experiential learning in shanghai

as with any bout of traveling one embarks on, each day passes with greater haste than the last, rolling along until the trip home is no longer a date on a calendar but the moment before liftoff, or the rush of a train, or the topping off at the gas station. our final days in shanghai were no different, and our trip to china as a whole is rushing towards a similar conclusion, having already spent a week in beijing. on july tenth we depart for the henan province in central china, where we are joining a grinnell alum, maggie, who is a year away from attaining her ceramics MFA at tsinghua university in beijing. this summer, she is exploring various pottery factories in china both for personal curiosity and artistic development. we'll only stay for two nights, but the five-hour train ride and two-hour bus ride from the capital will put some pressure on us upon our return, so we unfortunately couldn't afford to stay for long. in any case, our last days in shanghai were our most productive— some of which i will record here—and our initial days in beijing have yielded plenty of new experiences, though i haven't the time to share those yet too.

the day after my last post, we spent the morning finishing up looking at galleries in the former french concession area of shanghai, near our apartment. because i'm short on time, i'll just say that most of the stuff we saw was good, but little was extraordinary, at least by my tastes. there were some photograph and ink paintings we liked (andy especially), but overall nothing to write home about. that afternoon however, we took the metro out quite a ways from town, where we received more stares than at wuwei lu as we walked down a highway, along a much more ramshackley street, and the yet another long, wide road to the museum of art and urbanity shanghai (MAUS). situated in an ancient-looking building, the gated complex was not available to enter—at least without an appointment. rather than give up, we decided to make one then. we talked with wei on the phone, who worked at the gallery and met us at the gate no less than twenty minutes later! walking through the complex, she explained that most of the buildings were used by a company whose owner bought old, traditional shanghai houses, took them apart, moved them to the complex, refurbished them, and rebuilt them to sell again. the museum was at the far end, in the largest building. there we climbed to the second floor and were blown away to find lithographs from a book project featuring the six most auctioned, most recognized contemporary chinese artists including yang shaobin, yue minjun, zhang xiaogang, wang qingson, and wang guangyi. the exhibition was a few years old, but the project paired each print of the paintings and photographs with a poem by fernando arrabal, who was a spanish poet who moved to france to write. we took several hours to move through each room, looking at each print and poem in detail, soaking up these big shots we'd read about. the third floor had many paintings by an up-and-coming artist whose name i apparently never recorded; in any case, as the dusk approached wei had to walk us out, and then offered to drive us to the metro. we went home feeling inspired and lucky—and energized about meeting with our first artists the next day.

on friday the twenty-ninth we had scheduled to meet with yin yi and his partner liu yanan, who goes by nannan liu. he is a sound artist and filmmaker, and she a modern dancer and choreographer. we met them as planned at a show opening at M50 and proceeded to move to a nearby cafe to talk more and for yin yi to share his videos on his ipad. there was so much he talked about, but some highlights include: his preference for the tangibility of analog over working on the digital screen; his self-identification from a composer to a studio composer to a live performer—all in the ultimate effort of "truly hearing music"; that collaborating with dance choreographers has been less about "matching" and more about "meeting at the end"; and how "simple and clean" current chinese art was (as opposed to the "dirty and gritty" art of the u.s.—the former was a complaint). some of his projects concern silence (inspired by john cage), others specific sounds (like amplified mealworm squirming). he uses synthesizers and software to manipulate film—and takes pride in being an artist in shanghai rather than in beijing. nannan liu, while shyer than yin yi, had some further insights about these same topics and spoke of how few modern dancers worked in china. near dinnertime, they had to leave, and we all said farewell. andy and i frantically wrote down everything we heard afterward, and vowed to simply keep asking to meet with people—what's the worst that can happen? these two were so gracious to meet with us, and are not the only artists willing to do so, as our beijing inquiries are also successfully responding.

the following day we attended another opening at M50, this time a student show featuring the graduate artists-in-residence from the new york academy of art, who spent two weeks in shanghai creating works to show; they are by now in beijing doing the same thing here. they had some really great work on the walls, and were quite casual about coming up and introducing themselves to us. we will hopefully make a plan to meet with them at their temporary studio before we leave for shanghai again.

our final day in shanghai was both a total bust and a complete success. we failed at two attempts to attend separate galleries—one was closed despite supposedly being open, the other literally lost in a mall in pudong—and wasted a lot of time trying to find both. but we also met with the current caretaker of the fellowship our trip is funded through: michael wenderoth. his mother started the lan chang fellowship at both carleton and grinnell college, where michael and his brother attended, respectively. as we understood over lunch with michael, ten years ago students at both schools would apply to receive funding to go to china with projects in mind. as of five years ago, when their mother passed away, grinnell's promotion of the funding fell by the wayside, and carleton became more of a travel opportunity for professors there. in any case, andy, lee, and i are essentially the guinea pigs to see if the fellowship can return to annual use again at grinnell—thus adding to our personal pressure at not messing up this trip! anyways, we discussed many other things, but andy and i were especially glad to know that the true goal of the fellowship was simply to put students who otherwise wouldn't necessarily go to china in china—all for "experiential learning," as he put it. in that sense, i guess we're not doing too bad… later, we spent the early part of that evening apart, and then rejoined for a final dinner at our favorite soup place and resumed packing.

we awoke early on july second to get to the train station with plenty of time to spare, but our grinnell alum roommate jackie spared us a long wait at the station by collecting snacks with us and helping us get down their alright—apparently with trains one needs much less time to get aboard than with planes. (it was really nice of her to assist us with that; she'd been our roommate at the johnson's on-and-off as she moved into shanghai from a town south of there.) the train station is enormous, and our train left from the opposite end of the building, of course. we boarded just fine and were quite comfortable as we sped out of the city at 300 kilometers per hour, making the trip last about five hours or so—just long enough for being behind a bunch of children who were cute but also a bit loud. unfortunately, it was pretty hazy throughout the trip, so not much was seen outside; however, what we saw the most of were the giant housing towers that spurt from the flat earth for miles. we first noticed these repetitious apartments behind M50, but have since seen them anytime we leave a downtown area—they are truly incredible and unfathomable, to be somewhat redundant. we arrived in a hot-but-less-humid beijing, had an early dinner, and spent the evening at the sanlitun youth hostel writing our second reports to lee. we felt a bit lame as the bros at the hostel downed beers and played foosball, but we also felt accomplished after moving to a new city, securing some ideas for our MAP, and having a successful final experience on the coast. it will certainly be bizarre to return there for our final night and day in china, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.