now, we are making history.’

There are however signs that this might be changing. A recent Shanghai redevelopment project included the site where in the 1920s the communist party was founded. Not only the house in which the first clandestine meetings were held was preserved, but also a small neighbourhood, built in the Shikumen style was singled out to be saved from the demolition hammers. A handful of streets were refurbished and turned into the small shopping district of Xintiandi, featuring modern western and Japanese stores and a boutique hotel decorated in a mix of historic and modern styles.

At first sight the rediscovering of the old Shanghai ‘main street’, seems related to similar developments in America and Europe. There long forgotten old harbor fronts or historic down town streets are being refurbished, and turned into fashionable shopping districts. Critics often reject them as sell-outs. They are inauthentic fakes, simulacra, the argument goes, build by clever developers to comfort nostalgic minds longing for a past that once was. Modern consumeristic values are repackaged and sold as historic. They evoke feelings of old fashioned communities that no longer exist, just to boost sales of multinational chain stores. ‘What concerns me is … [that] illusion is preferred over reality to the point where the replica is accepted as genuine and the simulacrum replaces the source’, writes Ada Louise Huxtable in The Unreal America . Surrogate experience and surrogate environments have become the American way of life. ‘Distincitons are no longer made between the real and the false; the edge usually goes to the latter, as an improved version with defects corrected – accessible and user-friendly. … The Magic kingdom has become an urban design model.’

On a second look however, it seems these critiques of Disneyfication and false historcism cannot be applied to Shanghai. Xintiandi was turned into a popular shopping district, not because it revoked an historic idealized version of Shanghai. It became a trendy destination because in the first place it was a modern place. It succesfully repackaged and resold the historic buildings as a modern shopping district. It proved how the old can fashionable, how it can be the next new new thing. It proved that old buildings can be preserved without breaking the modern self-image of the new Chinese city. The Shanghainese do not like Xientiandi because the buildings reminded them of a happy past that was gone. They liked them because it proved they lived in a modern city, with modern shops, cafes and restaurants. It promises not a return to a happy past, but shows the way to an affluent future. It proves that historic sites could be incorporated in the Shenzhen-postcard vision of the city, by even making it more modern.

Beijing Bobo
Their is a tradition in Beijing of artists looking up each other. There is a history of creative minds building a small community to exchange ideas, of an avant garde, sharing a living and working space, to reflect and critique contemporary society. The emergence of Factory 798 can be understood in this tradition. There is however something different this time.

In the early nineties a small number of art communities existed in and around Beijing. One of the first of these settlements was the community near the old imperial Summer Palace. There, on the margin of the city, artists turned a number of old run down houses into their work space.

Black and white photo’s from those days show a young bohemian crowd, not unlike photo’s made at the Haight-Ashbury in the seventies. We see young people in bare or sparsely furnished living quarters. An old mattress, a half broken chair, an old table is usually all the material comfort there is. This is where we see them painting, sleeping, drinking, smoking and throwing parties. We see them even burning their art on the occasion of a special performance event. These artists lived both literally and figuratively on the fringe of society. They produced a discourse that was excluded from the official public sphere. They made art that almost nobody outside their own circle was interested in, so they might as well feed it to the flames.

This, now, is changing. In the process of the opening up of China, artists slowly gained more freedom to express themselves. Also their work gained international recognition and has been shown on exhibitions all over the world. Even within China in the last few years their art has been receipted more favorable. From the outer margins of society they slowly moved to a more central position in the national public sphere. As artists, as commentators on the fast developing urban life, as producers for an international art market.
The geographical position of the new artist community at factory 798 illustrates this process. This time the artists didn’t pick a site at the fringe of the city. They are back in town. And what a position they have claimed for themselves! Right in the middle of one of the fastest developing axis in Beijing: the corridor between Beijing’s embassy quarter, the international business district and the international airport. They moved – again both literally and metaphorically – towards the center of the Chinese society.

It is exactly this geographical central location that threatens the existence of Factory 798 as a center of art. While the Airport Expressway-axis is being developed further, it is foreseeable that pressure will rise to demolish the chimney’s and convert the old factory sites into either the landscape of the Shenzhen postcard, or into the suburban themed villages in the ads of the in flight magazines.

And while the artist community is under threat once more, it might be ironic however to note that in other parts of the world an opposite trend can be seen. At this point in time in Amsterdam a new prestigious development is being carried out around the southern part of the Ringway, close to the Amsterdam airport express way. It is called the Zuid As, or southern axis. With its new glass towers and emerging sky scraping structures, it doesn’t differ much from the Shenzhen-postcard model. At the time of writing banks and other big international companies are opening new prestigious offices.

But – and here is the big difference – policy makers in the Amsterdam city council are trying not only to attract Fortune 500-companies. They are doing their best to also develop cultural zones within this district. The city of Amsterdam even tried to move the Stedelijk Museum, the most prestigious museum of contemporary art in the Netherlands to a new location on the Zuid As. This is the idea: a museum or other cultural sight, could give a development like this a heart. An identity. Something that distinguishes it from all the other office developments around the world.

But there is even a larger factor at work here. The presence of a cultural base can be an important factor to attract the economic heavy weights. As Richard Florida has pointed out in his book The rise of the creative class economic growth becomes more and more linked with the rise of a new class of professionals: the creative class – designers, lawyers, scientist, mutual fund caretakers, artists, advertising agents, architects, engineers, managers, industrial inventors, software writers, etc. According to Florida, the working class and the people working in the service industry are primarily paid to execute to plan. It is people in the creative class that make the plans. The dealer in the service industry sells a new car, the workers build it, but it is the creative class that has designed it, and added the largest economic value.
This creative class is picky in deciding where to settle. They hold individuality, self-expression and openness in high esteem, rather than conformity and ‘fitting in’ . In order to attract them a city needs to offer a right mix of amenities. To build traditional places of culture such as the opera or a theater is to miss the point. This new class is attracted by a mix of bohemian values and more bourgeois comfort. Bobo’s they are often called, short for bourgeois-bohemiens. These people feel attracted to underground art and counterculture. They are part of the global economy, but also follow its development critically. They like Prada and underground punk rock. They visit Starbucks and art exhibits in squats.

Will this theory hold in the emergent Chinese urban culture, that comes from such as different history? It is too early to tell. But the rise of a creative class could turn out to be an important stimulus for China. It could even mean a shift in mentality of the global production chain. Right now creatives and managers are designing new technologies and building brands in the U.S. They hire coordinators in Hong Kong and outsource production in China.

Could it be possible for Beijing to reverse this process? To become not only a target for production and consumption of ideas and technologies designed elsewhere? To become a true global metropolis and attract its own creative industry. To truly become be a center of creative design?

In order to do so, the city needs to attract the new creative class. In the middle of all these new axis and zones of development, a demand will rise for places that will give them an identity. That will function both as places of inspiration and as a refuge. That are a combination of underground breeding grounds and of advanced consumer culture. Where one can indulge in designer coffee as a symbol of modern urban lifestyle and at the same time reflect upon these developments. That at the same time embraces the new consumer culture and critiques it. In Beijing, at the site of Factory 798, such a place already exists. And it has even grown there organically.

798

A symbol for modern China.

Let’s take a step back. Before looking ahead in the future, let’s have a look at the status and the function of the Factory 798-site at present day. Which of the above possibilities are already present?

On a cold winter morning, when I visited the 798-premises, I was brutally refused admission by two security guards at the entrance of Space 798. Come back at a later time, they told me. Why, they couldn’t say.

But it did not take long to find out. While I was drinking a hot coffee in one of the cafes on the site, a motorcade of long black limousines passed by the window. They were followed by a small minivan, in which a handful of western men were seated, with notepads and pens in their hands. A few women were carrying camera’s. Against the backdrop of the decaying buildings and the leaking pipelines, these luxury cars seemed slightly out of place. Then I noted that all the cars were carrying a small Swiss flag. I realized that this must be the Swiss president, who during those days was on an official state visit to China.
It was of course not unusual for factory 798 to host foreign head of states. Already at the opening ceremony the East-German leader Erich Honecker was present. At that time, the factory was a symbol for the new revolutionary China. Where modern technology and state of the art architecture preluded the era of the Chinese proletariat. It often had seen foreign delegations who came to praise the workers or admire their machinery.

But unlike his predecessors the Swiss president did not come to the factory to meet the workers or learn about the technology that is still produced at the site. He came to visit the artists in their workshops and to attend the exhibitions in the galleries. He wanted to see how the country had opened up. He came to see how the artists reflected on the country’s turbulent change. How the artists had claimed their space in the new society. How a new creative class was rising. How a showcase and a market for modern art was emerging.

And if the Swiss president has walked around long enough, he could have seen how at factory 798 both the old and the new China are present. The chimney’s, some of them still emitting thick white smoke, evoke a vision of an industrialized communist era. The modernistic Bauhaus architecture reminds visitors of the once strong ties between communist brother countries, China and the East German Democratic Republic. Even at present day, in one of the large halls, workers are still casting communist style statues of national hero’s and leaders, boldly and confidently looking ahead to a brilliant future. A giant Mao, molded out of plaster, leans against one of the back walls.

A couple of blocks away the new China presents itself. Inside the Bauhaus-shaped buildings, there are newly remodeled designer-restaurants, featuring pizza and cafe lattes. Commercial sings for imported lifestyle-beers point to a night club that prides itself to be located in the ‘Soho of Beijing’, ‘in a former factory now converted into a giant art mall.’ Inside the art-mall and galleries, old slogans once again revoke the old Chinese society. It reads: ‘Chairman Mao is the red sun that shines in our hearts.’ Underneath, there is an exhibition of modern art that critiques the new consumer society while at the same time being part of it.

In short, the Swiss president visited the factory because it had once again become a symbol. An emblem that both looked ahead to a new future, while at the same time reminding visitors of the past. A place that was both modern and post-modern. A place that celebrated the new consumer society, while at the same time reflecting on it. And a site that provided the city with a new cultural identity. In its short existence as an art center, Factory 798 has grown into an icon for the new modern urban China.