The Phoenix Years Art Resistance and the Making of Modern China by Madeleine Odea
BY JOANNA CHIU AND MADELEINE O'DEA
"The riveting story of China's rise from economic ruin to global giant in the past four decades is illuminated past another, equally fascinating, narrative below its surface – the story of the country'due south emerging artistic avant-garde and the Chinese people's ongoing struggle for freedom of expression. Past following the stories of ix contemporary Chinese artists, The Phoenix Years shows how China's ascent unleashed creativity, thwarted hopes, and sparked tensions between the individual and the state that continue to this day. Information technology relates the heady years of hope and creativity in the 1980s, which ended in the disaster of the Tiananmen Foursquare massacre. Following that tragedy comes Communist china'southward meteoric economic rise, and the opportunities that emerged alongside the hard compromises artists and others accept to make to be citizens in modernistic Communist china. Foreign correspondent Madeleine O'Dea has been an eyewitness for over thirty years to the rising of China, the explosion of its contemporary art and cultural scene, and the long, ongoing struggle for free expression. The stories of these artists and their art mirror the history of their state. The Phoenix Years is vital reading for anyone interested in China today." – Pegasus Books
Who should read this book and why?
The Phoenix Years is a volume for people who want to get nether the skin of history, and feel what it'south like to live through momentous times. Most of us know something large has happened in China over recent decades, but the very calibration of it tin brand information technology actually difficult to grasp. So my volume takes the story down to an individual level, and builds the narrative by braiding together different people's stories. My idea was to accept the reader within history, then they can empathize what it was like to be living the events, not looking on or analysing. I recollect the book shows how much of historical change is powered from below, past individuals' actions, their free energy, inventiveness, and passion. I think that'southward a really of import affair to understand specially in relation to a country like China where the people at the tiptop, the Chinese Communist Political party, are very keen to have all the credit for the transformation of People's republic of china for themselves. You volition see this in all their talk about "lifting people out of poverty" and creating a "new Mainland china," in brusk in their attempt to make this story all nigh them. And you know, it actually isn't!
What story does the book attempt to tell?
The book tells the story of the transformation of China over the last 40 years, taking the states from the late 70s to today. It begins with a country still reeling from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution and shows how a corking movement for change grew upwards equally a reaction to that. On 1 hand, in that location was the opening up of China's economy both internally and to the outside globe. On the other at that place was a nifty opening upwardly in people's hearts and minds, every bit individuals dreamed of a better, freer time to come. The book tells how the push for a freer society has ebbed and flowed over the decades since. Information technology places the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989 equally a pivotal point. It is also about how Chinese contemporary art has reflected and embodied that history, leading it to go recognised as one of the near exciting movements in the history of art.
The volume appeals to a wide range of people, not but Cathay specialists. Why do you recollect that is so?
I recollect it's considering the book focuses on individuals, people you get to know really well and follow as they alive through key events for themselves and for Prc. For example, you first meet one of the main "characters" in the book when he's only a raw army recruit, off to the front end in China's war with Vietnam in 1979. He hails from one of the poorest parts of Prc and he looks set to be cannon forage basically. Yet he survives, and you get to follow him equally he rides the opportunities of an opening Red china all the manner to academy in Beijing, and so on to Tiananmen Square in 1989 where he joins the demonstrations and becomes one of the hunger strikers. Y'all so go to see how he deals with the Tiananmen tragedy and finds a new path for himself, as many people were forced to do after that event.
Aside from these personal stories, I call up another reason why people respond then well to the book is that information technology shows how people tin can power change in society, and how idealism and inventiveness can survive even great loss and hardship. Information technology'south inspiring. Basically, the volume makes history human.
Why did you choose to focus on artists to tell the story?
Firstly it's considering at that place'south such an intimate connection between the history of gimmicky fine art in Prc and the history of gimmicky China itself. In fact both were born at the same time. Today's Mainland china and Chinese contemporary art were both born in the late 1970s, at a fourth dimension of extraordinary upheaval in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. At that fourth dimension at that place was a realisation that China badly needed to alter, that after all that destruction the land had to open if it was to survive. The immature artists who created the first contemporary art works at that time had experienced the Cultural Revolution at first hand, and their piece of work spoke securely to the moment. Over the years since, Chinese contemporary artists accept continued to engage securely with their country's history, not just reflecting information technology but living information technology and animate it too. I likewise chose artists to tell the story because of the vividness of their perceptions. Their lives are devoted to seeing their world clearly and that adds great richness to the volume.
You starting time arrived in People's republic of china in the middle of the 1980s. In the book you say that the 80s was maybe the freest decade in China'southward contemporary history. Could you lot talk a bit more about your experiences of that period? How did you become fatigued into the artist community?
Information technology really was an astonishing flow and I feel incredibly lucky to have lived in Cathay during those years. When I first arrived in Beijing in 1986 we were but a few years into the grand experiment of the "reform and opening up" of the country and nobody really knew where the limits would be and where it was all going to lead. This lent an exciting edge to so many of your encounters and and then much of what you did. I was really fortunate to live out nigh Beijing'due south university district rather than in the diplomatic compound in the heart of the urban center where journalists were meant to live. This meant I got ready access to Beijing's bohemia, which centred in those days on a place chosen the Friendship Hotel, which was where the foreign teachers and other "experts" lived. It was in that location that I began my friendships with a number of Chinese artists and poets, and afterward I started to hang out with them at their homes in town or in the Old Summer Palace ruins which was also a locus of Beijing's bohemia back then. Yous've got to remember I was only in my mid twenties then and so I was gravitating to people my own age. We were just so curious about each other and stayed up night afterward night debating and discussing everything from Nietzsche and Sartre to Warhol and Picasso. And communism and democracy also, of course. The young Chinese people I met had an immense thirst to engage and debate. They also felt a bang-up desire to be involved in driving change in their country. This was something that played out then tragically in 1989. I write virtually all this in my book of course.
Can yous give usa some updates on the artists you followed in your book? How take they been afflicted in the increasingly authoritarian environment under President 11 Jinping? Have any relocated overseas?
When I finished writing the volume two of the artists were living in a kind of exile in the w and that continues to be their situation. Both artists – Guo Jian and Sheng Qi – continue to be securely engaged with what's happening in China and continue to create work that reflects that. The other artists continue to live in China while pursuing increasingly international careers. Gimmicky artists in China today are lucky in that they are able to pursue domestic and international careers in parallel. Without specifically referring to any of the artists in my book I recall information technology is notable how many Chinese artists present testify a much broader range of work abroad than they do in People's republic of china. The state of affairs for artists inside Mainland china is increasingly constrained, with not just censorship pressures but the pressures of development which is making it harder and harder to afford studio space and to produce work. One great thing that has happened since I finished the book is that Huang Rui, who is a founding effigy in Chinese contemporary art and a major grapheme in my book, has made huge progress in his dream to preserve his studio as a publicly accessible museum space into the future. Until recently his studio was in firsthand danger of being demolished and so the country it stood on could exist exploited for re-development, but now information technology looks secure. His studio is now regularly open to the public and people who go in that location can look at an astonishing collection of his piece of work from his very primeval days as a founder of the Stars grouping (the very showtime contemporary fine art group in China) correct through to the present solar day. It'south called the White Cloud House and it's a major contribution to the cultural material of Beijing.
How did you get started equally a announcer in China?
I'd always wanted to be a writer only equally I finished university my main aim was to go a job so I could earn plenty money to travel and have the kinds of experiences I believed writers ought to have! Similar all my academy accomplice that twelvemonth I practical for a job in the civil service – the Australian government had a large graduate recruitment program and fortunately didn't turn upward their noses at people like me who had studied arts rather than annihilation more obviously "useful." Equally information technology turned out I got a traineeship in the Prime number Minister'due south section and so ended up spending a fascinating five years working on the inside of authoritative, social and economical policy making, while as well getting a chance to acquire a lot about the media from observing them upward close from the other side of the fence. Anyway after five years I realised I still wanted to exist a author, and specifically a announcer, but I wasn't quite sure how to make information technology happen. Luckily my partner at the fourth dimension conceived a 1000 plan to set off to work in Communist china and suggested I get too.
Fortunately for me back in the 80s China was still off the beaten track for the media, and lots of outlets didn't accept their own correspondents there. I was lucky enough to hear that the Australian Financial Review was looking for someone and my background in the PM'due south department made me interesting enough for them to consider. They told me they'd have pieces from me on spec and see how it went. Luckily they liked what they got and so within a few weeks I was their accredited contributor in Beijing. I reported for them for the next couple of years and so later on joined the ABC (Australia'due south public broadcaster). I yet can't quite believe that'south how I got my start, just I did. I owe my one-time partner (and Communist china) a lot. I guess my communication would be that you can come to journalism in all sorts of different ways, and all kinds of work tin can be a corking groundwork to a career in writing. And if you see an opening, jump at it!
When did y'all decide to commence on this book project? Did you ever know you would write a memoir on your years in China? If you didn't know from the beginning, can yous give some tips on how prospective memoir writers can mine their memories to create bright accounts of events that happened a while agone?
I just started seriously thinking almost writing the book in virtually 2011, a long time later on I first went to China, and so I hadn't been doing the affair that is probably the number one recommendation for any prospective memoir writer – keep a periodical! A journal – even if it'due south really cursory – can exist incredibly evocative. Small-scale details tin can trigger vivid memories and journal entries tin likewise remind you of what you thought at the fourth dimension, rather than what yous think in retrospect.
A resources I personally establish really helpful were my announcer's notebooks – do not throw these out! These too can take y'all back in time, and are almost invariably total of great details, transcripts of interviews, random ideas, contacts, and so on. Needless to say keep your clips too. I found these particularly useful for the latter chapters of the book. Photos can be a smashing resources also. Take lots of them, use them like a diary. Take photos of things that just strike you equally interesting, random things. You'll exist surprised at the details you can option up later on from photos. When I wanted to describe the tiny courtyard home of the artist I visit in the very first affiliate of my book I was really lucky to have a couple of photos of his identify which were a great check for my memory. I also found music really evocative. I recommend you put together a soundtrack of the time you lot are writing about and heed to that incessantly. You'll be surprised what comes to the surface via music.When I was mining the memories of the characters in my book I found talking about music was a really swell trigger for them as well.
Ane final thing is to revisit places that were important to yous. Fifty-fifty if you detect them terribly inverse the visit itself will trigger memories, and if by some hazard y'all find things are the same, like I did when I revisited my sometime apartment and found the same guy out front mending shoes who had been in that location the very first time I went at that place, it will be aureate. A whole day can come back to you bright as brand new.
Nigh the author
Madeleine O'Dea is a writer and announcer who has been covering the political, economic and cultural life of China for the past 3 decades. She beginning went to Beijing in 1986 equally the correspondent for the Australian Financial Review paper, and covered China through the 1990s equally a producer with ABC Boob tube. She was the founding editor-in-master of Artinfo People's republic of china and the Asia Contributor for Art + Sale and Mod Painters magazines. She has written for a range of other publications including The Guardian, The Art Newspaper, Orientations and Jump magazines, the Sydney Morning time Herald and The Age, The Toronto Globe and Mail, and The Australian. Visit her website and gild her book.
Book Details
The Phoenix Years: Art, Resistance, and the Making of Mod China
Allen & Unwin (Sydney, 2016), Pegasus Books (New York, 2017, 2018)
Source: https://nuvoices.com/2018/11/04/madeleine-odea-on-her-novel-the-phoenix-years-chinese-artists-and-the-nations-transformation/
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