Take it as a fun place for half day shopping, or maybe just a visit to a museum, but not as a serious real antique shopping place, especially when you were told that the stuff you are staring at is from Song or Tang Dynasty…and if you really want to buy it, they will have a story on it, the only thing you can rely on is your own sharp eyes.

The market sells almost anything you can imagine, from the big vase to menus of old cameras, or personal letters, even old private diary, it could be roughly categoried into: porcelain, jade or gem, furnitures, wooden carving, clock (watch), stamps, coins, painting(mostly Chinese paintings), second hand books, newspaper and magezines, old photos (sometime you can find old family album), collections from the Cultural Revolution (Mao’s red books, notebooks, posters, bags)… all of the above could be: seemingly very old or authentic stuff, replica, or just today’s handicraft work. The price may vary a lot from just 10 to several hundres or thousands yuan.

Photos from the market:

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Click here for more informaton about Jingyuan.

And here is their official website.

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798 Art Zone, is a part of Dashanzi in the Chaoyang District of Beijing that houses a thriving artist community, among 50-year old decommissioned military factory buildings of unique architectural style. It is often compared with New York’s Greenwich Village or SoHo, but faces impending destruction from the forces driving Beijing’s urban sprawl.

The area is often called the 798 Art District or Factory 798 although technically, Factory 798 is only one of several structures within a complex formerly known as Joint Factory 718.

Through word-of-mouth, artists and designers started trickling in, attracted to the vast cathedral-like spaces. Despite the lack of any conscious aesthetic in the Bauhaus-inspired style, which grounded architectural beauty in practical, industrial function, the swooping arcs and soaring chimneys had an uplifting effect on modern eyes, a sort of post-industrial chic. At the artists’ requests, workers renovating the spaces preserved the prominent Maoist slogans on the arches, adding a touch of ironic “Mao kitsch” to the place.

In the days of Joint Factory 718, Dashanzi was chosen for its peripheral position well outside the city center. The artists who later moved there were coming from the edges of the city as well. Today however, the area sits right on the strategic corridor between the Capital Airport and downtown Beijing along the Airport Expressway.

History:

The Dashanzi factory complex began as an extension of the “Socialist Unification Plan” of military-industrial cooperation between the Soviet Union and the newly-formed People’s Republic of China. By 1951, 156 “joint factory” projects had been realized under that agreement, part of the government’s first Five-Year Plan. However the People’s Liberation Army still had a dire need of modern electronic components, which were produced in only two of the joint factories. The Russians were unwilling to undertake an additional project at the time, and suggested that a turn to East Germany from which much of the Soviet Union’s electronics equipment was imported. So at the request of then-Premier Zhou Enlai, scientists and engineers joined the first Chinese trade delegation to East Germany in 1951, visiting a dozen factories. The project was greenlighted in early 1952 and a Chinese preparatory group was sent to East Berlin to prepare design plans. This project, which was to be the largest by East Germany in China, was then informally known as Project 157.

The architectural plans were left to the Germans, who chose a functional Bauhaus-influenced design over the more ornamental Soviet stylet. The plans, where form follows function, called for large indoor spaces designed to let the maximum amount of natural light into the workplace. Arch-supported sections of the ceiling would curve upwards then fall diagonally along the high slanted banks or windows; this pattern would be repeated several times in the larger rooms, giving the roof its characteristic sawtooth-like appearance. Despite Beijing’s northern location, the windows were all to face north because the light from that direction would cast fewer shadows.

The chosen location was a 640,000 square metres area in Dashanzi, then a low-lying patch of farmland northeast of Beijing. The complex was to occupy 500,000 square metres, 370,000 of which were allocated to living quarters. It was officially named Joint Factory 718, following the government’s method of naming military factories starting with the number 7. Fully funded by the Chinese side, the initial budget was enormous for the times: 9 million rubles or approximately 140 million RMB (US$17 million) at today’s rates; actual costs were 147 million RMB.

Ground was broken in April 1954. Construction was marked by disagreements between the Chinese, Soviet and German experts, which led at one point to a six-month postponement of the project. Communications expert Wang Zheng, head of Communications Industry in the Chinese Ministry of National Defense and supporter the East German bid from the start, ruled in favor of the Germans for this particular factory.

At the height of the construction effort, more than 100 East German foreign experts worked on the project. The resources of as many as 22 of their factories supplied the construction; at the same time, supply delays were caused by the Soviet Red Army’s tremendous drain on East Germany’s industrial production. The equipment was transported directly through the Soviet Union via the Trans-Siberian railway, and a 15 km track of railroad between Beijing Railway Station and Dongjiao Station was built especially to service the factory.

Joint Factory 718 began production in 1957, amid a grandiose opening ceremony and display of Communist brotherhood between China and East Germany, attended by high officials of both countries.

The factory quickly established a reputation for itself as one of the best in China. Through its several danwei or “work units”, it offered considerable social benefits to its 10,000-20,000 workers, especially considering the relative poverty of the country during such periods as the Great Leap Forward. The factory boasted, among others:

* the best housing available to workers in Beijing, providing fully furnished rooms to whole families for less than 1/30 of the workers’ income;
* diverse extracurricular activities such as social and sporting events, dancing, swimming, and training classes;
* its own athletics, soccer, basketball and volleyball teams for men and women, ranked among the best in inter-factory competitions;
* a brigade of German-made motorcycles, performing races and stunt demonstrations;
* an orchestra that played not only revolutionary hymns, but also German-influenced classical Western music;
* literary clubs and publications, and a library furnished with Chinese and foreign (German) books;
* Jiuxianqiao hospital, featuring German equipment and offering the most advanced dental facilities in China.

Workers’ skills were honed by frequent personnel exchanges, internships and training in cooperation with East Germany. Different incentives kept motivation high, such as rewards systems and “model worker” distinctions. At the same time, political activities such as Maoism study workshops kept the workers in line with Communist Party of China doctrine. During the Cultural revolution, propaganda slogans for Mao Zedong Thought were painted on the ceiling arches in bright red characters (where they remain today at the latter tenants’ request).

Frequent VIP visits contributed to the festive atmosphere. Notable guests included Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, and Kim Il-Sung.

The Joint Factory produced a wide variety of military and civilian equipment. Civilian production included acoustic equipment for Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium and Great Hall of the People, as well as all the loudspeakers on Tiananmen Square and Chang’an Avenue. Military components were also exported to China’s Communist allies, and helped establish North Korea’s wireless electronics industry.

After 10 years of operation, Joint Factory 718 was split into more manageable components, such as sub-Factories 706, 707, 751, 761, 797 and 798.

However, the factory came under pressure during Deng Xiaoping’s reforms of the 1980s. Deprived of governmental support like many state-owned enterprises, it underwent a gradual decline and was eventually rendered obsolete. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, most sub-factories had ceased production, 60% of the workers had been laid off, and the remains of the management were reconstituted as a real-estate operation called “Seven-Star Huadian Science and Technology Group”, charged with overseeing the industrial park and finding tenants for the abandoned buildings.

From 1990s

The Dashanzi factory complex was vacated at around the time when most of Beijing’s contemporary artist community was looking for a new home. Avant-garde art being frowned upon by the government, the community had traditionally existed on the fringes of the city. From 1984 to 1993, they worked in run-down houses near the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) in northwestern Beijing, until their eviction. They had then moved to the eastern Tongxian County (now Tongzhou District), more than an hour’s drive from the city center.

In 2001, Mr. Tabata Yukihito from Japan’s Tokyo Gallery set up Beijing Tokyo Art Projects (BTAP, 北京东京艺术工程) inside a 400-m2 division of Factory 798′s main area; this was the first renovated space featuring the high arched ceilings that would become synonymous with the Art District. BTAP’s 2002 opening exhibition “Beijing Afloat” (curator: Feng Boyi), drew a crowd of over 1,000 people and marked the beginning of the popular infatuation with the area.

In 2002, designer artist Huang Rui (黄锐) and hutong photographer Xu Yong (徐勇) set up the 798 Space gallery (时态空间) next to BTAP. With its cavernous 1200-m2 floor and multiple-arched ceilings at the center of Factory 798, it was and still is the symbolic center of the whole district. (Huang and Xu since designed at least seven spaces in the area and became the prime movers and de facto spokespersons of the District.) A glass-fronted café was set up in the former office section at the back of the 798 space, opening into a back alley now lined with studios and restaurants such as Huang’s own At Café, and Cang Xin’s 6 Sichuan restaurant, the area’s “canteen”.

The first Beijing Biennale was held in September 18, 2003 at the Art District and featured 14 exhibitions. “Tui-Transfiguration” (curator: Wu Hung; tui here roughly means moult) featured photographs by East Village chronicler Rong Rong (荣荣) and his wife, Japan-born Inri (映里). Their works notably featured their own naked bodies in various strange locales, and were generally well-received despite being criticized by some as typical of the self-centered nature of much art in the area.

The first Dashanzi International Art Festival, directed by the ever-present Huang Rui, was held from April 24 to May 23, 2004. This first edition, named Radiance and Resonance/Signals of Time (光音 / 光阴), was beset by logistical problems arising from landowner Seven-Star Group’s increasing irritation with the art community. As such, the festival became as much a public protest against the area’s upcoming destruction that a showcase of art itself.

What’s behind?

In keeping with the area’s “community spirit”, most galleries and spaces in Dashanzi do not charge either exhibitors or visitors. Instead, they generally sustain themselves by hosting profitable fashion shows and corporate events.

As such, Dashanzi is now a center of Beijing’s nascent “BoBo” (bourgeois-bohemian) community. Huang Rui and Xu Yong are good representatives of the type. And a local guru of sorts is artist/curator/architect Ai Weiwei (艾未未), whose self-designed house in Caochangdi just outside the factory complex was a trendsetter. True to BoBo style, he is an icon of consumerism as much as counterculture, working with Herzog & de Meuron on the design of the Beijing National Stadium.

In the absence of any rent control, tenants’ costs have escalated. In 2000-2001, rents were 0.8 RMB per square metre per day (24 RMB or US$2.90/m2/month, or about US$0.27/sq.foot/month). They increased slightly to 30 RMB/m2/month in 2003, and then doubled to 60 RMB/m2/month (US$0.67/sq.foot/month) in 2004. Total costs can be quite high considering the average 200-400 m2 area of the spaces, and the overhead of renovating and retrofitting the rooms to use modern appliances.

In 2004, Seven-Star Group froze the rental of new spaces and prohibited all renewals. Tenants resorted to subdividing and subleasing their spaces, to which the Group responded by attempting to forbid subleasing to cultural organizations or to foreigners, hoping to drive out the artists. Tenants, despite some of them having leases still valid for several years, were given the ultimatum of December 31, 2005 to vacate the premises.

But by the end of 2007 it was decided that the area would continue in its current format of a special art zone. In 2009, the area has been refurbished and is thriving. The roads have been repaved, new galleries have opened, and a cafe culture is emerging.

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From: Entry of 798 at Wiki
More photos of the area: http://www.panoramio.com/user/2157121/tags/798
Official website of 798: http://www.798art.org/index.html

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Nanluoguxiang Hutong

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This is a model of the Beijing Olympic Park.

A view to the south west of the Game Park.

A view to the North.

Street view to the north, the end of the viewpoint is the hill where is a ideal spot for over looking.

A birdview of the Game Park, on the top of the hill.

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The wood was abundant in South-east Asia, including China, in pre-Christian times and first became popular during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476BC). Its next resurgence was when it was widely sought and used by the imperial family of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). So high was the family’s demand that it took only a few years for red sandalwood trees to disappear from China.

By the way, this wood is steel-like heavy, and if you put it into the water, it will sink.

Its scarcity saw it take on the mantle of “precious” in the mid-Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), when all ranks of officials collected it in tribute to the imperial city. The main parts of the Forbidden City and its furniture are made of sandalwood.

The China Red Sandalwood Museum is the first and largest private museum in China specialized in collecting, researching and displaying red sandalwood works of art and connoisseurship of classical furniture.

There are items without parallel anywhere in the world — full-size furniture, scale reproductions of temple corner-towers and siheyuan (courtyards), magnificent gilded screens and thrones, cabinets, Buddha niches, mirrors, artifacts by the dozen and even superb unused samples of red sandalwood and other woods such as ebony, poplar, boxwood, mahogany and the extraordinary Dalbergia oderifera (ghost eyes) that also feature in the exhibition’s finished pieces. Amazingly, there are no nails or screws whatever in the elaborate 1/25-scale four-corner watchtower from the Forbidden City.

Among them, the most beautiful exhibit is a stunning set of 12 red sandalwood screens entitled Riverside Scene During the Qingming Festival, carvings that replicate a famous painting with the same title by Zhang Zedyab during the Song Dynasty (960-1127). The huge screens, five times the size of Zhang’s original, collectively weigh almost 5,400kg. It took 500 artisans eight months to complete the work.

All the museum’s exhibits are constructed at its workshop in Dahuangzhuang Road, Chaoyang District. Craftsmen first select best-quality sandalwood which, after careful drying, is carved, engraved and polished. A sandalwood screen with a dragon motif can take 100 craftsmen three years to finish.

The China Red Sandalwood Museum covers 9,569 square meters, and comprises a central hall; huge, three floors of airy exhibition halls; a sales department and ancillary rooms.

Something about the owner, Chan, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, is one of China’s most remarkable and successful businesswomen. Born of a noble family of Manchu nationality, she was greatly influenced by the traditions of Chinese culture during her childhood. She was particularly fond of two sandalwood cabinets owned by her family. During the cultural revolution, her family hid them in the Summer Palace for protection.

Further Information:

You can take photos only at the designated exhibits.
website: www.redsandalwood.com

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A copy of traditional courtyard house in the Olympic Park.

Linglong Tower was the boardcasting tower for the game, it is about 132 meters high.

Bird Nest, offically as National Stadium. A panaroma view of its inside you can find Here.

Fencing Hall of National Convention Center, as we can konw from its name, it is transforming into a convention place.

Some more Chinese element.

A view to the Olympic Forest Park, it is very huge, take a tour of it on foot is impossible, it is free to visit, electric vehicles provided at the south part of the park, ticket costs 20 yuan.

A photo of the lake and the hill. The hill locates at the axis of Beijing as well, I am going to climb up that hill, but how to get across the water is a problem, I have to go right from here, and it takes quite a long distance before I found a bridge.

A View to the north part of this park, it is too big, cannot go that far.

A View of the lake.

A view to the Bird Nest and Linglong Tower.

The best way to visit here is subway, you can transfer from Beitucheng Station on Line 10 to the Olympic Branch, there are only 3 stops on this line:

1. Aoting Zhongxin Station (if you want to take pictures all the way from the entrance to the north), you will need to get off at this stop.
2. Olympic Park Station, drop you off just in the center of the main venues, very close to the Water Cube, and the Bird Nest.
3. Olympic Forest Station, that is the end of this line, drop you off at the entrance of the Olympic Forest Park, the park is free to visit, closed at 5 PM.

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There is the biggest domestic casting iron sculpture, artificial tropical banyan forest, water-eroded cave, Panlong Waterfall, rock pictures and supernatural wood of Alishan in the North Garden. There is national museum, Sculpture Square and over 20 national villages in the South Garden. All buildings adopt the proportion of 1:1.

While visiting the national villages, visitors can enjoy the waterfall, floating clouds and bonfire at grassland, they can take a view of the scenic spots of China without going out of Beijing and appreciate and participate in the song and dance, festival celebrations, production and customs of various nationalities. From various sports and performances, visitors can enjoy the distinctive culture and art of Chinese people.

Bus Route: Bus No.55, 386, 407, 740, 804, 819, 849, 921, 941 or 944 to Beichen Road Stop or Qijahuozi Stop

Opening Hours: 8:30 – 17:30
(The South Garden is closed from every December to March of the next year).

Admission Fee: RMB 90 Yuan

Tel: 8610-62063647; 8610-62063646

http://www.emuseum.org.cn/eindex.htm

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Its main production was gas distilled from the coal,the gas from this plant goes to Beijing through the pipe system, which saved a lot of pollution downtown, and its byproducts was fuel for Beijing Steel Corporation (首钢 ShouGang).

From 16th July of 2006, the plant was shut down, and moved to another City Tangshan, and after a diversification of the workers, now the challange is how to deal with this mammoth ? First plan was easy: just tear down everything, and after two office buildings were blowed up, more research founds that the best way is to preserve the whole complex, turn it into a Industry Relics Park.

Now from 10th to 24th of Oct., 6 out of more 50 cantidate plans was selected out, and waiting to be polled at Beijing City Planning Exihibation Hall.

And the new No.7 subway is going to pass by here as well.

There is a detail report on this here.
And a website of The Hansa Cokung Plant and Duisburg Nord Landscape Park.

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For a panorama view of the construction of the Olympic stadium, click more

A panaroma view of the Bird Nest and the Water Cube…

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