Happy 2008! one world dream?

Long awaited 2008 is finally here! now the countdown to the "One World. One Dream." Beijing Olympics is underway in a whole new way. I flew back from Shanghai last night and (because my flight was delayed) went straight to a dinner at Wei's house. What a treat--salad with roasted beets, eggplant puree, beef with lemon and mint sauce and tangyuan for dessert. We ate and drank and watched bad Chinese TV while counting down the hours until we finally all raised our glasses one by one as our individual cell phones struck midnight, which curiously, ended up being several minutes apart. I guess I never realized that there is no satellite time here beamed to cell phones, we all just set the phones ourselves and so each of us were living on different time, as it were. A funny proposition when you think that all of China is living under the singular time zone of "beijing time".

Despite the frigid temperatures, it is nice to be back in Beijing. Meetings with Gao Shiming in Hangzhou were productive and Shanghai as well. I got to meet up with some other artists based at the Academy--Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi--and those temporarily visiting for teaching--Yang Zhenzhong and Chen Shaoxiong. Saw/met/taught/talked to Gao's first year curating students about curating and museum practice for 3 hours one afternoon. I spoke mostly about my experience working at the Asian Art Museum in SF for several years, about institutional practices in the States, funding issues, the pitfalls of culturally specific museums in America and so on. At the end, one of the first questions from a student was: "你是从哪一个国家？”or "What county are you from?" My standard answer "America" was then followed up by "Are you Native American?". Jeez. I get asked a lot of things living here in China--my salary, cost of my home in Oakland, where I studied Chinese, etc--but most often about my identity. I think this was the first time someone thought I was Native American!

On the night of the 28th I took the train to Shanghai and had 2 full days there of meeting artists and seeing what shows I could (there wasn't much because it is wintertime). My hope of seeing Zhang Huan's huge factory were dashed as he is swamped working on upcoming solo show so that will have to wait until after I get back from States in late Feb. Went to a festive annual New Year's party at BizArt which, it seemed, the entire Shanghai art scene attended. Everyone was there with kids in tow playing games like limbo and tug of war, giving out gifts, not to mention karaoke singing, and later on, poker. Kind of nice to see the entire Shanghai art scene like one big family hanging out together...that sort of thing just doesn't happen in Beijing. things here are too disparate or politically divided or something.