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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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The beginning of Songzhuang started in the late 1980s at Yuanmingyuan, from 1994 many artists moved here, 2005-2006 the village attracted much attention from the international media, now here habits about 3,000 artists.

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Art studio with workshop as neighbour

798 Space, with Mao time’s Slogan

Photos on show

A Japanese restaurant, 100yuan/person (12USD), ‘all you can eat’, but the service was not so good, you need some patience to wait at the second course, and some of the dish was out of stock, as they would very politely tell you they buy for you in the steet…

This is our first Modern art photo, with a signature probably something like ‘P.P.H.’, if someone would consider to buy it…

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A statue of Mao and Marx.

Inside 798 Space

Art Exibition, or contemporaty art.

Mao’s slogan is still overhead.

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