The painting's on the wall in Dashanzi: Brothers and Sisters by Wang Nengtao
Photograph: Jonathan Watts
Over the next few weeks, the Guardian's China correspondent, Jonathan Watts, will be blogging from the annual International Art Festival in Beijing's Dashanzi district.
There will be some particularly rum goings-on in our office neighbourhood in the coming weeks as Dashanzi hosts what is rapidly becoming one of China's leading contemporary art festivals.
That's saying something. Even at the quietest of times, this fashionably shabby art district in north-west Beijing is eccentric. Dashanzi is the sort of place where weddings guests help the happy couple celebrate by dangling themselves upside down from the ceiling, playing a harmonica and twirling around until they pass out; where a pile of bricks left outside a dilapidated factory workshop will have passrs-by wondering whether they are looking at building materials or the latest installation. And it is very close to the spot where one performance artist expressed man's relationship with the car by stripping naked and making love to the exhaust pipe of a four-door saloon.
That, at least, was how it was two or three years ago - but two or three years is an eternity by the standards of fast-changing Beijing and the even-faster-changing Chinese art scene. In those early days, artists moved into Dashanzi's Factory 798 of because it was cheap, spacious and rich with architectural and political history. The workshops were Bauhaus classics from the 1950s; the walls were daubed with Cultural Revolution slogans from the 1960s. And everywhere you went, there was the sound of machinery or the splutter of rusty steaming pipes - all thickly wrapped with grimy insulating tape. It was a precarious existence with constant rumours that the complex of factories would be knocked down at any moment by developers - an all too common story in early 21st-century Beijing. When the Dashanzi International Art Festival started in 2004, the main aim of the organizers was not to show off the work of the community, but to appeal to higher authorities to let them stay.
The situation could not be more different today. Dashanzi is now such a success that few young Chinese artists can afford to live here anymore, while the old ones have become so rich that they can afford to move out to grander premises. Instead, the area is filled with an every-growing number of galleries, boutiques, bistros - and even the odd newspaper office. But it is still full of strikingly anomalous sights: blue-collar workers rubbing shoulders with contemporary artists; the rubbish-collector's mule next to a gleaming SUV owned by a wealthy foreign buyer; and the subsided factory canteen just a minute's walk away from a chic cafe advertising the best cocktails in Beijing.
Preparations are now in full swing for the festival's opening tomorrow, which will feature a Brazillian samba parade, Chinese lion dancers, African drumming and plenty of weird and wonderful works of art. The one I'm looking forward to most is likely to be the least accessible: the performance artist Ye Fu plans to isolate himself for 10 days on the top of a disused smokestack. That is about as precarious as the festival is likely to get now that Dashanzi has gone mainstream.
But it will not stop the crowds flocking in search of the alternative, the amusing, the valuable and the downright absurd. As the theme for this year's festival is Beijing, it might also be a good excuse for this journalist to get out of the office a bit and see how artists view one of the most dynamic cities on earth.
I will be one among an expected 150,000 visitors to the festival over the next three weeks. I'm sure I can speak on behalf of many in saying that if I am not shocked, repulsed, inspired or at least left slightly bewildered, I will come away extremely disappointed.
