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The National Art Museum of China, or NAMOC (Chinese: 中国美术馆) is located on 1 Wusi Ave, Dongcheng District of Beijing, People’s Republic of China. The construction was started in 1958 and finished in 1962. It is one of the Great Ten Constructions to mark the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China. Chairman Mao wrote the name of the museum.It has a total land area of 30,000 square meters. The museum has been renovated from May 2004 to January 2005, and has been added an additional area of 5,375 square meters.

Its permanent collection includes both ancient and contemporary Chinese artworks as well as notable Western artworks. Some of the collections are masterpieces from the late Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty (1368-1911). Most collections are modern and contemporary works, including masterpieces of renowned contemporary Chinese artists, award-winning works from major art exhibitions, and various folk works. The museum also collects hundreds of foreign works, including four oil Picassos.

Although the museum contains collection of imperial Chinese art, its main mission is to serve as a national level art museum dedicated to displaying, collecting and researching the modern and contemporary artistic works of China. It has a main building of four stories, 1st to 3rd being display area. There are a total of 21 exhibition halls at the museum.The annual average visitors numbers is one million.

Its collections are also divided into specific categories of:

* traditional Chinese painting,
* oil painting,
* print,
* sculpture,
* new year painting,
* traditional picture story,
* caricature,
* watercolor painting,
* lacquer,
* pottery, and
* costumes

Further Information:

Address: No.1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng District (Bus routes Nos. 101, 104 and 108, please get off at the station of art museum.)

Open: 9:00 — 16:00, closed on Monday

Tel: 8610-64017076, 8610-64012252

Website: www.namoc.org

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The Bronze Pavilion on the hill of the Summer Palace.

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By Xu Yong

Beijing Hutong 101 Photos has come out in two editions by now. This new edition involves a change in cover design and of the 83th photo as well as a further revision and partial re-translation of the English text. It has been almost 10 years since the publication of the first edition of this photo album. In this very period, the face of Beijing has changed a lot, from a traditional one to a modern one with up-to-date and probably distinguished features.To the accompaniment of mechanical noises of bulldozers, siheyuan (quadrangle) in hutongs (lanes) were reduced to rubble, which was carried by truck over to the suburbs for filling pits. According to statistcs, more than 1000 hutongs in Beijing have disappeared from 1989 to 1999. The number of hutongs in the real sense has been reduced from over 3000 before to some hundreds at present, and it has still been on the decrease. The album reflects what hutongs looked like 10 years ago and shows how I felt about the special culture and atmosphere of Beijing. And that feeling of mine still seems unchanged.I should be grateful to the readers for their attention and kindness to the album as well as to Zhejiang Photographic Press and Ms. Ge Weiwei, the editor.

Xu Yong, April 12, 1989

HutongAn expanse of Hutongs is again going to disappear in Beijing. One of them is called Xiaofangjia Hutong. Located in the east of the old urban district, some hundreds meters away from the Second Ring Road or the old city wall of the Old Beijing, it run from east to west, that is, it strectched from Xiaopaifang Hutong in the east zigzagging to Dafangjia Hutong in the west. It was 291 meters long and 5 meters wide, it met Xishuijing Hutong in the north. The door plates flanking the courtyards on both sides were numbered 1 to 39, and 2 to 22, skipping the 29 in between.In the Hutong, there were 312 households with a?? population of over 1000.In the carving up of Ming Dynasty, these Hutongs belonged to Huanghua Lane to the east of the Imperial City. On the northwest sectiong, there was a?? horticulture garden owned by a big family surnamed Fang. By the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the garden had fallen into disuse. But the name of Fangjia Garden has been kept to nowdays. Both the Xiaofangjia and the adjacent Dafangjia (small and big Fangs) Hutongs got their names on this account, though the former is only half the length of the later.

Like all other Hutongs in Beijing, the rise and decline of the Xiaofangjia Hutong are closely connected with the vicissitudes of Beijing. By the time i shot these pictures, it had become one of the extant hundreds of Hutongs in the city. Although there still remained the original gates, all the courtyards without exception were inhabited by several of scores of families. The elegant and magnificent courtyards that once enjoyed repute in northern China for centuries with its trellises, fish ponds and pomegranate trees had long disappeared.

On August 18, 2002, I photographed over one hundred residents of Xiaofangjia Hutongs as they freely formed different groups in a random manner. Each resident held a card with his/her name, date of birth and identification written on it. Two and half months later, the Xiaofangjia Hutong and scores of Hutongs in the vicinity disappeared from the map of Beijing.Hopefully this album may serve as a commemoration of the Xiaofangjia Hutong.

By Xu Yong. December 25, 2002

The new century will be here very soon. A few pictures in this photo album were taken only a couple of weeks ago. In recent years, for business reasons, I hardly had any time to concentrate myself on taking pictures. Therefore, I had to keep with me a ???foolproof??? camera in my handbag or car so
that I could occasionally take pictures of some daily things that attracted my attention and aroused my interest. All of the pictures included in this album are selected from what I took on my way to from work or during vacation from early 1995 until recently – scenes of urban life in Beijing.To those people who have lived in Beijing for a long time, these common scenes may have nothing special. Thanks to nearly two decades reform and opening-up, great changes have taken place to the city of Beijing and its people, and people???s?? horizon has been greatly broadened. People have been accustomed to those things that they might find strange a decade or two ago, and even face the strange without feeling strange, for they have grown more self-aware, tolerant and considerate. True it is ! At the turn of the new millennium, everyone, whether the Beijingers themselves or the outsiders who have observed Beijing for a long time, would have the unfeigned feeling that Beijing is becoming more and more colorful, and more and more attractive.What I did in this album was to present some fragmentary records of Beijing scenes at the end of the century from the perspective of an ordinary person in a calm mood.

Xu Yong, December 23, 2000

1954, Born in Shanghai
1978, Graduated from Luoyang Industrial College
1986, Graduated from Beijng Normal University, majoring in Chinese Literature
1990, his photo album – “Beijing Hutong 101 Photos” – was published
1992, his subsequent Native China series photo albums including “Lanes Collection”, “collection of Regions of Rivers and Lakes”, “Hutong Collection” and “Cave Collectiong” etc. were published
1996, he cooperated with 99 well-known contemporary writers and published “Hutong 99″ – a photo/essay album.
2001, he published “Beijing Unveiling” – a photo albumHe has held several exhibitions of his own works both at home and abroad. Many of his works have been collected by domestic and overseas organizations and individuals.
1990, his “Beijing Hutong 101 Photos” – a well-known work of contemporary photography, which has exerted extensive impact both at home and abroad.
1994, he initiated in Beijing the activity “To The Hutong”, which soon developed into a “Hutong Tour” sightseeing activity. Such effort drastically changed the idea that Hutong have become “useless junk” in the process of urban modernization and effectively promoted the publicity and protection of Hutongs in Beijing.
2002, as one of the pioneers of the Dashanzi Art District, he established 789 Space, the biggest art space in the area.

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Yang Xin is a painter who paints Beijing”s local culture. He was born in Beijing in 1962 and graduated from the Art Department of Heibei Normal University, major in oil painting. Now, he works as an editor and reporter for Beijing Youth Daily. In these years, he concentrats on the study of Beijing”s Hutong culture and history. He devotes himself to exploring, preserving and developing the local life and culture. He has published several painting books including “Reading Hutong”, “Old Trades of Beijing” and “Outside the Front Gate”. He has also held a number of his own art exhibitions.

My book “Read Hutong” has just been published with the fragrance of the ink. I expressed my feelings which accumulated in the last 40 years on Hutong in this book and thus to show my love on Hutong.Some people prefer the “Modern Art” and foreign art, and they think Hutong is just some worthless relics from several hundreds years ago. For many years, I always talk about hutong with friends about its past, present and future. I still hold traditional value of life since I have grown up in the Hutong. I miss Hutong very much not only for the reason that I grew up there but also it has showed me a mixture of the Hutong culture in ancient history with the culture in new century. those different sizes of door, compoung, door rings bring people happiness and also worries. If the nex generations point the photos and albums and ask us the Hutong that we live now, and how can we give them a real meaning of Hutong? Perhaps they will laugh at us if we are not able to five them a reasonable answer. The things we have experienced, missedfand gotten are relevant with these “broken bricks and poor tiles”. How to express the Hutong culture and life about natives in Beijing has always made me puzzle for a long time. When many friends in the Arts field realize that shey should find something from hutong culture, I suddenly find that Huong culuture will disappear with the orchestra for the new century. It makes me have the sense to pick up a pen and draw the Hutong natually.

Unprecedented changes have taken place in the pattern of this famous historical city of Beijing and the way of life of the people living in it. But there are more and more people who are beginning to seek the traces of the years gone by from among the splendor of the city in the modern times. The culture and arts of the particular Beijing flavor I fervently love and have painstaking pursued have aroused growing interests from a growing number of people and even from the whole globe – this is a message conveyed by both the exhibition of the 81 old Beijing photos brought to China by the Albert Kahn Museum of France and the host of best-selling publications that can be found everywhere in the city. The ceaseless and long-enduring pursuit and love for Beijing culture by Chinese and foreign personages have inspired creative passion and responsibility in me as a native of Beijing.

“Culture of particular Beijing flavor”, which people take delight in talking about, records the episodes of life that passed down in history in a gradual process of the development over the past nearly 1000 years and they can be recaptured systematically and carried forward only by careful sort-out. History advances, many things have become memory of the past. The number of people who experienced and knew about the past is becoming smaller and smaller. If the episodes are not recorded and sorted out in good time, they would drop out of the memory of the people for ever.

“Wedding sedan-chair rental”, “Water delivery house”, “Big saddle cart” and “Minor teahouse” – all these words sound very strange to modern people. But they were essential part of the life of the Yuan, Ming, Qing and National Repeblic periods. Many things could only be what were experienced by the fathers of our fathers and sound quite obscure, yet they still attract a large number of followers. What I am trying to do in writing the book “Old Trades of Beijing” is to systematically relive the past so that people would know and bear in mind the life of our ancestors.

But in what way can the charm of the culture of Beijing flavor be brought out to the full – that is what I have been seeking painstakingly from the very beginning. What art advocates for is beijng natural, realistic and true. Only by bringing out to the full contents, illustrating an idea, a feature and by developing a unique way of expression instead of following the beaten path, making things clear and accurate, is it possible to make it lovable and acceptable. That is the essence of the skills of my “painting” tingled with the local flavor of Beijing

During those sleepless nights, I seemed to have passed the Zhengyang Gate, walked on the streets at the Dashilan, witnessed the ups and downs of the old stores like Tongrentang, Neiliansheng and Ruifuxiang, enjoyed the Ping Play at Tianqiao, the comic dialog and the Peking Opera, loitered in the chess teahouses at Tianqiao, the south city amusement park and the lantern workshops, had the sesame seed cakes and fried dough twists with the performers of tricks in the Big Wine Vats, shucked the sweet roast chestnuts and started a conversation about the airs of the local tyrant ant the rise of the Fuliancheng Play School, with a ringing in my ears the peddlers resounding hawking far and near. Among them, I felt the load weighing on my mind and my emotions going up and down. Yet what I learned more in the people was their sincere self-contentedness and the sprit of striving for the better, which moved me and guided me, that the pen in my hand began to draw lines involuntarily.Readers familiar with the creation style of the Beijing flavor will easilly notice that this new book, in addition to my former manipulation of the humorous exaggeration lines, is facilitated with thick solemn colors, the detailed realistic method, and the magnificient scenes with sense of realness, which enable me to demonstrate more the profoundness in real history behind the light humorous figures. That is the content embodied with the rich and mellow culture. It can be safely said that, thanks to such culture, my paintings are given more expressiveness and gifted with conspicuous development, enabling me to achieve the pursuit for novelty, change and inprovement of my style in the process of completing the The Trilogy of the Old Peking

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