MEET TANG HAI GUO

It has taken some serious wrangling, but I've finally managed to interview and photograph a cool artist here in China. Tang Hai Guo is a young expressionist painter who lives in Shenzhen. He opened up his home/studio to me this past weekend and I was really quite impressed. We spent hours taking paintings out of a storage closet and arranging them for the photo. His integrity was what really struck me. Tang's style of art is not the type that most Chinese would buy to decorate their homes, but it is what he feels, so he paints in spite of the market. A lot of his paintings are subtle (or not so subtle) critiques of what he sees as the run-away greed and selfishness of many Chinese. Tang believes that by celebrating what is wrong with this world on a canvas it becomes part of a cathartic process of eradicating it from our lives. His wife cooked Julie and I the best meal we've had had here in China. You can view more  of Tang's work by clicking here.

INSIDE A WET MARKET

HER STYLIST SHOULD PROBABLY BE KILLED

I've been noticing the billboard at the top of this post all over town. What struck me about it is that the woman featured in the ad really looks like a transvestite. I was all set to do a blog about whether the Chinese are cool with transvestites when I came across another picture of the model, Charmaine Sheh. In this picture she is all woman. Whomever was responsible for her haircut should at the very least be flogged. I've never been more blown away by the difference in two pictures, except maybe by my brief stint in fashion photography.

LURED IN BY A PIZZA CONE

I was in downtown Guangzhou yesterday on my way to a nice sushi lunch when I stumbled upon the restaurant above, poetically called Murmur Shadow. Something about the outer-space lighting theme, the weird communist cat logo, and the mystery of the "pizza cone" lured me in. Well, turns out a pizza cone is really just an oddly rolled hot pocket. I got a sausage and cheese for the bargain price of $1.60. Curiosity makes the cat fat.  

THE LACK OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION IN CHINA

China is not an easy place to live. Its landscape is a never-ending wasteland of soulless architecture and unfinished projects, all engulfed by a heavy haze of pollution. Finding areas with any sort of character has been difficult. On a recent trip to Shenzhen, we discovered the OCT Loft area of town, with many hip restautaunts, beautiful murals, and a handful of art galleries. I can't tell you how nice it felt being in an area with some soul and integrity. Now we need to find a similar area near our apartment. I'm not sure they exist, but I am positive. 

WINDOW OF THE WORLD SHENZHEN, CHINA

Window of the World is an amusement park situated on 118 acres in Shenzhen, China. The park recreates the most celebrated architecture of our world in miniature fashion. It also has a handful of rides. It is a weird place, though I suppose kind of interesting. Julie and I waited in line for about an hour for a Jacques Cousteau themed ride oddly named "Greenland Underground Exploration". The ride was a fast jolty affair in total darkness. I don't think it did much justice to the famous French explorer.  

WORLD'S CREEPIEST AMUZEMENT PARK

This little amusement park is located inside the estate where I work. It is called "The Farm", I assume because the centerpiece of  the park is a pig, a cow, and a goat, all housed in sad little pens. This park, like a lot of the buildings and spaces around us here in China, is devoid of aesthetics. Broken rides are scattered throughout the park, the grass is overgrown, and trash bins leak liquids and filth onto sidewalks. One roller coster ironically has cars shaped like Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney actually went to great expense to build an entire underground city below Disney World to make the park as aesthetically pleasing as possible and conceal operations that would distract from the beauty of the park. Here, I bet for the right price I could have that pig slaughtered and barbecued on a spit over by the trashcans.