About 20 minutes outside of Beijing's city centre, in an area just off the airport expressway, sits a group of recently renovated warehouses. To get there, you have to scramble across the highway and walk down a quiet lane, ringed by housing complexes and metalworking factories. At the end of the lane, the warehouses spring to life - huge spaces filled with giant paintings and sculptures, adjacent to several cafes and restaurants.
This is the Dashanzi Arts District, a designation that was created just a year ago when artists adopted the warehouses as their homes, followed soon after by gallery dealers and restaurateurs. The giant warehouses were built in the 1950s with Russian and German help, to house factories.
The designers followed the German Bauhaus school of architecture, employing banks of oversized windows in vast industrial spaces. The current owners of No798 have retained the flavour of the original buildings along with the Cultural Revolution slogans. The entire aesthetic is in keeping with the arts and architectural scenes in New York and London, where industrial space and political engagement have often been considered de rigueur for artistic creation.
Contrast this with the gallery and arts scene in Hong Kong. Most galleries are either high up in residential complexes or plunked down in the rather staid area of Hollywood Road. They are home more to taitai than artists. Only the Fringe Club can claim any historical legacy due to its privileged location and building. Elsewhere in Hong Kong, when people speak of 'The Arts', the first thing that comes to mind are the monstrous government buildings for theatre and concerts.
While Hong Kong remains mired in a bureaucratised, marginalised arts maze, Beijing has nurtured a home-grown arts ethic that is flourishing and, at times, even profitable, without government assistance. Put simply, in Beijing it is cool to be involved in the arts. In Hong Kong, it is cool to be at a hot club, to know a TV soap star, or to have a friend with a Maserati. Why are the two cities so different?
Beijing's brash confidence is rooted in its role as the nation's capital, a history of being home to the country's best universities, and China's growing self-confidence as a peer to the west in most matters. It is a wonder to watch Beijing leap forward. And it is not surprising that, just as Beijing is exhibiting signs of exuberance in many areas - highways, buildings, traffic - it also has an arts scene in overdrive.
