I think this photo, taken from www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo984310.htm, is exquisite. The color of the sky creates some anxiety in your mind, which tightens the impression of this photo of lit-up Maman, Louise Bourgeois's famous sculpture, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. If only the camera-shooting guy were absent from the picture...
I don't really know why the "summer time" begins today when I still see snow on the ground in Stockholm.
Work on the climate project.
Receive a request for refereeing.
Work on the climate project with my colleagues.
Clean up my messy office desktop and equally messy Windows computer screen desktop.
Updates on September 11, 2009: The plug-in is now called Firefox PDF Plugin for Mac OS X. Although Firefox 3 now lets you browse PDF documents within the browser window, it doesn't seem to work properly. Scrolling down the document messes the screen. All the icons on the top work weirdly. It's still better to install this plugin in my opinion.
I've been using Mac OS at home for more than a year. One thing that keeps bugging me is the browser. Mac OS's default browser, Safari, is sometimes unable to show a website designed for Internet Explorer. In such a case, you need to use Firefox for Mac.
The problem of Firefox for Mac is, however, that you cannot view a PDF file within the browser window. Everytime you click the link to a PDF file, the PDF file is downloaded onto your computer even if you don't know if it's worth saving on your computer until you actually read it.
Finally, I learn this problem can be fixed by downloading firefox-mac-pdf.
Now I probably do not need to use Safari anymore. Let's see...
Work on the climate project with my colleagues.
A faculty meeting to discuss visiting researcher position applications for half an hour.
Attend a seminar.
Work on the climate project with my colleagues in the morning and in the afternoon.
Work on the climate project on my own in the evening.
Work on the climate project with my colleagues.
Have a chat with this week's visitor, to give her my comments to the seminar yesterday and to learn one thing useful for the climate project from her.
Work on the climate project with my colleagues.
Attend a seminar given by this week's visitor, Pascaline Dupas. Based on a randomized field experiment in Kenya, she presents the first convincing evidence that allowing the poor to save in a bank account increases their welfare.
Go for dinner with today's seminar speaker and my colleagues.
1. Review applications to visiting student fellowship for PhD students with interests in empirical development microeconomics.
2. Lunch with a colleague and this week's visitor.
3. Have a chat with the visitor on bed nets for malaria prevention.
4. Call IT help staff to learn what the file management will be like if I switch to Mac OS from Windows in my office computer.
5. Discuss the climate project with my colleague.
1. Discuss what to do next in our climate project with my colleagues in the morning.
2. Lunch with this week's visitors to our Institute and other colleagues.
3. Attend a work-in-progress seminar by a PhD student at our Institute.
4. Attend a seminar by one of this week's visitors.
5. Gather background knowledge of bed nets and malaria in preparation for a chat with the other of this week's visitors.
1. Have a chat to a PhD student on her research.
2. Have a chat with another PhD student on her research.
3. Review some PhD applications.
4. Read Guttman (2008):
Assortative matching of borrowers under joint liability contracts may not occur due to dynamic incentives, because forming a group with safe borrowers decreases the probability of being denied credit after group defaulting MORE for a risky borrower.
Monday 9th to Thursday 12th:
Work on the climate change project with my colleague.
Friday 13th:
Mistra-Swecia Scientific Seminar in which my colleague presents our work.
Belatedly, I found Robert Jensen's guest posts to Steven Levitt's Freakonomics Blog. It's an unusual account of how development economics research is actually done.
Robert Jensen's research is characterized by the testing in developing countries of basic economic theory that is yet to be empirically verified in a convincing fashion. As a result, it contributes both to economics in general and to development economics in particular. He's one of my favorite economists.
Work on the climate change project with my colleagues until late in the evening.
Work on the climate change project with my colleagues.
Attend a seminar talk by Peter Nilsson, who finds that those Swedes born to young women during a temporary policy-driven increase in alcohol availability back in 1967 drop out of school more likely and earn less today. His careful analysis rules out many competing hypotheses, suggesting that the exposure to alcohol in utero negatively affects the cognitive skill. Check out his paper if interested.
Continue working on the the climate change project with my colleagues until late in the evening.
Work on the climate change project with my colleagues until late in the evening.
1. Talk to a PhD student about her research when I bumped into her in the corridor.
2. Work on the climate change project with my colleagues in the morning.
3. Work on the climate change project on my own in the afternoon with an extensive use of ArcGIS, and I learn I need to install some extra plug-ins for ArcGIS to do my job...
Work on the climate change project in my office in the late morning and in the afternoon.
Work on the climate change project in my office in the afternoon.
Work on the climate change project with my colleagues.
The job offer outcome is out today. Three of the four candidates we offered a job of assistant professorship have accepted the offer. A great news for us.
1. Work on the climate change project with my colleagues.
2. Finish writing and submit the referee report.
3. Read Wright (2008). He empirically finds: (1) Among autocratic regimes, personal rule and monarchy are more likely to be found in countries with mineral resources and small population. (2) The cross-sectional correlation between the regime stability and the likelihood of the presence of national legislature in autocracies is positive for single-party and military regimes but negative for personal rules and monarchies.
1. Read a paper that I'm asked to write a referee report on in the morning.
2. Work on the climate change project with my colleagues in the afternoon.
3. Start writing a referee report for the paper mentioned above in the evening.
1. Work on the climate change project myself in the morning
2. Attend a brown bag seminar presented by one of our PhD students at lunchtime.
3. Work on the climate change project with my colleagues in the afternoon.
Come to my office in the afternoon to work on the climate change project.
Come to office in the afternoon to work a bit on the climate change project on my own.
1. Attend our recruitment meeting in the morning. We have decided whom to offer a job as an assistant professor.
2. Work on the climate change project with my colleagues until late evening.
1. Work on the climate change project with my colleague.
2. Lunch with our last job market candidate.
3. Attend a development economics student workshop.
4. Attend a job talk.
5. Grade all the job market candidates whose job talk I attended, for out meeting on the recruitment tomorrow.
1. Write and submit a referee report.
2. Learn a bit about HIV and email comments to my fellow development economists in Japan on their project on HIV prevention in Africa.
3. A colleague with whom I'm working on the climate change project visits my office and lets me know what he learns from the medical literature about how malaria infection during pregnancy (which will be affected by climate change!) increases child mortality. This gives us an idea of the empirical specification.
A well-done lecture on what we really know about HIV in Africa, delivered by Emily Oster:
Summary: (1) An emphasis on education may be misleading because preventive behavior appears to be linked with life expectancy. (2) The HIV prevalence rates in African countries, reported by US Census Bureau, are likely to exaggerate the actual prevalence. (3) Poverty do not seem to be the cause of the spread of HIV infection.
1. Learn about leadership successions in Laos in 1992 and in Liberia in 1971 for the autocracy project.
2. Work on the climate change project with my colleagues for the whole afternoon. We've made some progress.
After doing laundry, buying an iPod Classic and foods in the city center, and cleaning the bathroom, I go to my office, working on the climate change project for three hours in the evening.
Read Maccini and Yang's paper entitled "Under the Weather: Health, Schooling, and Economic Consequences of Early-Life Rainfall" (forthcoming in American Economic Review) for the climate change project. Indonesian women are taller and more educated if it rains more than average during the first year of life. No such relationship between early childhood rainfall and men's height and education.
1. Work a little bit on the African democracy paper. Datasets occupy my disk space too much. I need to transfer and zip them.
2. Lunch with the visiting student, commenting on her works.
3. Work with my colleague on the climate change project for the whole afternoon.
1. Continue working on the revision of the African democracy paper.
2. Work on the climate change project. Learn about how diarrhea is affected by climate. Available evidence suggests that the number of diarrhea cases linearly increases with temperature but has an U-shaped relationship with rainfall, presumably because little precipitation forces people to use dirty water and too much rain floods dirty water.
CORRECTED on 22 Feb.
1. Attend a lunch-time seminar at Handels.
2. Continue working on the revision of the African democracy paper.
3. While waiting for regressions to be run, read Deaton (2009) again to summarize his points on randomized control trials (RCTs) in development economics:
(1) RCTs gives us an unbiased estimate of the average treatment effect due to the fact that the expectation is a linear operator, but it is not informative about other features of the distribution of the treatment effect such as median. (Pages 25-7)
(2) RCTs should be designed to learn not whether a particular project works but why it works, because "projects can rarely be replicated while the mechanism underlying success or failure will often be replicated and transportable" (pages 30-1). See Section 5 for more on this.
(3) Calculation of the standard error of the average treatment effect is not straightforward if the treatment effect is heterogenous, because the variance in the error term will then be different between the treated and the control group. (pages 31-3)
(4) Controlling for covariates to improve the precision of the treatment effect estimate can be hazardous with the presence of heterogeneous treatment effects. (Pages 34-6)
(5) If compliance to the treatment is incomplete, reduced-form evidence (ie. intention-to-treat effect) is more informative than the instrumental variables estimation because the latter yields the local average treatment effect which may not be of interest. (pages 14-20, 36-8)
1. Continue working on the revision of the African democracy paper. I don't know why this takes this long. I want to finish this and move on to another research project. But it takes long...
2. Lunch with today's job market candidate and my colleagues.
3. Attend a job talk.
1. Continue working on the revision of the African democracy paper.
2. Lunch with today's job market candidate and my colleagues.
3. Attend a job talk.
4. Read Deaton (2009).
Feel very tired. Sleep early.
1. Continue working on the revision of the African democracy paper. Each regression takes 3 hours to be done. Write a computer program to run a regression. Wait for three hours. Check the result. Think of what to do next. Write a computer program to run another regression. Wait for three hours. Check the result. Think of what to do next...
I discovered two things about myself.
Number one. I like reading a text that describes what's going on in very detail. I realized this when I was reading "Collectors" by Raymond Carver. I rarely read a novel in English because I need to look up words in dictionary several times per page (expressions like "lift up" when you are laying on the sofa and "put out his hand" when someone meets up someone else are the kind of English phrases I don't perfectly understand). But this short novel came with a Japanese book on translation from English to Japanese written by Haruki Murakami, who did a lot of translation of English novels for Japanese readers. So I had an opportunity to read it (along with Haruki Murakami's translation into Japanese). And I found myself enjoying reading it when a sentence describes people's movement or landscape in a bit too much detail. I did know this when I read Haruki Murakami's novels in Japanese whose sentences are also too much in detail with tons of adjectives (and most of them are dropped when his novels are translated into English). But I didn't know this would work for English novels until today.
Number two. I like watching a video with good sound that is rather difficult to understand. Today I went out to the area around Industricentralen, a former residential building for factory workers located in north-western Stockholm (off the beaten track for tourists), which now houses a cluster of contemporary art galleries. I needed to refresh myself by facing hard-to-understand pieces of contemporary art. More than 90 percent of contemporary art works are rubbish (and they often use rubbish as ingredients, by the way). It's important to visit a cluster of galleries. Then you will encounter at least one not-too-bad piece of art. This time, Galleri Flach+Thulin did a job to me with Twan Janssen's 20-minute video installation entitled "The Stockholm Syndrom". While all the other visitors left within five minutes, I sat down on a chair (provided by the gallery) to watch the film all the way. It's an abstract one created by computer graphics. It just keeps on showing white stuff whose shapes and movements are inspired from clouds, water waves, smokes, and the like. This continues for 20 minutes with abstract music of repetitive kind composed by Jasper TX. It's not too bad at all. Much more enjoyable than normal movies, television programs, or music videos from uninspiring rock and hip hop musicians. I do not watch films or TV, but this is not because I don't like videos as a means of expression. I do like videos that are not easy to understand (like this one that I wrote about before or the one that I saw at the List Visual Arts Center at MIT).
1. Read Emanuel (1986), a survey of evidence on the impact of a mother's early childhood health on her reproductive performance.
2. Continue working on the revision of the African democracy paper.
3. Talk to my boss about the revision of the African democracy paper in the kitchen. Come to conclude that more substantial revision is required than I initially thought, but my boss says, "Don't overdo it."
1. Continue working on the revision of the African democracy paper.
2. Lunch with today's job market candidate and my colleagues.
3. Attend a job talk.
4. Skim Dell, Jones, and Olken (2009). Even within countries in the Americas, hotter areas are poorer.
5. Find a useful Stata ado file called UNIQUE.
1. Work on the revision of the African democracy paper.
2. Spend the whole afternoon with my colleagues for installing software to get access to the PDC. Windows sucks as we all know.
1. Continue revising the African democracy paper.
2. Meet a PhD student from Italy who specializes in development economics and will be visiting us until this summer.
3. Skim Pollard (1965) for the labor management project plan, coming to conclude that I should give up this project.
1. Continue revising the African democracy paper.
2. Lunch with today's job market candidate and my colleagues.
3. Attend a job talk.
1. Work on the revision of the African democracy paper in the late afternoon.
1. Work on the labor management project plan.
2. Discuss the autocracy project with my RA.
3. Submit the referee report after the final check.
1. Continue writing a referee report. Almost done.
2. Get some feedback to the labor management project plan from a colleague in the kitchen.
3. Skim Ohno (2007) and Acemoglu and Zilibotti (1999) for inspirations for the labor management project plan.
1. Interview today's job candidate for 30 minutes at 9 am.
2. Start writing a referee report.
3. Give some feedbacks to a PhD student who talks to me about his research while I am having lunch in the kitchen.
4. Attend a 90-minute job talk.
5. Dinner with the job candidate and my colleagues.
1. Interview today's job market candidate for 30 minutes from 9 am.
2. Read a paper for which I'm asked to referee.
3. Attend a job talk.
4. Learn about tomorrow's job market candidate.
5. Dinner with today's job candidate and my colleagues.
1. Interview today's job market candidate visiting us.
2. Grade mock referee reports handed in by PhD students in our development economics course.
3. Lunch with a PhD student, getting some feedbacks to my research idea.
4. Skim Ballester, Calvo-Armengol, and Zenou (2006).
5. Attend a job talk.
6. Learn a bit about tomorrow's job candidate.
7. Read Ohno 2007 for the labor management project plan.
8. Dinner with today's job market candidate and my colleagues.
A great nightclub in London was closed for good today. The End nightclub, located in a few minute walk to the south of the British Museum, has been praised by many DJs and clubbers as one of the best nightclubs in London. Indeed, the quality of its sound system and the acoustic is one of the best among many clubs that I've been to in my life. During my five-year life in London, I've been there many times, especially for its Wednesday night party called Swerve, hosted by my favorite drum & bass DJ Fabio. That was the party I always went to when I was exhausted from my life as a PhD student. That was the place where I was always sure that I would feel happy and healed by great sound, especially deep and loud bass.
I wanted to fly to London for the final Swerve party last Wednesday, where Fabio would be on the deck for more than four hours, but my job obligations as an assistant professor forced me to give it up. After coming home last night from a drum & bass party held in a club in Stockholm which didn't have good acoustic or the sound system capable of pumping out proper bass sound, the most crucial element for drum & bass music, I terribly miss The End.
Another place in which I can feel happy for sure, which is an absolute rarity for me, is gone.
1. Interview a job market candidate visiting us today for 30 minutes, and learn about the literature on randomized experiments to improve the access to clean water in developing countries.
2. Email my fellow Japanese development economists to give them feedbacks on their plan for evaluating clean water programs.
3. Work with my colleagues on our climate change project.
4. Attend a 90-minute job talk.
5. Go to dinner with the candidate and my colleagues.
1. Learn the consequences of malaria infection during pregnancy and early childhood by visiting the WHO website, and think about empirical specifications for our climate change project. Discuss my colleague on this.
2. Attend the Development Study Group in which PhD students in the field of development economics in Stockholm discuss their research ideas and preliminary results. Give some comments to the presenters.
3. Discuss my RA on the autocracy project.
4. Learn a bit about the job market candidate visiting us tomorrow.
5. Think about how to revise the African democracy paper.
1. Finish marking the exams.
2. Work with my colleagues on our climate change project in the whole afternoon.
3. Make some progress in revising the African democracy paper.
1. Meet a PhD student who talks about his research to me for an hour in the morning. Give him some feedbacks.
2. Write and run a computer program for the African democracy project.
3. Analyze data with my colleagues for our climate change project in the whole afternoon.
4. Mark exams after going home.
1. Work with my colleagues on our climate change project all day.
2. Read Chapter 2 of Ohno 2007 for the labor management project after going home.
1. Finish compiling the data for our climate change project.
2. Start revising the African democracy paper.
3. Prepare what to tell my RA for the autocracy project.
4. Read Ohno (2007) for the labor management project.
(Yesterday was a complete day off.)
When I first started blogging back in 2001 (at that time it was in Japanese), I made up a word Econoclasm as the blog title. One reason is, as "econo-" implies, I was studying economics (and I am now, too). Another reason is I felt like I was an iconoclast (and I do now, too). The last reason is I liked (and still do like) this tune called Iconoclasm, composed and performed by Buck-Tick. So this is the theme song of Econoclasm.
1. Read Anderson and Ray (2008)'s paper on missing women.
2. Learn a bit about the DHS maternal mortality module and update the Devecondata accordingly.
1. Submit the referee report after the final check.
2. Compiling the dataset for our climate change project. The most tedious part is over.
3. Read the introduction of a couple of papers of my interest in the latest issue of Review of Economic Studies.
1. Finish writing the referee report.
2. Compiling the data for our climate change project.
1. Writing a referee report
2. Compiling the data for our climate change project
3. Have a chat with a PhD student in my research institute about my new project
1. Writing a referee report
2. Compiling the data for our climate change project
Designed by Yumi Terauchi.
(These photos are taken from Excite Ism Concierge, January 12, 2009.)
1. Preparing a referee report
2. Compiling data for the climate change project
Finish reading the paper for which I have to write a referee report.
Let me try to record what I do each day as an assistant professor from today on. Here's what I did on the first day of my job this year.
1. A meeting with my colleagues on our climate change research project.
2. Write exam questions.
3. Submit a referee report.
4. Prepare the claim for reimbursement of expenses to attend the conference in China last month.
5. Start reading a paper for another referee report.
The Entrance
I stayed in room 311 of the Lu Song Yuan hotel from 17 to 19 December, 2008. Room 311 is not on the third floor but on the ground floor, by the way.
The Lobby
The main courtyard
The good:
Booking was easy. I simply emailed them to ask the availability of a bedroom, received a reply on the following day, emailed them again to confirm my booking, and received their confirmation and a direction to the hotel (useful to show taxi drivers as this hotel is not well known to them) as email attachments. As I would arrive late, I called them up to give my credit card number (otherwise you don't need to do this), which went on smoothly.
The hotel building dates back to the Qing Dynasty era. The lobby's decor feels traditional with antique furniture and decorated ceilings. So does the bedroom. There are several courtyards, one of which I see through the window of my bedroom. The tea house looks cosy with two shared PCs for internet access.
Near the hotel is Nanluoguaxiang Hutong (see the post below), a narrow street lined with hutongs, Beijing's traditional homes dating back to the 13th century, which house small restaurants, bars, and shops of rather good taste.
The staff members are all friendly though few speak English.
Room 311
The bad:
The location is not as convenient as it seems. It is located in the center of Beijing, but the nearest subway station is a 15 minute walk away. As taxi drivers do not know where this hotel is, going back to the hotel is a bit of a pain in the ass.
There seems to be no way of preventing shower water from spilling into the bathroom floor even with a shower curtain.
The receptionist mistakenly charged my credit card with 1100 yuan at checking-in, which is fine. But when I checked out, it took 15 minutes for her to arrange the refund in cash, shortening my precious time for exploring Beijing before heading for the airport.
The ugly:
The bathroom stinks.
Verdict: if you don't mind breathing with your mouth in the bathroom, it is a great budget hotel in Beijing.
A street in Beijing with recently renovated hutongs housing cafes, restaurants, and shops.
A restaurant mostly featuring Taiwanese cuisine despite its Italian name. What's noticeable at this restaurant is the uniformity of waiters and waitresses. All of them have the same haircut (the kind of short hair style popularized first in Tokyo), wear the same kind of clothes (a white shirt, black suit trousers, and either a black jacket or a black vest), and have a round face. It takes some time to realize that some of them are boys while others are girls. The restaurant manager seems to select girlish boys and boyish girls to achieve the unisex appearance. The decor is, I would say, a mixture of Chinese and Scandinavian style.
I order a Taiwanese pickled cabbage for a starter, a Taiwanese stir-fried noodle for the main dish, and a glass of hot milk tea in Hong Kong style. All of them are excellent. The price is 76 yuan (7.60 euro).
Gongti Xilu, the street that Bellagio faces, appears to be a happening place during the night with several restaurants in style like Bellagio (the next door is Green T Cafe, featured in Wallpaper* City Guide) and some nightclubs.
If your travel guide to Beijing was published before the 2008 Beijing Olympic games, the subway map in the guide is outdated. It's wise to print out a Beijing subway map with station names both in Chinese and English, like this one or that one, because subway stations do not provide portable maps to visitors.
The Water Cube (aka the National Aquatics Center) doesn't really look beautiful. Fortunately, there is a weird sculpture nearby.
What makes Bird's Nest beautiful is the shape of its top edge in entirety. The closer you get, the uglier it becomes.
After having dinner at No Name Restaurant (see the post below), I stroll down to the south along the western shore of Lake Qianhai. After passing loads of restaurants and bars, most of which are rather tacky, I enter Lotus Lane, where I meet the most disgusting Chinese people. A guy approaches me, talking to me in Chinese. I ignore him as this kind of guy is usually dodgy. But he doesn't give up, following me all the way. Once he realizes I'm not Chinese, he starts talking in broken English, saying, "Chinese girls." I say, "No thank you." But this pimp never gives up, still following me all the way. It's very disgusting and distracting. I tell him out loud, "No thank you." Then he finally gives up.
At the exit of Lotus Lane, a woman approaches me, saying, "Music. Girls." She also never gives up until I tell her out loud, "No thank you."
Chinese pimps are very persistent and disgusting.
For dinner in Beijing, I visit No Name Restaurant, recommended by Wallpaper* City Guide. Finding this spin-off from the pioneering bar in the area surrounding the Houhai Lake without its name (thus known as No Name Bar) is a bit tricky. But once you find it, a real treat awaits you.
The restaurant offers the Yunnan cuisine. The menu is both in Chinese and in English with photos of each dish. Both shredded potato fried in Yunnan style and grilled whole fish stuffed with lemongrass are excellent. Even a cup of tea (Pu-erh tea) is very good. All of these cost 136 yuan (13.6 euro), expensive by Beijing standards but still reasonable for someone from London or Stockholm.
Although it is still an interesting area to explore, the Beijing 798 Art District (see the post below) has become too commercial for some serious contemporary artists. Such artists, also grumpy with rising rent in the 798 District, have migrated to the northeast, by crossing the Fifth Ring Road, and settled in a village named Caochangi. I'm amazed by the fact that Beijing's contemporary art scene has already reached such a second stage. The Caochangi village indeed has no commercialism at all. No billboard. No cafe or restaurant.
East End Art Zone B is a walled area in Caochangi. Inside the premises spreads out a surreal settlement. Every building looks the same: two-story, gray bricked walls, and with a garden surrounded by wooden fences. If you turn more than once, you will lose the sense of direction. No signpost.
On one alleyway sits a giant art piece, possibly thrown away by an artist.
There are two art galleries in the Zone. One of them turns out to be a Japanese one named Mizuma & One Gallery, which displays a work by Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba.
After flying back to Beijing yesterday, I spend two nights in the Chinese capital city before heading for Tokyo. The aim is to see how far Beijing has developed to be a modern city.
Taking a taxi from the city center to the northeast for about 20 minutes, I arrive at the much-hyped Beijing 798 Art District (its official website only in Chinese).
The district used to be a place for secret weapon factories back in the 1950s, after communists took over mainland China. The factories were then abandoned until contemporary artists started colonizing the area, because of its cheap rent, in the 1990s.
If the description of the area stops here, it's not particularly unusual. Many cities in the West have such a contemporary artist colony in post-industrial chic. (The most notable is probably Tate Modern in London, the contemporary art museum housed in the former power station.) What's unique about the 798 Art District is that it is located in China, the country with long history and distinct culture, the communist government, billions of people, and "cool" Japan as a neighbor.
Therefore, art galleries are housed in the former factories with occasional appearances of communist slogans on the wall. Chinese letters on the signage look as if they are part of art and design. In an area of 800 meters in width and 400 meters in length, you cannot stop finding more galleries, with even more under construction. The popular art form is painting, often with influences from Japanese manga and socialist propaganda cartoons. Funny-looking giant sculptures stand along streets. In addition, the area is peppered with cafes and restaurants, some in style. One event space in a former factory exhibits the latest autumn/winter collection from several top luxury brands such as Comme des Garcon and Alexander McQueen. All of these make it interesting to explore the district. One day is certainly not enough to see everything.
The red letters say, "Hooray for the Communist Party!"
Chimneys with a giant red-star mug
More chimneys with a giant fly.
With Maoist slogans intact, this unused space in a former weapon factory looks as if it is a piece of art.
The main street in the District
Behind these iron doors spread the latest collections from Comme des Garcons and other luxury brands.
:phunk studio's exhibition at Art Seasons Gallery.
A gallery advertisement in post-industrial chic.
The Artkey 798 Showroom.
Bai Shi Tea House (白石茶館), housed in the Artkey 798 showroom, with piano music in the background. I'd frequent this cafe if I were a Beijing resident. The vibe is perfect.
An unused square in the district
A corridor to galleries
The first gallery I visit in the 798 Art District is Gallery Show. The pathway to the gallery is already surreal.
The gallery's entrance. Notice a Maoist slogan in Chinese letters on the wall below the broken windows.
The gallery can be reached by walking up the staircase full of graffiti. Letters featured in this graffiti are Korean. This gallery appears to be owned by a Korean.
Above the graffiti remains the floor map used when the building was a weapon factory.
The gallery itself is well-curated. Below are two of the paintings that I like:
Wang Xiao Jin (2007) "Sister No.4"
Tang Jie (2007) "I'm not afraid No.1"
From an art gallery's entrance in the Beijing 798 Art District. I forgot the name of this gallery, but it's located on Seven Star West Street.
