An Arcadian Home for Artists by Peter Micic

We have been on the road for almost and hour and a half. At this early hour of the morning, the ride has been absent of overtaking cars and coaches. We are looking for an artist village in Shangyuan. My six-sense tells me that we are in the right direction, but we stop the SUV at regular intervals to make sure we are on the right track. A small narrow bridge takes us across a rivelet. A middle-aged woman is clearing away grass around a large stone slab. On this slab is engraved: "Shangyuan Artist Willage." The spelling error provokes annoyance because such an error in Chinese would have never occurred, but the indifference to whether the spelling in English is correct is more often than not a constant source of delight to foreign travellers. My annoyance is intensified because it's etched in stone, and can't be simply rubbed.

To this-out-of-the-way place, many painters, escaping the increasing urbanization of Beijing, and the cold and perhaps impersonal nature of human relations in the metropolis, have come here to find a haven to pursue their art. It's about sixty kilometres south of Beijing in the Taohua mountain valley, surrounded by green lush fields interlaced with rivulets, winding paths and rows of plane trees. Markets summon peasants and traders bearing in the back of small trucks, tractors and motorbikes the simple commodities necessary for life: grain, vegetables, fruit and livestock. I was soon to discover that a large number of young kids from all over China had forsaken their summer vacation to learn some of the rudimentary skills of painting from Wang Huaxiang.

Wang was born in Guizhou in 1962. He is a graduate of the Guizhou provincial art school and has his paintings displayed in art galleries and private collections around the world. Wang came to Shangyuan in the summer of 1995 and bought a courtyard which eventually became his studio and school. Wang tells me that before he arrived "he had drifted aimlessly in the world for some thirty-three years." This sounds like someone who feels more at home in the transient places of travel than at home. But Wang was determined to find a studio and grow firm roots. He had considered other places such as Songzhuang, Yanjiao, Shunyi and Meitougou, but Shangyuan was really an unexpected discover. Wang had already contacted a landlord in another village in Sishan to rent a place, but his mind was not yet made up. "I found myself standing by the roadside, the grey sky pouring down with rain, my mind a total blank. Suddenly, a white van pulled up and the driver asked me where I was going. 'Take me wherever,' I said. The driver probably thought I was crazy, so I explained that I was an artist and was looking for a studio surrounded by mountains and water. He suggested that I go to Shangyuan Village. Once I saw the village it brought back memories of my childhood in Guizhou: images of ducks and lots of water. I felt as though I was returning home."

Shangyuan has taught Wang to be more like a child. Not childish, but childlike. He loves the country life, the solitude, as well as the community. He is someone who does not like to be away from home. Travel and travail, as the poet Ted Kooser reminds us, come from the same root meaning "to toil," "to labour." Wang is happy being where he is. I have the feeling that he is more intensely in contact with elements of Chinese art culture when looking at paintings in a museum or when painting his own images than when travelling through China itself.

A stone-paved courtyard is Wang's studio, and home. His workshop Feidi Arts has attracted artists and visitors from around the world. Teachers and professors from the Central Academy of Arts and Qinghua University are now living at Shangyuan or spend a large chunk of their time here teaching and pursuing their own artistic endeavours. There a groups of students playing cards, and several large dogs barking from their kennels in the courtyard.

A successful painter in China, as in the West, has many of the attributes of a business tycoon or magnate, spending as much time and energy wheeling and dealing as on their artistic pursuits. Wang seems far removed from all of this, walking around the courtyard with mindful, unhurried steps. Pascal's famous dictum that the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room does not apply to someone like Wang. It appears content and at ease in his surroundings. He is an artist, a businessman, a teacher and mentor, and from what I was able to observe with his interactions with his daughter, a loving father as well.

Peter Micic wrote for Danwei about the Jasmine crossing in November, 2006.

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Posted Jul 26 2007, 10:55 PM by Danwei - Media, Advertising, and Urban Life in China