I take much delight in happy 'accidents' like this - a curiously shaped tower of bricks left balanced on top of a partly demolished wall, or a plastic bag inexplicably knotted around a telephone wire. This sort of thing does seem to be rather common in China, and I often wonder if there isn't a conscious - if obscure - intent behind such constructions (apart from my conscious intent to record them with my camera, of course). Anonymous guerrilla artists roaming the streets of Beijing? Perhaps some of the hordes of minggong, the peasant migrant workers who staff the city's construction sites (and factories and restaurants) letting off a bit of creative steam?
2 comments:
Anonymous
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Well, another possibility is that some -- though surely not all -- might actually mean something, in the manner of hobo signs or code [Wikipedia].
The bricks strike me, yes, as somebody more or less doodling with construction material, but the plastic bag on the wire is... almost semantic. Do you remember where you came across it? Have you seen it in just one place, or has it cropped up elsewhere, too?
I remember the first time I saw a pair of sneakers slung around a power, thinking it was a hilarious prank. Then I saw it a 2nd time someplace else, and a third, and started to wonder what it meant. (Apparently I wasn't alone.)
Yes, I thought of hobo signs too; but, as far as I've been able to discover, there's nothing similar in China (I'm sure there is, but it's not something the middle class Chinese know about or care to discuss).
The plastic bag was a one-off. It was on 'The Street', my favourite street where I lived for my first two years here - during the process of its demolition.
I too had wondered about the shoes-on-a-wire meme. That seems to happen the world over. Well, in Europe, anyway. I'm sure I've seen it in a film somewhere, actually; I have a suspicion it might be Tornatore's Everybody's Fine.
A leading presenter on China Central Television's English-language channel has revealed himself to be a xenophobic hate-monger. WHY does he still have a job? Lobby for his dismissal - by any and all means.
Days Ai Weiwei was detained
80
With ironic, sinister symmetry, the celebrity artist/activist was incarcerated on the same day that my friend Wu Yuren was finally released from 10 months' detention.
Now, like Wu, he's been released on extremely restrictive 'bail' terms - but could face re-arrest at any moment. He was detained incommunicado from April 3rd to June 22nd 2011.
Days Wu Yuren was in prison
307
"Released on parole" after 10 months; "parole" lifted another year later. The original charges against him were apparently dropped without his trial ever being formally concluded.
Froog is an escaped lawyer - but there is no need for alarm; he is only a danger to himself, not to the general public. An eternal wanderer, he now lives in an exotic city somewhere in the 'Third World' *, where he is held prisoner by an unfinished novel (or, more precisely, an unstarted novel). He spends a lot of time running, writing, taking photographs, and falling in love with women who fail to appreciate him. He also spends a lot of time in bars.
[* OK, I'll come clean: I've been living in Beijing since summer '02.]
I take much delight in happy 'accidents' like this - a curiously shaped tower of bricks left balanced on top of a partly demolished wall, or a plastic bag inexplicably knotted around a telephone wire. This sort of thing does seem to be rather common in China, and I often wonder if there isn't a conscious - if obscure - intent behind such constructions (apart from my conscious intent to record them with my camera, of course). Anonymous guerrilla artists roaming the streets of Beijing? Perhaps some of the hordes of minggong, the peasant migrant workers who staff the city's construction sites (and factories and restaurants) letting off a bit of creative steam?
2 comments:
Well, another possibility is that some -- though surely not all -- might actually mean something, in the manner of hobo signs or code [Wikipedia].
The bricks strike me, yes, as somebody more or less doodling with construction material, but the plastic bag on the wire is... almost semantic. Do you remember where you came across it? Have you seen it in just one place, or has it cropped up elsewhere, too?
I remember the first time I saw a pair of sneakers slung around a power, thinking it was a hilarious prank. Then I saw it a 2nd time someplace else, and a third, and started to wonder what it meant. (Apparently I wasn't alone.)
Yes, I thought of hobo signs too; but, as far as I've been able to discover, there's nothing similar in China (I'm sure there is, but it's not something the middle class Chinese know about or care to discuss).
The plastic bag was a one-off. It was on 'The Street', my favourite street where I lived for my first two years here - during the process of its demolition.
I too had wondered about the shoes-on-a-wire meme. That seems to happen the world over. Well, in Europe, anyway. I'm sure I've seen it in a film somewhere, actually; I have a suspicion it might be Tornatore's Everybody's Fine.
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