不知道 i don’t know

Wow, has it really been three months since I last posted anything here? So much has happened in that time!

The last post was following my second visit to China, for the opening of the show which my then girlfriend was working on: Beautiful New World. Since then the most important event has been that my girlfriend has become my wife and we have moved ourselves to Beijing!

When I get a chance to sit down and think about it (which is a rare occurrence these days) I really feel that this is the most exciting time of my life! We are creating our new life together, we have so many opportunities and I have my wife to thank for all of it.

Shi is currently working on her first exhibition at her new job, about which I’ll post more details later this week, and I am helping out on a new project that should be going live at the end of the month.

Everybody’s been so kind to us here, I really appreciate the faith they have in us. I hope to be able to fulfil all of our expectations – this is certainly the place where this will be possible and definitely the right place for us to fulfil our dreams.

This post is dedicated to my fiancée, Shi, from whom I’ve been away from for far too long and won’t be seeing again until October, this absence proving far more difficult to handle than I expected.

So, in my Chinese lesson today, I learned how to say “long time no see” which seemed appropriate to our situation, so here it is:

好久不见

我爱你 诗 xxxxxx

Me with some monks

I got back from China on Thursday and I’ve now pretty much unpacked and settled back into the flat. As I expected, while I was away there was little opportunity for the sustained thinking and concentration that I need to write blog posts, but having those three weeks away from the computer was a good break from working.

For all its problems I’ve really taken a liking to China, or at least to what I saw of it, and it’s kind of boring to be back in London (this last is probably just post-holiday blues).

As is probably evident from my recent posts here, I’m becoming more and more interested in the art scene in China. It’s at a very interesting stage of development, right now in the process of creating the systems and structures which will potentially become its future institutions. This is in comparison to the West where these institutions are entrenched and have been for a very long time, with little room for manoeuvre. I’ll be writing some posts on what I saw while I was in Beijing and I’ll be trying to synthesise my existing interests with this new-found subject-matter.

To really understand China though and to be able to be involved with it, I have to learn the language. I feel that unless I can speak the language I will never be able to fully immerse myself in the culture or be able to work with it in an appropriate, productive and respectful fashion. To that end, I’m looking into courses in Beijing at the various colleges there. If anyone has any recommendations or comments, please let me know.

So, tomorrow I’m flying out of London to Bejing for three weeks. What am I hoping for or expecting from this trip?

Firstly, and most importantly from a personal point of view, I’ll be seeing Shi, my fiancée again after a five-week gap. I’ll also be meeting her family for the first time.

Secondly, I’ll be being a tourist, seeing all those things which a tourist mustn’t miss when in China (or at least as many as we can reach comfortably from Beijing in the time available). That includes all the usual suspects, the Forbidden City, Tian’anmen Square, the Great Wall, the terracotta soldiers, etc.

And finally, I’ll be getting a feel for the art scene in China. This is something that I’ve only recently been introduced to, mainly through Shi, and the whole situation really interests me, both formally and theoretically.

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