Boring Beijing – not so Boring; a “4D” cinema ride and a man getting ass banged by a bull getting ass banged by a cloud at the 798 art district (not my words, the words of the artist)

The following question has loomed large in my head since arriving in Beijing.  Is there more to do in this city (as someone who is used to a London lifestyle) than just party, eat and speak Chinese?  I think the answer is, maybe.

On a Sunday Summer’s day in London, or any other major international city for that matter, a discerning and well heeled (read aspiring to be well heeled) 20 something man like myself can eat and drink, yes, but art galleries are aplenty, curio shopping is widespread, a picnic in the park (read London Fields) is a nice option, a gig etc.  It’s not so much that Beijing doesn’t offer this, it’s just not in the same way.

After nearly 3 months in China now, and enough drinking and eating for a good year, I decided to make it a mission to search out other things to do.

I started with the low hanging fruit – major tourist attractions.  So far, I’ve done the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, The Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace (more on this later) and the national museum.  Lower down on my list were the Underground City, National Police Museum and the Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall.

Let’s start with the first, first.  The Underground City was ordered built by the great Chairman himself when relations between the People’s Republic (China) and the USSR soured.  This was, as our parents will remember, at a time when the world was on the precipice of nuclear war, and whilst China publicly was not threatened by the USSR (and the US’s for that matter) nuclear arsenal, privately Mao ordered vast underground tunnels and safe havens to be built below Beijing, to protect its peoples in the event of an attack.

Apparently most of this network has been rather cleverly converted into the Beijing Subway system.  God bless China.  What of it remains, has become a museum.  And so off I trotted, one sunny day, to said museum, only to discover it was closed for refurbishment for the summer. Bummer.

On to the next one (as Jay Z once said).  The Police Museum is, as you might expect, a museum which documents the creation of the Beijing police and its evolution over time, with a special focus on their role in “maintaining order” at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  Whilst the inner geek in me wanted to see the museum, the curious foreigner in me was very interested to learn of how the museum (which incidentally is right next to one of the main government complexes in Beijing) reported on the so called “Cultural Revolution”.  As it turns out, the Beijing Police weren’t too well treat during this period, with many of their senior ranks being purged by the secret police for alleged subversion.  This was publicly reported in the museum, with a small section devoted to the bravery of the police men who were affected.  Interesting. 

I was promised, at least by my Beijing Bible (Insider’s Guide to Beijing) that I would be able to practice shooting lasers on the 4^th floor.  This was, however, disappointingly not the case.

Whilst the Beijing Planning Exhibition Centre doesn’t sound like it would rock anyone’s boat who wasn’t a bored architect, it was, surprisingly, cool.  Basically, like many things in China, whoever was in charge of this museum had the “vision” to make it into some sort of mini- theme park, complete with rides.  (Serious!).

Its purpose was really to show how great a city Beijing was, and how clever the planning authorities were in creating such a vibrant and splurging urban mass.

The central attraction has to have been the huge scale model of Beijing, showing all the buildings and developments (I even managed to spot the office where I work).  See picture.

Also of note was the “4D” ride.  A side note here.  A lot of things in China are hyped up, and “4D” (as opposed to 3D) certainly was one of them.  “4D” in this case meant 4 screens, rather than another dimension of reality.  The purpose of this ride was to illustrate to the viewer how Beijing might look in 50 years time.  Apparently, everyone would be travelling around in flying cars, as this was the “ride” element of the attraction, complete with moving seats, to simulate what it would feel like riding through futuristic Beijing in the air.  From what I’ve gathered (from the ride) the national planners want Beijing to be much bigger, and much taller.  And did I say much bigger?  Well, that’s the dream anyway.

On to more cultural elements now.  The one good thing about being an expat/ foreigner in a Chinese city like Beijing is that a lot of the cool cultural quirks and developments are basically aimed at attracting you.  One only has to scan one of the many weekly/ monthly expat focused publications to get a listing of Beijing’s happening happenings on any day of the week. And, so this I did.

The Bookworm – a nice, but overpriced bookshop come restaurant near San Li Tun - was hosting a talk by Chandran Nair.  A word on him.  This dude’s basically written a book called “Consumptionomics”, using China as a case study of how as a global economy we have become too reliant on consumption, of everything.  This is a bad thing, so the argument goes, because not only does it mean we’re more susceptible to global downturns, but it also messes with the planet’s resources.  Interesting.  Shame I arrived late to a full room and couldn’t get in.

Anyway, not one to be stopped by a pushback like this, I went to an art exhibition launch at one of Beijing’s boutique hotels – the Opposite House (apparently where Beyonce stayed – although not sure I believe this) – right after.  The gallery, which I have since been to, had a pretty cool exhibition.  Essentially, it’s a Chinese artist who’s made these giant red naked men (and boys) who rather ominously sit in the lobby of the hotel.  Pretty cool.

That night I met lots of interesting people, but it confirmed one thing for me.  Basically, the liberal middle class are the same the world over.  I had exactly the same conversations with the patrons of this event – mainly art curators and artists themselves, that I would at a middle class dinner party in London.  “Isn’t it wonderful”, “look at the aesthetics of this piece of art”, “the situation in Libya is just awful” were staple parts of the conversation.  In a way it was reassuring and a nice revisit to the familiarity of home.

The Red Gate Gallery itself has some pretty cool pieces of art.  It’s basically housed in the old watch tower of the Dongcheng area of Beijing, which is where one of the remaining stretches of the old city wall of Beijing still remains.  See pictures.

More on art now.  One of the very cool things that Beijing can boast is that is in an exclusive club of international cities which has its own art district - “798” (not some clever marketing name, but so called because it is in the 798 district of north Beijing).

I had been before, but just as most of the places were closing, so I again visited this vast sprawl of art galleries and cafes with my friend, Leon, who had come to China for 10 days to visit me. 

798 is less of an art district (there is some decent art there) now, and more of a lifestyle area.  I say this, as it probably has the highest concentration of coffee shops, bars, restaurants and fashion shops in the whole of Beijing, inching out the art as you sip on your over priced latte.  Having said that, if Chinese food isn’t to your liking, it does have some pretty good foreign food places. 


What it doesn’t have, unfortunately, is cutting edge art. Well, maybe it does. I’m a bit of a Philistine when it comes to art. But if you consider a cloud, in the shape of a dildo, ass banging a bull, who is also doing so to a man against a wall art, or a red miniature statue of Michael Jackson in the same league as Picasso, then you might like it.