Oh, what a night. We are back in the apartment – the power is back on. Its cold here – so we had both aircons feeding out heat into our room and pablos room. Then at 3.45 am we get a violent knock on the door and shouting in Chinese. We have a security guard at the front of the block – but it wasn’t him. There were two normal dressed men. I said ‘don’t open the door’! to Matt – They screamed and more knocking. We were scrambling for clothes. We were just a bit stunned – Was there a fire in the apartment block? I went to the window, and couldn’t smell anything. Was it something to do with the last guests owing something? Was it a break in? Was it some sort mafia? Were they after Pablo? All of these thoughts are speeding about while half asleep. But, as far as I was concerned that door was our protection. Our neighbours didn’t come to the door – it was just directed at us. For fifteen minutes (not exaggerating) of violent knocking we just looked each other and thought ‘What now?!’. Pablo slept through it. Then we had torch lights shining into our bedroom. Then I called an German Artist, Jan, who has lived here for twelve years and speaks chinese – and lives in the same apartment complex – to work out what the hell was going on. Anyway – apparently it was our air-conditioning that had broken down and was making excessive noise and waking everyone up…
Oh gosh. It took a while to get back to sleep – I don’t remember the last time I had felt scared – but not understanding what was going on, I did feel fearful for a few minutes there! It was a great example of just not knowing what really goes on, certain etiquettes, what things should sound like, (I just thought all the aircons here sounded like that) not knowing the nuances – I am so glad it was just an air conditioning problem.
mmm. I think few could deal with our lives – and the unexpected that constantly pops up – but, for some reason, we enjoy it – its been fascinating, and hard work – but its rewarding. Matt and Pablo have been troupers. I wouldn’t want to many nights like last night – but now we are laughing about it over coffee this morning! Oh, we need those aircons fixed – or we need to buy a new heater for pabs – I don’t want him to catch a cold, and we need clothes to dry more quickly – with the dampness here it would take days for things to dry if we don’t have heaters on – and we don’t have enough clothes for that.
I still can’t think about work – still settling in – got some incense for the bathroom – putting a few pics up on the wall – a bit more scrubbing. Our little apartment is going well. Internet is ON! This is a major step forward. I think I can start some work.
There is a little café near us – Moon – and it’s a great little space – there is not much on the menu – some tea and coffee and beer – but its a great little space to hang out in – and it has internet – really slow internet – but its been our place to get online. Pablo loves it there, as the owners love to give him things, and we tend to meet a lot of the locals and also local expats who have got lost in Chongqing. Last night we had drinks with bao lei – an artist who teaches water colour at the academy, and her partner, Jan from northen germany. He has lived here for about 12 years now – he came over on a swap with his university and found life here better and hasn’t been back. I think a lot of the western artists like the cheap studio space, cheap living easier – and the excitement of Chongqing – the place is chaos. They took us to a restaurant, – helped us order! The dishes are around 7-9 RMB each – just over a $1 Everything seems cheaper in Chongqing. If you wanted to, you could live here really cheaply. We spend about $50 a day for the three of us, but we are buying a few western products for pablo.
Jan gave as a great list of chinese food to order – also the address of oganhaus – essential to be able to get home in a cab. We are settling in – the area is fantastic, people friendly, Organhaus has been great – very welcoming, very helpful.
They are working on getting us a TV and DVD and also internet connected. I think it will take a while – but it will be great to be able to work from home.
mmm. we got back from dinner after a big day of cleaning and the power box was beeping. I asked the neighbours, and through sign language I worked out it was an ‘electricity’ card we needed. We find out the card is with another assistant who is not answering her phone – so no card, the power went off that night, – and now the following night, we are put into a hotel in Sichuan Art Academy. Its been about 30 hours now – and they say they will work it out today I think. They wanted to move us to another apartment – but after all the cleaning, I couldn’t face another clean in another apartment. Anyway, so now we are in a hotel. The bad part of this is Pablo is sleeping with us, meaning its hard to sleep – and the great part is – they have a hot shower here – steaming hot – and the shower in the apartment is just luke warm, so showering means boiling a kettle.
So far we have been in chongqing for five days, and I am yet to think about work – we have just been concentrating on the living environment, but I am already thinking time is going too quickly. We went into the city yesterday, and I just started snapping photos – people in restaurants, in the streets, hairdressers.
The area is fantastic, and the people at Organhaus a really great. We had an opening at Organhaus the day we arrived – two German artists from Dusseldorf were leaving the next day to go back to Germany. Yanshu, the director has also gone to Dusseldorf to do a residency – they do swaps with Chinese artists and German artists – but we met him briefly before he left on the flight. The following night Nikun, the curator, took us to a hot pot restaurant. A Turkish artist has just arrived – Gunes – she is here with her mother – she lives in Istanbul. The restaurant was so loud- everyone laughing, smoking, shouting, drinking and gambling throughout dinner. Pablo made some friends with the other kids, and they started running wild throughout the restaurant, entertaining the rest of the diners. At night here the streets fill with stalls cooking all sorts of things – mostly street barbeques, hot pots and noodle dishes. – and then night markets fill the street as well. The area is filled with art students. Pablo gets heaps of attention – some he handles OK and others he just hides his head until everyone disappears. But it doesn’t take long to draw a crowd here.
There is no internet in the apartment which has been strange for me – I usually have to spend a lot of time online – and everyone at organhaus doesn’t seem to start work till around 6pm – I am not sure why – but I am going to have to get my head around starting a meeting at 6pm – its usually my shut off time – where we are just thinking about feeding Pablo, and settling in for the night. However, even over the last five days – we have shifted – we are getting up around 10 am and to bed around 1am.
Gosh, its been hard to get online – and we just got lost into Shanghai. I am not sure what Shanghai was about in the end – mostly eating – Nick and Bree brought us to some great restaurants that we wouldn’t have usually gone to. We walked around a lot with mics, cameras, tripods to shoot, but no luck. We found some great barbers – one had set up shop under a highway – with a mirror and a seat. We had a friend Nick to translate for us – and we tried to throw a bit of money into the equation – but no luck – no cameras! Strange, but out of the wood work came a well dressed fellow who started asking us a lot of questions, started videoing us, and then following us for about twenty minutes. This was hard to make sense of. Was it just some intrigued person? was it some sort of secret police? The following us, and videoing us for twenty minutes was a bit disconcerting. We tried another Barber, an old man and woman – again, no luck. So who knows? Frustrating, but it was great to spend time in Shanghai.
We have been in Chongqing for five days now, Huang Jueping, Jiulongpo District, and still settling in. Chongqing is in the middle of China – a sprawling growing city of 35 million people – the biggest city in the world. It hasn’t got the feel of the metropolis of shanghai – feels a lot more provincial. We arrived Monday night from Shanghai. After hours in a cab, and the city never ended we ended up in Huang Jueping– the apartment blocks are filled full of murals and graffiti – commissioned by the government. The streets are filled full of artshops, art courses – the Sichuan Art Academy is based here. It’s a great area.
I am doing a residency with Organhaus, an organization based at 501 warehouse.It has a gallery space downstairs, and office space on the 2nd floor. It has a few apartments available to international artists. The apartments are large – three bedrooms each, about 90 square meters, situated right behind the gallery. It’s a great set up. As we were showed the apartment, I internally cringed. There was little furniture, and all the remnants of the last people staying were everywhere – filled ashtrays, dirty sheets, mouldy coffee cups with more cigarettes in them, enough grime to think it hadn’t been cleaned for months on end. I used to be able to handle this grime when I was younger, living with uni students in Melbourne – but now, with Pablo – I freak out a bit. We did a search for clean sheets and towels – I didn’t shower for two days as I wanted to spend as little time in the bathroom as possible. I hardly moved in the bed for fear of bedbugs. Finally we realized there was no other apartment or hotel to go to, so we stocked up on cleaning chemicals and started scrubbing. A full day later, and every surface scrubbed – it’s a lot better – livable, and I don’t think I will ever qet rid of the smell that eminates from the bathroom. I am on the search for incense. We bought new pillows, some slippers, some cutlery and glasses and stocked the fridge with a bit of food. We put everything through the wash. Its amazing what a bit of cleaning does. Slowly, its started to feel like home – other than some sort of mouldy substances inside the cupboards in the kitchen (which I won’t open), and a bathroom that will always smell a bit- it’s a fine place to live. We settled in quickly despite the shaky beginning.
Got the visas – One week to get the visa, another three weeks till it runs out. What a process. The next place we do it will be chongqing.
Getting to know the city of Shanghai. Its never ending. Skyscrapers, next to alleyways filled full of markets and streetfood. A fantastic underground system that seems to effortless transport millions of people a day.
I am still managing the road system – trying to cross a road with a pram, with the green walking light flashing is an exercise of juggling. Buses, trucks, bikes, don’t look out for pedestrians at all, and come from everywhere. Apparantly they always have right of way. Yesterday, just as we began to walk accross the street, a bike comes flying at us, hits a pot hole, and then slams into a car. The bike slides accross the street with him still attached to it. I start running to help, and then Matt says ‘your crazy, you will get implicated’. We walked on. A strange feeling to walk away when someone is hurt.
