ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 16 It is called Forbidden City because it was forbidden to enter or leave without the emperor’s permission. It was the central seat of political and ceremonial power in China for 500 years, 1406—1912. The central axis is comprised of a series of throne rooms and vast courtyards. On either side are warrens of intimately scaled private rooms, kitchens, apartments, and chapels. Some halls are now museums containing extraordinary…
ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 15 So far in photographs of Beijing I have minimized the presence of people at popular sites. That is not possible at the Palace Museum, commonly called Forbidden City. It is the first listing in every tourist guide book and travel website and always crowded. Beginning this month, the daily visitor count will be limited to 80,000 people per day. As many as 122,000 have crushed through on a…
ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 14 At first I regretted choosing to visit the longest remaining section of Ming Dynasty city wall in Beijing. My first view of the wall was squeezed between new hotels, apartment buildings, and a major rail station. But after passing the Marriott in the northeast corner and a ten minute walk through a recently improved wooded park next to the mostly hidden east wall, the true relic emerged. Built…
ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 13 Tiāntán — Temple of Heaven — is a historic religious site within a 660 acre urban park. Especially in the early hours of the day people gather there to play games, dance, practice tai chi, and perform music. There are two large, well-tended flower gardens, one of roses, the other of peonies. Long wide walkways through manicured forests lead to scruffier cedar forests near the south gate. singing…
ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 12 Emperors and retinue of the Ming and Qing dynasties used Tiāntán — Temple of Heaven — annually to perform complex and lengthy ritual ceremonies for the worship of heaven to insure a year of good harvest. The circular wooden altar has been rebuilt many times. It was occupied, damaged, and looted by the Anglo-French Alliance in the 1850s, again by the Eight-Nation Alliance in 1900, and burnt to…
ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 11 Confucius, first teacher and moralist, lived 551–479 BC without power or status. The temple compound built to venerate him in Beijing and its neighbor the Guozijian, Imperial Academy are a short walk from the Yonghegong, Tibetan Buddhist Lamasery. Begun in 1287, the Confucius Temple functioned officially until the end of feudal rule in 1911. The grueling civil service examination system at the Guozijian, gatekeeper of upward mobility, ended…
ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 10 Yonghegong is an active and well-attended Tibetan Buddhist Temple in Beijing. Built in 1694 as an imperial residence, it was converted to a lamasery in 1744. Worshipers offer gifts of money, food, large paper flowers, and complementary incense provided at the entrance. As with other sites in Beijing, it is meticulously restored and enormous, with five central halls containing countless carved, painted, and bronze aspects of Buddha. The…
ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 9 Haidian District, Beijing, location of the artist residency program at Inside Out Museum, is home to at least eleven major universities. Founded in 1911, Tsinghua University is a public research institute with a wide range of academic programs. Within it, the Academy of Arts & Design has a museum-quality gallery, 25 departments including architecture, graphic design, drawing, painting and other fine arts, a compact art supply store, and…
ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 8 The view from the top of Longevity Hill of the roof peak of the Guanyin Buddha Temple would seem to be the natural end of a tour of Yiheyan — New Summer Palace — in Haidian, Beijing. But wait, there’s more. Much more. A series of Indian-style temples stack up and over the ridge descending to the North Gate. At the bottom is Suzhou Market Street, originally built…
ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 7 The commanding center piece of the symmetrically designed Yiheyuan — New Summer Palace — in Haidian, Beijing, is the Buddhist Temple on top of the precipitously steep Longevity Hill overlooking Kunming Lake. The hill was augmented with excavation of the entirely man-made lake. Photography only serves to mislead regarding the actual contrast of scale, compression and expansion of space, and extremely large quantities of color and ornamentation. central…