“I don’t want to choose between TV and interactive. That’s ridiculous. It’s like saying, ‘Choose between your left hand and your right hand.’ I want to use both hands – and various other appendages!”
Tagged: Advertising, Creativity, Insights, Marketing
Tagged: China, Decline of West, History, Insights
Tagged: Chen Kun, China, Chinese Brands, Jonnie Walker, Marketing
How did you get into photography, and are you able to actually make a living from it in Beijing?
I don’t recall exactly how I got into this business. I just recently graduated from college, and I’m actually looking for job. In China photographers like me can’t really make a living with photos like these… but I’ll keep going.
Over the last ten years in particular, China (well, at least theoretically) opened itself to the ideas of democratization and capitalism…how has your life change personally in Beijing? Are you experiencing a new kind of freedom or do you still suffer a lot from censorship?
Haha, nothing significant changed. My photos and exhibitions get banned as always. But at a certain level, or at least compared with the past, China is indeed becoming more and more free spirited.
Do you actually work with professional models or do you find them among your friends?
Most of my models are my good friends, they all trust in me and enjoy having their pictures taken…well, that’s what I hope.
You seem to have mixed emotions about living in the big city… on the one hand you’re showing skylines and apartments, on the other hand none of the people you portray look too happy.
I believe it has something to do with my periodic depression; therefore people in my pictures seem not so happy. But depression is something we need–it makes us think. I’m a pessimistic person but I hardly get desperate. I have no interest or affection to any city; I only care about people.
You’re also showing a lot of nudity in your pictures, even in a heavily explicit or semipornographic way…is this kind of photography accepted in China’s major cities by now or are you trying to push the envelope a little with your work?
China still would not accept this. About sex and nudity: I don’t have the intention to express or to make a change, not to mention reform the system and the time we’re living in. There is absolutely no deeper meaning in my pictures, or at least there’s nothing really serious in them. I just love genitals and I will never take on wicked thoughts while photographing them. I just want to show a different side…and I’m only really passionate about the genitals of my lover.
How does it work with the creative underground in Beijing… are people supportive or is everyone fighting for themselves?
Phew, I wish I could give you an explanation or elaborate report, but I don’t have the slightest clue,
to be honest.
How important is the Internet for you, and how do you deal with the government trying their best to censor blog-culture?
For me the Internet is a great platform, it gets my work to more people and they will react to it in a certain way. For now, most of my pictures could not be shown (officially) on the Internet. I hope one day these poor little pictures could be regularly shown in daylight.
Interview featured in Lowdown Magazine
Tagged: Artists, China, Photography, Ren Hang, Taboo
In a small dark room on the second floor of 119 Di’anmenwai Street, the most distinctive sound is the buzzing of a tattoo gun as it touches flesh. Twenty-eight-year-old tattoo artist Wang Lei retouches the colors on a coworker’s arm. The small compound, blasting American Top 40 songs, is filled with young Chinese guys and girls donning dreads, piercings and tattoos.
Over the past decade, tattoos have become more accepted in mainstream Chinese youth culture, but for older generations, the art of tattoo remains taboo. Traditionally, Chinese society frowned upon tattoos, which were associated with foreigners, prisoners and gamblers.
Despite its age-old unpopularity, artists claim the practice is historically significant in China. According to Lei’s coworker, Lui Bo, tattooing dates back to the Song Dynasty in the 12th century, when field marshal Yue Fei left war to return home to care for his mother. Yue Fei’s mother criticized him for leaving the front, saying that a soldier’s first loyalty is to his country. To ensure this would not be forgotten, she tattooed the characters “Utmost,” “Loyalty,” “Serve” and “Nation,” on Yue Fui. This anecdote, as retold by Lui, is fundamentally associated with tattooing in China.Both Lui and Wang believe that as today’s younger generation comes of age, tattoos will gradually gain widespread acceptance. “I am lucky because my parents are strong supporters of my passion for tattoo and fully accept my career as a tattoo artist,” Wang said.
With a rising middle class, the Chinese have more disposable income than ever, Wang said, giving them the ability to spend more on leisure and personal expenditures such as body art.
The simplest of tattoos start off at 500 RMB ($77), making the trade lucrative and allowing tattoo artists such as Wang to live a comfortable middle class life. Before taxes, rent, and business costs, Wang’s shop revenue per year is between 700,000 – 800,000 RMB (roughly $107,000 – $123,000). Although the tattoo industry is experiencing growing popularity, it still exists as a small niche culture in China. There are no regulations to ensure hygiene or sanitary working conditions, Wang said, and it is difficult for authorities to monitor conditions because tattoo shops can open and close with frequency. Despite the current industry flux, Wang said he believes that a growing economy and Western influence on Chinese culture will drive more people into tattoo shops. “As the younger generation replaces the older generation, we will change society and the future,” Wang said. “Then, tattoos will be fully accepted.”
Photos by Lizzie Chen
Tagged: Chinese Youth, Taboo, Tattoo
In developing her tea shop, Song Fang, aka Florence Samson, a French sinophile who has been resident in the city for 10 years, has plumbed China’s rich tea-drinking legacy with all the impunity of someone who loves tea, loves the instruments and packaging that surround the ritual, but has not grown up with the cultural revolution.
She has also brought a vision which was doubtless fed by an earlier career working for Dior in Paris and Veuve Clicquot in China, and business acumen honed at Harvard Business School. Samson knows the power of history and heritage (and a signature colour) in developing a luxury brand and has employed it to bring the humble ceremony of tea-supping Chinese-style into the 21st century. ‘There’s 5,000 years of history to tea-drinking in China. It is treated as a medicine, and it can be very expensive and confusing, and the packaging can be awful,’ says Samson.
The fine art of tea selection
Fluent in the language, she has learnt how to select tea from true masters based on plantations all over China. She found a synergy with her experience of wine tasting while working for Veuve Clicquot. ‘There are a lot of things in common – for both tea and wine you look at colour, notes, liqueurs, roundness…” She also wanted to introduce French style blending, and turned to experts back home. Of 60 teas there are 40 that she classes as Chinese, 20 are French. There’s black tea, green tea, white tea, oolong, Pu Ehr and many blends and aromas – Yunnan special, Keenun, Ginseng Oolong, China Blue, Shanghai Dream…
Designing the brand
Design is another passion and the branding was a personal project ‘I see China changing so quickly and I wanted to preserve something of the old China,’ she says. Her collection of biscuit tins date from the 1920s to 1980s, and helped inspire her own packaging ‘Our tins feature tea plantation farmers from the 1950s. It’s light hearted. Tea is a happy time,’ she says. ‘And the blue symbolises water.’
The first floor tea room has a peaceful interior created by the local Australian designer Roger Hackworth featuring wooden birdcage lights where this clever blend of Chinese and French tea culture can be savoured alongside fusion sweet treats created by Eric Perez, a celebrated French Patissier based in China. Needless to say we clocked out for a little longer than the average teabreak on discovering Song Fang.
Tagged: Chinese Brands, luxury, Marketing, packaging, tea
Cao Fei is one of China’s most acclaimed young artists. Her work has been widely exhibited in various Biennials, solo and group exhibitions around the globe. In the recent ARTFORUM, Hans Ulrich Obrist calls her work “both critical and spectacular, using pop culture as a bridge rather than as a simple reference in the ubiquitous orgy of appropriation and revival”. Hong Kong based Para-site art space describes her work below.
“Cao Fei presents a real subculture suffused in illusions through her work and reflects the dilemma of youth existence and ennui emerging in the face of Chinese urban and economic transformations. These players navigate in-between worlds of fantasy sword fights and mundane reality and by juxtaposing them against the domestic and urban backdrops, the parallel realities in play in COSplayers reveal the life attitudes of China’s modern-day youth as alienated urban superheroes trying to deal with the urgent reality and the unease of populations left out of economic miracles.”
Tagged: Artists, Cao Fei, Chinese Women, Chinese Youth
