798 and Dinner

It's been a beautiful two days in Beijing. The sky has been blue, the pollution low, and the temperature a comfortable 70 degrees, so we have really enjoyed being out and about in the city. The fact that half the population has left for the national holiday does not hurt either.


Yesterday we visited the 798 Art District. Housed in a decommissioned military factory complex located just off the Capital Airport Expressway, 798 艺术区 is Beijing's answer to Greenwich Village and Soho, but without soaring rents pushing the artists out of the neighborhood, and a ton of Bauhaus-style factory floors that have been converted into beautiful gallery and studio spaces. There's an eclectic mix of avante garde sculpture, photography, and painting now on display because of an art festival that will be running for about three months, so we got to see a lot of new and interesting art. Nothing I would want in my house, mind you, but we definitely saw some museum-quality pieces that I would not be surprised to find at MOMA. And as an added benefit, there was a complete dearth of snooty New Yorkers walking around trying to look effortlessly bohemian.

We also had dinner with some Chinese friends. Inevitably, the conversation turned to the more controversial topics of the day, including the One Child Policy and Falun Gong. We were surprised to discover that one of our friends is an illegal second child, kept off the books by a relative responsible for maintaining government records of child births. (It's almost like a title registry system.) They have heard the same stories we had of forced late-term abortions, and disagreed with the idea, but understood and did not complain about the notion of forced early-term abortions.

We also learned that a friend has a parent in the police force back home, who shared stories of Falun Gong. To the Chinese, Falun Gong members light themselves on fire in protest, withhold medical care from their children, and violently attack government facilities and personnel. As such, ordinary Chinese people are surprised when the West seeks to protect Falun Gong, since in their view the Falun Gong people are violent, irrational cult members. So we were left to wonder how much of their opinions were influenced by the local press and government, and how much is actually kept hidden from the West. Either way you slice it, however, torturing practitioners of any religion is not okay, cult or not.