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北京都市农耕联盟 启动会:8月11日,16:00 @家作坊
Beijing Urban Farming Union kickoff meeting: August 11, 16:00 @ HomeShop

诚邀您来家作坊参加这次有关都市农耕交流,来认识志同道合的朋友,了解关于都市农耕的实际情况和DIY自己动手的技术,与其他朋友分享自己的知识和经验。 从哪弄土壤和肥料? 从哪获得种子? 用什么容器? 在哪种? 该如何共同努力才能把都市农耕变得更容易更有趣呢? 为了解答这些问题,我们将组织参观家作坊的实地小农场、堆肥实验及种子交换库,对小型的民间及社区农耕行动进行介绍,探讨连接不同的农耕群体(包括潜在的农耕者)并促进他们的合作的可能途径。 我们应该在城市里种植更多的粮食和蔬菜! 这次交流会就是为了邀请大家参与进来!

Please join us for a gathering at HomeShop to exchange on urban farming in Beijing. It’s an opportunity to meet likeminded people, learn some facts and d.i.y. techniques, and share knowledge and experiences. How can we access soil and fertilizer? Where can we get seeds? What materials can we use for containers, and where can we put them? How can we work together to make it easier and more fun?

To address these questions, on the agenda will be a tour of HomeShop’s on-site small farm and composting experiments and Seed Exchange Bank, presentations on small civil-society and community initiatives into agriculture in Beijing, and envisioning possible ways of linking up and cooperating among diverse groups of growers (and potential growers).

We should grow more food in the cities! This meeting is an invitation to get involved.

共同组织:家作坊和简明清
Co-organized by HomeShop and Jonas Nakonz 

其他:
在家门口种上一株黄瓜,即刻你就被转移到一个包含所有下列事物的宇宙:全球政治,复杂生态系统,社会变化,减缓气候变化,DIY技术,大大提高的生活质量和关注自然之美带来的精神上感悟。 民以食为天,但是平常你吃的食物可能带来生物多样性破坏,全球气候变化,土壤和水的污染。
数据: 在中国,农业一个部门排放的温室气体是整个工业部门的将近两倍。每年中国使用约有5千万吨化学肥料,但只有17%被作物吸收,其余的则都流失到了环境中。更不用说,每年喷洒在你食物上的150万吨农药,还有在生产这些农药过程中使用的煤炭能源。而在中国,马路上30%的耗油大卡车实际上是在运送粮食。如果你能闻到饭菜里的燃油气味,肯定吃不下饭!
中国的城市化带来了人类历史上最大规模的人口迁移,也创造了大约1万平方公里的可使用的屋顶面积,这些空间给有机种植者提供了一个庞大的舞台来解决前面提到的问题。此外,大量的有机质以厨余垃圾的形式被浪费。北京每天就填埋处理8千吨,焚烧处理2千吨厨余垃圾,而这些厨余垃圾完全经过堆肥处理制成有机肥来供都市农耕使用。 在市区,“桶园艺”令人耳目一新,尤其在中老年人中很流行。但都市农耕的潜力远远不止于此。技术琳琅满目,从利用回收的瓶子完成自灌的简易系统到由传感器控制的自动化农场,非常有意思。任何空间和环境都有其用武之地。都市农耕能把灰暗压抑的水泥空间变成令人耳目一新的的放松与聊天场所。它创新社区、交流网络、以及教育和能力建设的平台。不要再等政府来帮忙解决我们这个星球的问题。如果你种下那棵黄瓜,那么你就为一项伟大的事业贡献了一份力量!

More:
Plant a cucumber at your doorstep and you’re instantly beamed into a universe of global politics, complex ecosystems, social change, climate change mitigation, d.i.y. technology, massively improved quality of life and spiritual enlightenment contemplating the beauty of nature. Food sustains life; but eating your average food can contribute to the destruction of biodiversity, global warming and poisoning of soils and water.
Some figures: Chinese agriculture emits almost twice as much greenhouse gas than its entire industrial sector. Of the yearly 50 Million tons of inorganic fertilizer poured onto Chinese soil, only 17% is taken up by crops. The rest is “lost to the environment”. Not to mention the yearly dose of 1.5 million tons of toxic pesticides sprayed on your food, and the coal-burning energy to produce that stuff. What is more, 30% of all fuel guzzling trucks on Chinese roads are actually transporting food – if you could smell the carbon in your dish you’d choke.
Chinese urbanization – the largest migration in human history – has led to the creation of an estimated 10,000 km2 of unused rooftop area in China; that’s a big playground for organic gardeners to counter these problems. There’s tons of wasted organic matter; Beijing alone sends 8000 tons of food waste to the landfills every day and burns another 2000 tons. All of that could be put into compost bins and provide clean nutrients for your food. In Chinese cities, bucket gardening is refreshingly popular, particularly among the elderly. But the potential of urban farming goes far beyond. There are fascinating technologies, ranging from easy self-watering systems from recycled bottles to sensor-controlled automated farms. There is something smart for every space and condition. Urban farming can transform gray concrete into spaces of relaxation and dialogue. It creates community, networks of exchange, a platform for education and empowerment. Don’t wait until governments solve the problems of this planet. If you plant that cucumber, you’re part of a big thing!

A traditional courtyard house.

A church, for training purposes.

A real post office, on the left.

A fake coffee shop next to a real tea shop.

 A fake Carrefour

A real supermarket

 A fake bank.

 An alleyway next to a real print shop.

A consulate for “Country A.” 

A fake government building.

A real police station.

 

On the edge of town.

My first attempt to enter the Chinese People’s Public Security University at 7 o’clock on a Thursday morning met with abrupt rejection. “This university is not like others,” the sympathetic but inflexible guard smiled. The following Tuesday I returned and through the magic words of a few contacts, fairly waltzed into the vast and well-kept campus, abuzz with the meticulous workings of early evening. We walked along streets with names like “Loyalty Avenue” and “Diligence Avenue” in a self-contained parallel universe populated by young cops and athletes in various groupings and formations breaking apart, flowing through a corner together, founding blue constellations across the immense, dusking Culture Plaza. No trash cans in this world: trash cans mean trash. No holding hands in this world. 

After a review of evening roll call followed by substantial dinner in the cafeteria, we proceeded to a large installation near the heart of the campus, formed of a massive free wall surrounding a model of what appeared to be a European style town center. The traffic lights stood blind and waiting, and through a window above a real dry cleaners came the keening quasi-tunes of karaoke. 

The town was neither completely real nor completely fake. Perhaps this diversifying was to make it more interesting, to create a sense that this dead space was somehow half alive, like a permeable, banal amusement park. But as a training ground for how to tackle situations like traffic control and bank robberies, one could also imagine this mixture of shops for daily necessities and the neighboring empty simulations as furnishing the leitmotif of preparedness for social breakdown even on one’s habitual off-hour trips to commissary.

Passing again outside the wall, we cut across the gigantic sports fields to a low building of studio rooms where extracurricular clubs convened. One of our guides, whose major is in processing foreigners and who loves punk music, had offered to let us watch their brand practice. We were treated to a suite of Chinese and American standards including “Every Breath You Take” by the Police, “Desperado” by the Eagles and “Holiday” by Green Day. 

No irony in this world. Just the shining, armed citizens with their perfect eyesight (mandated to make it through the gate), honing their creative, sexual energies for the republic.

Holiday

“Say, hey!

Hear the sound of the falling rain
Coming down like an Armageddon flame (Hey!)
The shame
The ones who died without a name

Hear the dogs howling out of key
To a hymn called “Faith and Misery” (Hey!)
And bleed, the company lost the war today

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On holiday

Hear the drum pounding out of time
Another protester has crossed the line (Hey!)
To find, the money’s on the other side

Can I get another Amen? (Amen!)
There’s a flag wrapped around a score of men (Hey!)
A gag, a plastic bag on a monument

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On holiday

(Hey!)
(Say, hey!)

(Wait for it!)

“The representative from California has the floor”

Sieg Heil to the president Gasman
Bombs away is your punishment
Pulverize the Eiffel towers
Who criticize your government
Bang bang goes the broken glass and
Kill all the fags that don’t agree
Trials by fire, setting fire
Is not a way that’s meant for me
Just cause (hey, hey, hey), just cause, because we’re outlaws yeah!

I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives

This is our lives on holiday”

 (from the album “American Idiot” by Green Day, 2005) 

城市农夫比赛

你是否身居城市的钢筋森林,却有一颗向往田园生活的心?

你是否在阳台、在房前屋后、甚至在郊区租了一小块地种菜、育苗、浇灌果树,而且不使用化肥、农药等各种化学合成物质,是个骄傲的城市有机农夫?

你是否觉得自己也是种菜能手,傲视京城?

如果以上三个问题的回答都是YES,那么请参加北京有机农夫市集为您度身定做的“城市农夫比赛”,向专业的有机农夫和各路专家(以及“砖家”)证明你的实力吧!

时间:2011年9月25日(周日)12pm-4pm

地点:城市农夫比赛及农夫市集周年庆祝活动
天窗临时咖啡店/酒吧, 大栅栏燕家胡同2号

具体比赛流程和时间安排稍后公布。更多信息请见新浪微博@北京有机农夫市集 http://weibo.com/farmersmarketbj;和博客http://t.cn/adIcwx

奖品:奖品将由市集农户和商户,以及部分合作伙伴提供,包括:新鲜蔬菜、香草茶、红酒、《贝太厨房》杂志,手工首饰,手工糕点等。

您和您家的蔬果可以报名角逐以下类别的奖项:

  • 瓜拉松奖:最佳南瓜造型;最坚强丝瓜;最搞怪冬瓜;最美丽葫芦奖。
  • 最红西红柿。
  • 香草盆栽造型大师。
  • 豆你玩奖(豆科种类大比拼)
  • 珍稀品种奖
  • 自由类别(您可以为您家的蔬果设计专门的奖项哦)

比赛结果将由消费者和评审团共同评选产生。评审团成员包括:

  • 经验丰富的专业有机农夫
  • 园艺专家
  • 美食作家
  • 吃货砖家等

比赛奖品由市集农户和志愿者提供。当然,更重要的奖励是来自专业和业余农夫的经验交流,技术分享,甚至种子和苗圃交换。

有兴趣报名参赛的城市农夫请把以下信息发到farmersmarketbj@gmail.com,请务必在标题注明“城市农夫比赛报名”:

  • 参加比赛的蔬果品种和竞技类别
  • 蔬果及其生长环境的照片,尺寸不超过1M
  • 您种菜的地点和环境(阳台上?市内?家门口的院子?还是在郊区租的地?)
  • 蔬果生长的方位(具体到马路、小区或村即可,最好网上地图可以搜索到大致方位)
  • 联系方式(电子邮件、电话;如有微博,请注明)

URBAN GROWERS COMPETITION!

Are you a city-dweller who grows food (home-grown organic, no chemicals!) in or around your home?
So you think your vegetables are the best in town, huh?
Come and prove your skills at the next Country Fair, happening September 25th in Dashilar!

Urban Growers Competition & Country Fair’s First Anniversary Celebration
at Sky Light pop-up Café, No. 2 Yanjia Hutong

Sign up for the following categories:

  • The Gourd Quadrathlon: Best pumpkin shape; strongest sigua; monster beigua; perfect hulu aesthetic
  • Reddest Tomato Award
  • Potted Herb Arrangement Masters
  • Bean Variety Open
  • Exotic Vegetable Prize
  • Freestyle Entries

Judges will include a combination of esteemed farmers, distinguished gourmets and food writers. A great way to share your knowledge, techniques and even your seeds! Serious fun! Great or strange prizes!

Interested participants please send Country Fair an email <farmersmarketbj at gmail.com> including:

  • What vegetables you will submit
  • A small (1mb maximum) photo of your plant and its location in your home.
  • A short description of your growing location and conditions (where in home, what location)
  • The name of the street where you live
  • Contact information (phone, email, and weibo if applicable)

家作坊的选手 HomeShop’s contenders:

Beigua is indeed a vegetable! 北瓜是一种菜!

Hi Grandpa,

How are you doing?
Far too long since we have spoken.
I just got your new email address by Nina forwarding a message with some nice old pictures you had taken.

I am still over here in Beijing, China. I have lived here almost 3 years, once fall arrives.

Just yesterday, I had a very funny experience. I went to a fake “Jackson Hole” north of Beijing, past the Great Wall. Supposedly, the developers copied the master plans directly from the Wyoming town, and just plotted the whole thing down onto some hilly countryside on the border of Hebei Province (the province surrounding Beijing). As a development including more than 1000 new homes, it’s not finished yet but there are already a few weekend “cowboys” living there.

We were there because of some interest the developers had shown in supporting our organic farmer’s market—but I found it incredibly difficult to get past the innocent and yet eerie surroundings (innocent, because what do they know about Jackson Hole? and so an innocent delight in surfaces; eerie because of such enthusiasm for surfaces—but I suppose the same could be said about the “real” Jackson Hole!).
Most of the wood was just imitation, made of plastic; although our guides claimed the rocks were real, and kept asking me as we toured a house “Is this how you live in America?

After the tour they gave me a cheaply-made bolo necktie with “Jackson Hole” on it.

They couldn’t tell me which house was a copy of Dick Cheney’s.

I thought you would like to see some of these images.
I hope all is well!

Love Michael


Hi Michael

So good to hear from you. I talked to your father yesterday and he told me who or where you were in that group picture that Nina sent to me. I would never have known you with all those whiskers.  Is that Emi beside you?

I am sending you some pictures of Lupine in the Big Horn Mtns taken on July 9, 2011. We had lots of snow in the Mtns this past year so the wild flowers are flourishing. We also made a trip to Jackson so will have to send you a few of those pictures. The pictures you sent about building a replica of Jackson Hole are interesting. Cheney, I believe, is still in the east. Think he has to be pretty close to medical assistance and he isn’t that popular.

I thought that was fun looking back at pictures when you and Nina were little. I thought she may have been interested.

Arleen and I are doing quite well. We take trips into the mountains quite a lot. She is legally blind with macular degeneration but she does very well. She has had quite as few sick days since you and Emi were here.

Lets keep in touch Michael, it’s so good to hear from you.

Love, Grandpa Eddy

(Note: Grandpa Robert Eddy lives in a town called Cody, Wyoming, named for the 19th century showman “Buffalo” Bill Cody, and situated at the eastern gate of Yellowstone National Park. Last time we visited Grandpa Eddy, he took us south to the Grand Teton mountain range and into a valley called Jackson Hole, where the small elite ski town of Jackson was home to ex-US Vice President Dick Cheney and John Walton (son and heir of Wal-Mart founder), and where nobody looks twice when Sting, Sandra Bullock, or Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston whiz down Dick’s Ditch on snowboards.”)

I have to be honest, leaving Beijing and entering another climate, one with bees, dramatic cloud formations carried on cool breezes, and sunsets, it rather briskly plunges into an abstract idea. Of course, it doesn’t help that the transitions are managed within the privations of air travel and its dreamy borders. Something of the vague shadow of recall remains even after landing elsewhere (and even after returning, in this case to Beijing). We hear back from our friends and collaborators, in those bursts of attention, when they are not engulfed in the gentle rustling of the sprawling pumpkin vine, a lost bank card, jobs, and all immediate and present things, and isn’t it amazing how clothes and cups air-dry? But somehow those things that actually seem to make an idea or sentiment make sense—the lick of moisture, the depth of layers of sounds, synesthesia—fail to reach us. I have for a long time harboured a feeling that appeals to presence magicalize ordinary things, placing sense beyond explanation and language, glossing over and rendering inaccessible the potential, tacit domination of charisma, taste, identity. I wouldn’t be the first to muse on the values of absence, chance and indifference as contributing to a democratic aesthetic (which some might place in a properly Modernist and therefore outmoded tradition). But I have to acknowledge never having been able to fully account for why things fizzle at a distance.

I gave a talk while I was away, in an art centre in Montréal. I tried to present my experiences so far living in China, including projects and jobs I had done, the work of friends, and a general description of what living in Beijing and practicing art here is like. This was a format I had never tried in an artist-talk. My throat became dry because I talked so much, I worried I appeared like some kind of Lonely Planet ambassador, and feared my monotone delivery was driving some people’s eyelids to flutter druggedly. Those may be my paranoid projections on a listenership (and the feedback was positive, seemingly), but there were other creeping feelings behind the performance anxiety. The question a friend had asked a few days prior hovered somewhere in my descriptions, why do you live there? (Well, I ended up there rather *indifferently*…) I remarked on the visceral qualities of the urban makeup that make life exciting and challenging, and the state-in-formation that characterizes the place and people, which I announced might lead any of us to question the unfinished nature of our respective origins and positions. The motivations straddle all divisions, but in the context, I was referring to art. I went on: If there is no existing measure for how to gauge my success, neither based on the intensity of inclusion in the local art world, nor on my entrepreneurial exploits, nor rate of publication, nor institutional power, freedom, stability of life… then the ensuing parallel could surely be drawn that those in Canada who I was addressing, or my peers in Germany, the USA or anywhere, certainly had no such measures either. If success had been globalized, so had irrelevance, so had decadence.
Perhaps I’d better mention other examples before this turns into an analysis session about my particular case of ressentiment (and it’s a thin line whenever a self-reflexive voice is assumed). Meeting with some friends in my hometown Halifax about a project involving portable galleries, I sat back and watched a fascinating discussion unfold among the locals (I no longer the local) on the limits of the Canadian artist-run centre system. It seemed from other such conversations in different towns that this is something of a national hang-up, as particular players position themselves toward international networks and markets, and others solidify institutionalization, and most of them struggle.
We could argue the responsible use of a commercial system and the apparent independence it brings (not only in China) trumps the legalistic-bureaucratic state funding systems, which in any case support and are supported by the galleries; just as we could argue the cleverest position to be in is that of the court eunuch. For a little while this fancy played in my head when visiting old friends from Europe or Canada, as their practices circulated them around the whitish public art spaces, drinking good liquors, getting high marks on risk assessment from facilities management; as all the young poke around the daydream, what’s the best city in which to live? The given provides a host of calculated answers—including perhaps the narrative I seem to be advancing (here and in my Montréal talk—for the sake of the audience, of course): because I am nowhere I am everywhere, I am a representative.
But it is not a matter of a facile choice, and the stinging truth is that it’s not such an interesting debate, still assuming the tone of a report back, to one side or another. So what is interesting? What is particular, beyond our obsessions with conventions, power and our whatever singularity?

These questions connect back to one of those that lingered for me after our Continental Drift, that of practice (conveniently, practice entitles a moody and self-absorbed preamble, or it is sterile, doctorific.) In discussions on the approach for people who were not on it, it was stated that the experiment—or experience, as some emphasized—of Continental Drift would be shared and made public through subsequent works, texts and water-cooler anecdotes, the affects that feed into practice. We all gently contemplated what forms, what connections the latent and the stated alike would develop over time; would there be a future?
But a drift is not only a means to gathering materials for our practices, otherwise it would be a research trip, properly speaking; in its carrying out, it is meant as a practice in itself, one by which we expose our moods and personal dramas to various stimuli (reality) and to each other’s common experience. There are no objectively safe ways to go about it, echoing the ethical dilemmas of art mentioned above: one cannot prove one is not a conventional tourist, but neither should that stop one from going. As a group coming from different backgrounds, with different interests at stake, our interactions ranged from particular to common, from encountering each other, to discussing the massive changes apparent in China, which we are all somehow part of. Regarding this latter issue, given the topical relevance of globalization, even though I live here, I might have expected to take in visions of the forces of manufacture and development that drive global trade. Maybe they did in a way, but not how I anticipated; in Beijing, for instance, we observed the organization of space not according to the establishment of heavy industry, but according to priorities of culturalization: a model for the management of society, as Brian put it to me on our first day of meandering. This could be seen around Wuhan’s East Lake as well, as a natural resource was transformed into a capital-intensive development without passing through a significantly industrialized prior state; the post-industrial imaginary also permeated descriptions of the agrarian-becoming-peach-themed fantasyland in Lijiang. Maybe these correspondences aren’t surprising, as shifts in Chinese culture are feverishly tracked by foreign and domestic marketeers, and this is the face that asks to be seen anyhow. We did catch glimpses of the underside of this narrative, the chaotic, organic and banal, the preferential and the securitized, and the devastated. As empirically subjective as these firsthand experiences are, they are not the motifs that stick with me the most, that would come back most directly to ideas on practice, though the “method” itself is empowering, and must be repeated and improved upon. Rather, the most striking momentum on our Continental Drift was that of recognizing peers, whether they are in Hubei, Yunnan, New York, the Midwest, Beijing, or wherever. The point here was not in finally being acknowledged or something tragic like that, but simply in seeing that others have similar concerns and are there, doing it their way, whether or not the whole enterprise entails a sense of failure, a possibility we floated in our final meetings. Late one night, Claire Pentecost invoked the term “networks of validation,” which in my mind rescues the idea of the network from the hegemonic necessity that compels us all, all of the time. This doesn’t mean an alternative network that we can navigate for success; nor is it even a network for really breaking the distance between us, like a guarantee of a holier, democratic variation of presence. The world will hardly allow that, at least in this way. It is more useful as an ethical construction by which our practice sees itself, sees its potential expansion, as a constellation of knowledge, faculties and passions; sees its faults, its different faces, and that doesn’t romanticize its incongruity with its context or its powerlessness; and by which, perhaps, the idea of a common project is resuscitated. My own investments in such a construction are in figuring out how the paragraph above, on the vicissitudes of art practice at home and abroad, can be turned into something more interesting, as promised; which means not simply reflecting the inside/outside nature of an art world whose ambivalence won’t wash away; which means producing meaning tangled up with a messy world, with the tools I know how to use; which means conferring gravity to abstract ideas and places; which means having a screwdriver thrown at me, told to hot-wire a car, to go on a road trip.
What would you do?

Che Fei and CU OFFICE’s trans-community: Jin Street Model
车飞与超城建筑的超街区:“
金街模型

Trans-Community space usage distribution. 金街模型空间利用展示。

(more…)

Gentrification and the Everyday

By Edward Sanderson

Part 3: Everyday Life

Occupation, as I talked about in the previous part, is an expression of the Everyday and an important part of Everyday Life involves the active occupation of space, for example in the way the HomeShop has come to occupy its new site. The consequences of occupation threaten institutionalisation, which may lead to gentrification in its imposition of permanent change on an area.
On the other hand institutionalisation protects HomeShop’s work from over-ephemerality or instant dispersal. The positive side of this comes from an example of activism, as Isaac Mao points out:

“… In China, many dissidents and activists are opening up their personal information. Why? Because previously they just wanted to close it down to protect themselves without being tracked by the government. Someone might want people to know his position so he can do things secretly. But now many are opening up this information because they see the social power. Once they’ve opened up their position, home phone, and travel plans, more people in the cloud know where they are at the same time as the authorities. He is protected even as he is tracked.”
(more…)

提醒大家在北京! 还有13天跟北京市“提意见”! Reminder for everyone in Beijing! Only 13 days left to “voice your opinions”!

above: a few notes on the sidelines from 吴以楠 Sunday, 欧阳 Xiao and me… To be non-anonymous in a country of billions sounds like implication, another cruising for a bruising. Cynicism reigns, who wants to speak?  中文公告: http://zhengwu.beijing.gov.cn/gzdt/gggs/t1134433.htm
吴以楠(右边)和植村絵美(左边)在家作坊门口制作“种子炸弹”,老二(中间)过来帮忙做质量控制。WU Yinan (at right) and Emi UEMURA (left) make seed bombs in front of HomeShop, Brother ZHENG (center) drops by to do quality control.

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下面的文章是由一个在胡同长大的女孩儿写的。她是家作坊的邻居和朋友,叫吴以楠。她在小经厂胡同6号(家作坊旁边!)出生并成长,后来她又搬到菊儿胡同居住了几年,之后便像大多数胡同里的老北京人一样搬到了楼房。在从淮北师范大学毕业以后她回到了北京,今年初她装修了小经厂胡同的老房子并跟她男朋友搬回来住。最近我们偶然发现了她在写博客,而且写的很不错,因此我们将在家作坊的博客分享一些她的感想和经历。

The following text is written by friend and neighbour of HomeShop WU Yinan. She was born and raised at Xiaojingchang Hutong number 6, then went away for a period to Ju’er Hutong before finally joining the great number of old Beijingers to move out of the hutongs and into a multi-story flat. After graduating from university in Huaibei she moved back to Beijing, and at the beginning of this year she renovated the old family home and came back to live there with her boyfriend. We recently found out that she maintains a blog, from which we will co-feature some of her thoughts and writings here.

In light of all the recent gossip, foreign media and NGO hype about pending demolition of parts of the Gulou area to make way for subway lines, a time museum and shopping centres galore, perhaps what we should remember is that a lot of this area is already relatively new making way for the even newer. This is of course not a form of tacit consent, but these makeovers have been happening all along. Yinan’s post is titled “First make a ruin of Houhai and then of Nanluoguxiang, Let me see what else you all will make a ruin of next”, and expresses a lot of her anger about the reek of ‘xiaozi‘ (kind of like a youthful, big-spending hipster type) that has blown into Beijing since the days of her childhood spent around Gulou and Houhai.


怒了,真的怒了,自从我搬回鼓楼住以后,身边的一切似乎早已不是儿时的回忆了,我自然不是抵制发展进步的人,但是忽然觉得全国文化味儿最浓的地方,突然全变了味儿,而且都变成了一个味儿!

我出生在鼓楼东大街的一个小院儿里,童年的记忆离不开后海的轻风,地安门的繁华,钟鼓楼的端庄,锣鼓巷的素朴,后来搬到了簋街旁边,眼睁睁的看着这个地方 从一个狭窄拥挤的大排档一条街变成了一个更为拥挤油腻的饭馆街。可以说,我从小就围绕着这些现在被炒作的一塌糊涂的地方生活,深知其中变化无穷。

小时候的后海很安静,微风轻抚着柳树带来阵阵凉爽,微波粼粼的湖面让人心旷神怡,早上有老人在湖边练太极,舞剑,一群老头老太太在湖里游泳,春夏秋冬,四 季从不中断。我夏天的记忆悠闲地漂浮在后海的鸭子船里,冬天的记忆则穿着冰鞋徜徉在厚厚的什刹海冰面上,最后一个记忆的碎片就是和我最好的知心朋友坐在湖 边的石头上,一边吹着风欣赏湖面上美丽的景色,一边在柳条声的伴奏下吃着后面超市里买的凉面,那惬意劲就别提了……在外地上了四年大学回来后竟然发现后海 再也不是我儿时的那个天堂了,伴随着叮咣震耳的音乐,四射至天空的霓虹和激光束,后海貌似忽然化作一个黄头发蓝眼睛白皮肤的顽皮小孩对我说“骨德儿白”。 虽然曾经和住在这里的朋友一起寻觅过童年的印记,但是无论如何我似乎已不再认识你了……

行至今日,我搬回了鼓楼的老房子居住,很少有去逛后海的冲动,后海已经变成了城市人,外地人,外国人的后花园,可以任意的放肆,交友,娱乐,我不反对清静 之地变得喧闹不堪,只是经常可怜住在附近院子里的老头老太太们,他们再也没有清静自在的日子过了,真怕他们因此而折寿;也怕那些无耻的商人窥视着这些在此 过了一辈子的老头老太太们毕生守护的房子,想用来投机投资而让他们离开他们钟爱了一辈子的老地方。

从后海出来一定要走烟袋斜街,烟袋斜街在我小时候的印象里就是个澡堂子,里面有个华清池,每次去都很喜欢那里休息的小房间,用木板隔断,有两个床位,中间 有个桌子,桌子上还有茶杯和袋泡茶。晚上的时候澡堂会出租给住宿的人,我见过很多人涌进来搭床铺的场面,可能是挺便宜吧,住宿的人那么多……

现在早已不见了华清池这个澡堂子,卖纪念品的,特色服装饰品,还有饭馆和酒吧,喧闹的小巷到处弥漫着浓烈的香水气息,混合着酒精和饭菜的味道,就一路来到拆的乱七八糟,早已不再繁华的地安门。

地安门的没落让我黯然神伤了好久,曾经最喜欢一路从地安门百货商场逛过各种琳琅满目的小店,直到平安大街,现在也没什么可看的了,拆的拆,关的关,是要建地铁吧,将来这里我希望会更繁华,但是千万别建成纪念品一条街……

之后来到我暴怒的一条街——南锣鼓巷!

因为曾经在菊儿胡同住过好多年,每次放学回家都会走南锣鼓巷,所以我有发言权!!

现在南锣鼓巷可是大名鼎鼎,饭馆林立,酒吧扎堆儿。打着文化牌,做着商业化的事,甚至为此不惜重金的让电视台让主持人念叨念叨,再拍个电视剧什么的,弄得大家都认为南锣鼓巷是北京最后一块没有被污染的净土,纷纷跑去污染。

对了,北京怎么能有净土呢?不能,一定不能够!力争发现一块污染一块,争取全都污染完。

南锣鼓巷乃是北京城平常的不能再平常,普通的不能再普通的一条胡同,只因为他串起来周边许多纵向的胡同,而这些纵向的胡同里有个把官宦和名人的府邸,就突 然这么炒热起来了……北京东西城的胡同名人官宦的府邸多了去了,这对我这个从小长在北京的人已经是稀松平常的事,那会北京城就到二环路,而且东富西贵,除 去紫禁城不能住,可不都住东西城的胡同里么!我常常怀疑,是不是这些什刹海后花园的人发现光逛个后花园不过瘾,才在旁边又弄出个南锣鼓巷来消遣。

我不反对南锣鼓巷作为一个文化和历史遗迹的标的而得以繁荣,恶心就恶心在,压根南锣鼓巷的繁华就和老北京的文化不搭界!你到酒吧里说来瓶小二,人家说我们 这里只有科罗娜,你说来碗炸酱面,人家说我们这只有三明治……等等等,还有新疆烤串,四川风味,意大利披萨,水果沙拉,青海酸奶,印度首饰,总而言之就是 没老北京味儿!文化没看到,光看到酒吧了。三五成群的老外混搭着满嘴洋文的中国小资,喝着啤酒调侃着人生。问老外你敢不敢跟我来个二窝头,老外就“no no”,就算不知道要入乡随俗,也不能让乡随了老外,临了走到尽头还建了个“贞节牌坊”上书“南锣鼓巷”,形状与“国子监”一般,一看就是个新玩意儿,什 么时候南锣鼓巷需要牌坊了,搞笑!

想起前两年去云南旅游的时候丽江古城的杯具,在北京小资心里那是个神圣的去处,如此忧愁多情之流,到了才发现城的建筑很美,但是说白了就是个酒吧纪念品饭 馆之城,同行的假小资们煞有介事的在酒吧里忧郁的品尝着美酒咖啡,表情既享受又有几分沉醉,有的还付费点一段唱走掉的音乐来彰显自己的品味,全部都是繁华 的浮躁,几乎淹没了丽江古城原始的素朴,就快要找不到曾经痕迹了,而如今的南锣鼓巷,后海,颇有步丽江后尘的意味,逐步走向小资心目中的忧愁多情交友品味 之地,外国人心目中的第二个“故乡”。

糟践吧,继续糟践,我们伟大的历史遗迹和文化精魄马上就要在内有崇洋小资,外有寻欢老外的联合攻势下蒸发的看不到痕迹了。

有的时候和一些真心寻找北京文化的老外聊天,他们对这些地方都有鄙夷之神色,宁可在其他不繁华的胡同里徜徉,寻觅,也不愿踏足那个已经变味儿的温柔乡。

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— 转载自《人生就像绕口令》,转载于2010年6月1日 / First published 1 June 2010 by WU Yinan at Life is Like a Tongue Twister.

Park (in which the sounds we make in public are both expressions of ideology and good for the body)


Calling (in which the sound of advertisement forms a fabric that envelops us)


Dongfanghong 1 (in which the sound of the bell at the Beijing Railway Station reveals a story of our relation to the voice of authority)


Dongfanghong 2 (in which the voice of authority is found to be composed of echoes)


Music (in which we are introduced to the workers who live on their downtown work site)


The audio drama “Sound Research of China” (Michael EDDY, KANG He, 李增辉 LI Zenghui) is composed of episodes from ongoing research into the makeup of the sound environment of Beijing. The process consisted of many outings as a group into the streets of Beijing and following and questioning the sounds that we identified as “characteristic” of life in China, and of the relation of sound to life there. Working as a unit of three “specialists,” each of our backgrounds informing our manner of recording, analyzing and editing the source materials, we pursued the sounds in various ways to see how they might compose their own narrative and drama.

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“Sound Research of China” was a component of Vitamin Creative Space‘s participation and resulting in the installation in the “Structural Integrity” project in Melbourne’s Meat Market for the Next Wave festival. For further documentation, please check here.