Saturday, April 26, 2014

World Art Museum




I’ve just done something in China that I’ve never done before.  My oldest daughter needed to take a standardized SSAT class.  You sign up and pay on the U.S. web site and they point out the official site in Beijing, where the test is offered.  OK, it’s over on in Haidian District.  Throw it in Google Maps, and, it’s not in the north west, its’ over on the west side of the third ring road.  I used to work near there at ZiZhuYuan, (Purple Bamboo Garden) sixteen years ago.

My daughter approached the test with the appropriate seriousness, cranking through the prep book and asking me for clarification on some five hundred words.  Chinese, Americans, nobody wants to 名落孙山[1].  Like any parent we got all the stuff ready the night before, printed out the admission ticket, got the passport, and made sure we had copious, sharpened number two pencils.  This morning it was just like any other morning, up early, breakfast, get everybody ready and . . . click on the Maps ap for directions.

Sunny clear day, relatively unobstructed traffic down, easy exit off and refer to the map.   We’ve over shot the first right and take the second, and so it begins.  According to the map it must be this hutong alley.  We turn in.  My wife is driving, rolls down the window and asks the man having a roadside breakfast if the “how do you pronounce it?"  “The bla bla bla school honey.”  “let your daughter see it, that can’t be right.”  “It’s not in characters, it’s in pinyin (romanized) darling.”   Hence I can’t be wrong.  “Let me see.”  “Here you go.”

Now my wife proceeds in her sweetest Chinese: “Hey Mister, hello, can you let me know where the bla bla bla school is?”  “Ask the boss here, I don’t know.”  “Hi madame, is the bla bla bla school over this way?”  “Couldn’t tell ya.”  “I see.”  We proceed along the alley on my advice and are now stuck inching past an oncoming taxi.  “Hi sir, can you tell us where the bla bla bla school might be?”  “No idea lady.”  Oh dear.  “Hello?  Miss?  Oh Really?  Really?  Right over there?  Hey, great. Thank you.” 

Back out, over around, two more directional inquiries and we’re at the place described in the Google Maps’ address gate, with about fifteen minutes to spare.  The way before which, is blocked.  A squat man in a rumpled uniform saunters over toward our car.  "This is that place.  But I haven’t heard of any test here to day lady.  Louie?  Louie?  Is there a test on here today?” “I haven’t heard of any test.”   It dawns on me that we have found the place on Google Maps and it is the wrong place. 

Now everyone is getting frantic.  Check the receipt.  The only number to call is in the U.S.  The name on the receipt is different than what’s in the ap.   Down the street, u-turn, back around, miraculously we are able to go left across the high street with a fortuitous traffic light.  Somewhere over here on the opposite block said the last reference.  Just park, we can try to walk from here.  Ask an old man, right that way.  Cool.  Up we go, take a left as instructed and sure enough there’s a crowd up ahead.  Are the kids still waiting to get in?  Oops, these aren’t kids.  These are young people working for the fifteen some odd test prep class companies, who’ve set up shop around the entrance.   Yup, this is the place, and that is the entrance.  Where are all the kids?  There inside, the test starts in five minutes.  But you can’t go in with her.  OK.  OK.  Here’s your passport, dear.  Here’s the ticket.  I’ll take your phone and . . . you made it. 

Unwinding from the great dash, my wife now settles into focused nervousness.  “Is she all right?”  “Of course dear.”  “How can she call if she doesn’t have a phone?”  “She’s not supposed to call.  Let’s go drive over to . . . “  “I don’t want to leave the area.”  “I see.” 

To my great dismay we are sitting now in the only establishment in the area that is open and serving; Kentucky Fried Chicken.  My wife has ironically gone and ordered the classic Beijing alley-food breakfast, you tiao and dou jiang (fried bread sticks and hot tofu milk) from Colonel Sanders.   My daughter wants to know if they have this in the U.S. KFC.  No darling.  The Colonel has a different special recipe back home.  Not far up the road is the “Beijing World Art Museum.”    It’s not The Met, but it’s worth a look. 



Later, now it is safe to report that it was most assuredly not The Met.  I had to pump it up big time to get my younger one to assent.  We went in and then found out we had to go back across the street and show a passport to get a free ticket for everyone.  Walking in I ask the lady at the counter for a map.  She looks at me like I’d asked for an apple.  “A floor plan perhaps?”  “No such thing exists, sir.”  “Well then.  What’s on?”  Oh, well, yeah, the kids’ exhibit is over there and there are things open on the . . . Gladys?  Is upstairs open? Yeah, so the upstairs is open too.”  “Right.  Well.  Thanks.”

On the first floor is an exhibit of kids’ art, which is nice if you like looking at other children's artwork in a room where the air con is broken.  The dimly lit stairs lead us to the second floor where everything looks closed.  The gift shop gal explains that you walk around that wall over yonder, and then down.   There is an enormous round room on the wall of which is a rather predictable wall relief that looks like a more elaborate version of the wall carvings in two dozen four-star tourist hotels across the country which begins with our man from Sichuan, Deng Xiao Ping and traces Chinese history back counter clockwise to for a hundred cyclical meters to the mythical FuXi.  That’s the second floor of “Beijing World Art Museum.”  Surely the third floor must have something of merit.  We schlep up and there is a sculpture gallery of Chinese luminaries which various companies have sponsored the erection of.  Nothing wrong with refreshing on who’s who, in Chinese civilization but the rendering of Li Qingzhao sponsored by the Number 2 Shandong Cement Works, is hardly Rodin. http://www.worldartmuseum.cn/sjysg_en/

And with the completion of this progression we have seen all that there is to see in the “Beijing World Art Museum.”  Is this a civic boondoggle?  How can you have a massive museum of this size, with that name, one of the world’s most significant emerging metropolis and this is all there is to show for it?  It’s like the American World Series which doesn’t invite anyone else in the world to play.  The “Beijing World Art Museum” has absolutely nothing from anywhere else in the world to display.  Why not?

We took a stroll in the YuYuanTan Park which our man Qianlong, who’s appeared on our DustyBrine pages before, built during his reign.  It is a sunny spring Saturday and, as one can only expect, it is packed to the gills with humanity.  The two yuan for adults entrance fee, doesn’t seem to be deterring anyone.  



Up ahead there is a crowd   In the crowd are music stands.  A bald man is getting a score ready.  Behind him are tubas.  A one, two, a one two three four . . .  This is a collection of older people assembled in the part all singing the red anthems of their youth.  They all seem so excited when the tune kicks up.  Everyone knows what to do.  The bald conductor is bringing up the right, now bringing up the left to the um-pah-pah beat.  The Li Huanzhi, 1958 classic "Socialism is Good" is on. One can’t help but imagine what’s going through their minds, belting out the songs that they went off to make revolution with, fifty years on, with message removed of all its potency beyond mere nostalgia.

Time to go get our test taker. 



[1] míngluòsūnshān:  (idiom) to fail in imperial exam

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