20.1.2010 von Ines.

Today we went to the opening reception of the art exhibition of my Chilenean cycling friends nicoykatiushka (NyK) called “Pause”. It was at the Lan Club (LAN 蘭, designed by Philippe Starck) in Beijing and their artwork will stay displayed until February 28th 2010.

NyK’s creative work is based on a collaborative method which they have been developing since their wedding day, on June 20th, 2003. For the past 6 years, nicoykatiushka have developed a system of art and life incorporating factors that are determinant throughout their process based methodology. Influenced by daily life as well as their nomadic lifestyle which fluxes between Beijing, New York and Santiago (Chile), NyK conduce a fresh and active dialog that allow stimulation from outside their close knit nucleus.

NyK explore notions of relationship and experimentation with installations that combine aspects of performance, video and photography. Within the mixing of mediums one will often be confronted with the image of NyK as the protagonist of these experiments. Pause presents a temporary stop, a moment to look into past and recent works created in and out of China. Recent works exhibited will include Eye Shift (revisiting Steve Reich), Whisper and Fuck Beijing.

NyK’s work has been shown extensively, showing in galleries and museums such as Exit Art (NYC), The Artist Space (NYC), Kuandu Fine Arts Museum (Taiwan), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chile), Aratoi Museum (New Zealand) and Ex-Teresa Arte Actual (Mexico).

In 2006 NyK formed NYKFFA (nicoykatiushka Foundation for the Arts), a mobile platform for collaborative artistic projects, supporting the idea of artist communities and networks by hosting video festivals and exhibitions run by artists. NyK recently created Antenna, a non for profit organization whose main role is not only to create a framework and a stage but also to bring together different cultural experiments and to collaborate with artists and curators to produce one moment of potentiality.

I like their work. I personally liked “Eyeshift”which is the visual version of what the composer Steve Reich was doing to music in “Music for 18 Musicians”. We used to listen to that piece in school in music class while we were all lying on the ground. I loved those music classes.

Geschrieben in China, Beijing | Keine Kommentare »

19.1.2010 von Ines.

For those of you that know how it is in Beijing you will understand how happy I am. There are over 4 million cars registered in Beijing, there are traffic jams almost all day long on the main roads, cars use the bicycle lanes to cut through traffic jams, the bicycle lanes are used as parking lots and some bike lanes have been converted into car lanes or parking lots. What used to be the bicycle capitol of the world has recently become bike hostile. Also cars and buses cut cyclists off, never giving them the right of way.

According to the China Daily news article in an effort to get people back in the saddle again, the local government has now begun an ambitious plan to return byways to eco-friendly cycle routes. The plan was outlined in a directive on Jan 1 from the municipal reform and development commission, which supervises the city’s industries.

The plan calls for better law enforcement to make sure designated bike lanes are only used by cyclists. Bike rental facilities will also be resurrected, with at least 500 stations set to be run by a private enterprise by next year, according to the directive. The authorities will also abandon outdated traffic regulations that marginalize cyclists and make it easier for cyclists to use public transit in populated areas, including the CBD, Zhongguancun and southern Beijing - all to be completed by 2012. The government made the move in the face of rising traffic volume and slower commutes.

This plan, named “Green Commuting”, will also help the city lower emissions, experts said.

“In fact, authorities have been forced to come up with new solutions to solve the city’s traffic deadlock,” said Ou Guoli, a traffic management professor at Beijing Jiaotong University. “Experience from super-sized cities overseas has inspired Beijing to rediscover the lost art of cycling.” Ou said cycling may well take off again, but not before the authorities clear the way by rewriting traffic rules, issuing favorable policies for bike rentals and tightening measures to prevent bike thefts.

This is such great news! I am so happy that the government has come up with this “Green Commuting” plan. This plan will encourage the use of bicycle in the city. And it will make cycling in Beijing safer again. What a bright future! Maybe there will also be some regulations on having less cars in the traditional Beijing hutongs, or even turning them into pedestrian and cycling zones.

Geschrieben in Green, Cycling, China, Beijing | 1 Kommentar »

17.1.2010 von Ines.

As I love outdoor sports like rock climbing, skiing, mountaineering I was looking forward to the Banff Mountain Film Festival coming to Beijing. A friend rock climber and mountaineer has opened a bar and cafe down the Wudaoying hutong where my bike shop is. It is called the “Together Cafe”. Inside there are many outdoor magazines and pictures from his expeditions to Tibet. The film festival started yesterday and I actually wanted to go but never checked the schedule. When I finally looked yesterday afternoon I was shocked to see that the first movie screening session was already over as it had started at 9am and the second one was already on going. So we could only go today and went for the early starting screening. There were quite some people even though I think there were only 3 foreigners.

We saw a movie called “Cliff Note” (悬崖笔记) about cliff diving in a canyon. Amazing was a movie about free solo rock climbing and then base jumping from the top. Or just base jumping when you fall during the free solo climbing. Also doing slack line balancing between peaks or cliffs without being secured and also just using the base jumping parachute in case you fall.

I enjoyed the movie called “Searching for the coast Wolves” (寻狼记). It was the very touching story of the former cross country running champion and biologist Gudrun Pflueger from Austria about her research about the coast wolves in Western Canada. She actually had an encounter with the coast wolves that seem not to have any bad experience with human beings in the past centuries and therefore did not see any threat in Gudrun and just played around her.

The Chinese movie maker Ricard was asked to come up and to talk about his outdoor movies. One is called “Dragon Breath”. On the back of the DVD is reads (including the typos) the following: “During the Spring Fesitaval, four Chinese top climbers came to Shuangqiao Gully, located in Mt Siguniang in Sichuan, to challenge the Dragon Breath, the hardest route in the vally. This documentary record their climbing and life in the vally.” They only screened trailers of 4 of his movies and of course we recognized some of our Chinese outdoor and climbing friends in these movies.

After that we met our friend Nicolas Favard who is a French jewelry maker. He does very beautiful jewelry and each piece is unique. He designs pieces of art for his customers. If you are in Beijing I recommend you drop by his boutique in Sanlitun in the Nali Patio on the 3rd floor.

Geschrieben in Outdoors, China, Beijing, Climbing | 1 Kommentar »

15.1.2010 von Ines.

It is Liman’s birthday. She is one of those people that do not tell others when her birthday is and rather not have any celebration. So I did not know until her boyfriend invited me a few days ago to a surprise party. So he arranged that all of her friends meet at a friends place and prepare a cake and flowers. She thought she was going to see a movie and just drop by that friend on the way to the movie theater. But we were all there when she came.

She was really moved by this. And it was a very nice party with nice people and it lasted quite long.

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14.1.2010 von Ines.

This afternoon I took some pictures of our Natooke bicycle and juggling equipment shop. We are currently getting various products delivered and waiting for a lot more that we ordered before the Chinese New Year holiday. I uploaded all pictures of how our store looks like today to this webalbum.

Geschrieben in Natooke, Juggling, Fixed Gear, China | Keine Kommentare »

13.1.2010 von Ines.

Today I received this article that a friend of mine (thank you so much) found in the Global Times newspaper. It describes that with the push for Chinese people to get cars, Beijing is now congested (I can totally agree) and this has stimulated the Chinese Government to issue a plan to persuade more of the Beijing residents to ride bikes (I am so happy! This is great!) like commuters. Bikes are not expensive in China, but as bike theft is a huge issue (Yes, I know that) the government wants to increase bike rentals in Beijing like in Hangzhou.

Geschrieben in Cycling, China, Beijing | 2 Kommentare »

7.1.2010 von Ines.

Today I went to a lecture organized by Tsinghua SEM and INSEAD EMBA about China’s unique opportunity to achieve sustainable peaceful development held by Dr. Lee George LAM who is Chairman of Monte Jade Science and Technology Association of Hong Kong.

The title was from “factory of the world” to “green economy of the world”. I would like to share some of the things he mentioned (no guarantee that I noted them correctly, sorry for any possible errors):

China uses 9% of the worldwide available oil but only produces 5%. China wants to have half of the cars produced in China by 2020 be cars with alternative energy. For 2030 most cars in China will be either hybrid or electric cars.

China will focus on low carbon emission power. But the energy generated by solar, wind or geothermal will not be enough to support the whole country, therefore the focus is on nuclear power. By 2020 5% of all power plant will be nuclear and they will contribute to 10% of the power produced in China.

China is focusing on railways. The plan is to have 16000km of high speed train tracks by 2020. That will be 4 horizontal lines, 4 vertical lines as well as 2 special lines: Beijing to Shanghai and Beijing to Guangzhou. For example on the Wuhan to Guangzhou 1000km long railway the average (not maximum) speed is 350km/h.

Germany is leading the world in terms of green construction and green houses. China will follow these good examples.

China has a natural shortage of fresh water. The country has only 6% of fresh water of the world but accommodates to 22% of the worldwide population. Roughly 300 cities in China are short of water. 40% of the rivers are polluted. There is acid rain especially in the areas with many industrial production sites. last year there was a drought in China and 2.5 million people were short of fresh water.

China is the number 1 producer of waste. Consumers need to be educated to think sustainable and reduce waste. There is investment in green technology and clean technology and that will increase.

Then Dr. Lee George Lam suggested everybody to become a “Green Leader”. We all should make our daily contributions. Like riding a bicycle (actually, he was suggesting taking a subway, but bicycle is even better as you know) or eating less meat. I think he said that if you eat 500gr less beef, that means you reduced your carbon emission by 500gr. But the main thing every individual that starts taking care about these issues should do is: Spread the word. Educate your neighbors. Inspire your friends to live greener. Set up a green business. Lets make a sustainable future for our next generations!

Geschrieben in Green, China | 1 Kommentar »

3.1.2010 von Ines.

Wow, more snow! This is great! It is unusual to have so much snow here in Beijing but it is really nice.

As I had grown up in New Jersey as well as in Southern Germany I am used to lots of snow in winter. And from early childhood I learned how to make proper snow mans. But there are other people that did not learn how to roll snow for a snow man. Like some neighbors that told their children to make this kind of snow cone snowman.

The good think about this style is that the children properly cleaned the surrounding area from the snow.  But it just does nto look like a snow man to me.

Geschrieben in China, Beijing | Keine Kommentare »

31.12.2009 von Ines.

This year we decided to do something different for New Year’s Eve. Fede had invited friends over for dinner and then a meditation from 11:30 to 12:30. We had a huge long dinner with different Italian and Chinese vegetarian dishes until I almost could not move anymore. Around 11 we made space for everyone to sit for the meditation.

And then at 11:30pm we set our mobile phones to silent, switched off the lights and got all quiet.

We had 1 hour of silence, everybody focussed on themselves. It was a nice a very nice way to start the new year. And as we are in Beijing there were anyway no fire crackers or fireworks so we also did not get disturbed by any outside noise. We are looking forward to 2010. I wish all of you all the best!

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24.12.2009 von Ines.

It just does not feel like Christmas in Beijing to me. Maybe because I do not go to the malls, nor the Western shops or restaurants, nor cafes. Inside the former Beijing city walls it seems like any other day to me. Of course I was in the shop working and and my employee Samantha contacted many companies and factories for buying their bike products. They were all working too. The weather was very overcast and hazy until in the early evening a huge wind started. Such wind is always good to blow the clouds and pollution away but it did not make it so easy cycling with the raclette machine in a box. We were going to Fede’s new place - an old Beijing hutong that he just re-arranged. And how nice it turned out!

After a starter of delicious madoufu (fermeted tofu) and mushrooms we had a huge pile of cheese that was melted with the raclette machine and ate together with potatoes.

Suddenly, after a lot of cheese I felt how full I was! Then I could only lie down and rest. I was so full that I could not move.

I could not even move to get some of the desert. Not even a cookie.I cannot remember when I had last felt this full.

After a while I managed to get up for going home. Cycling home we past by a fire next to a garbage bin. We stopped and had a look what was burning. It was an old blanket that probably caught fire from a cigarette stub and the very strong wind that was still blowing. Julien tried to stomp out the fire with a Chinese elderly couple watching us. The wind was so strog it would always relight any glimming parts we decided to through the blanket in the empty garbage bin and close the lid. There was still wind getting inside the bin and therefore there was still smoke coming out so we asked the couple that was still watching us very closely to go and bring us some water. They came back with water when we had just convinced a different neighbor to bring us water too. The fire stopped and all were happy.

Geschrieben in China, Beijing | Keine Kommentare »