Site 8 Zunyi

August 7
Before the sky was light, the group arrived at the Zunyi Hotel. The new building was a modern hotel; the old building was cheap, a 1950s Soviet-style monstrosity with a huge roof. Upon seeing the place, Qiu Zhijie called out: "Let's hold our meeting right here! Right here!" The gray bricks of the old building made him think of the local committee courtyard where he lived as a kid. Lu Jie took note of an old, ragged red carpet that smelled of mildew, and felt that the building was a little too close for comfort to the kind of place where the Zunyi meeting should be held. Choosing a site for China's first international curatorial conference was no easy task, and the choice was made even more difficult by the fact that the meeting's themes were to be "The Power and Interpretation of Visual Space" and "Curating and the Chinese Context."

The group wished to sleep after checking into the hotel, when it received a call from Guiyang artists Chen Qiji and Wang Jun, who had already arrived in Zunyi. Over a dozen Guizhou artists, under the direction of local critic Guan Yuda, had prepared a ceremony with which to welcome the Long March ranks to the province. An hour later, the Marchers met Wang Jun and five of his companions in the hotel, and agreed to participate in the ceremony the next morning at the Red Army Martyrs' Memorial atop Red Army Mountain.

Lu Jie stayed in his room preparing the theoretical framework and meeting outlines for the curatorial conference, and making last-minute preparations for participants who had been added at the last minute. He was on the phone continuously with guests from China and abroad, from north and south of the Yangtze, discussing their expectations for the conference. Qiu Zhijie, Lisa Horikawa, and Shen Xiaomin - the Long Marchers who had not yet visited Zunyi - took the chance to visit the site of the original conference and take in the scenery of the streets, and to look for ideal places in Zunyi in which to realize Long March art events.

Critic and curator Gu Zhenqing, who was to serve as the conference's master of ceremonies, arrived early in Zunyi. That afternoon, he entered Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie's hotel room, shook hands, and delivered a piece of bad news: the meeting originally scheduled to take place in the multi-purpose room of the Zunyi Hotel could no longer take place there. The arrangements had been made through a friend of Gu's on the Zunyi municipal party committee, who had continuously greeted the idea with warm enthusiasm, going as far as to promise that if the meeting were held in September, it could be included as part of the two festivals set to take place in the city during that month -The International Acrobatics Festival and The National Famous Alcohol Festival - thus securing a small grant from the municipal government. When Gu Zhenqing arrived on the scene and talked to his friend, it became clear that the meeting would discuss contemporary art, and that an international forum would require high-level approvals, otherwise the hotel could not serve as host. This technical problem sadly stemmed from the deeper problem of misunderstandings about contemporary art. The curators analyzed the problem from their hotel room: this international meeting, it seemed, did not need to be a major formal conference. Meetings of this sort occur everyday in Beijing and Shanghai. Were they in Beijing, one would need only give Wang Gongxin a call, and the event could be held at The Loft New Media Art Space. Here a deeper kind of communicative work was required; it would be necessary to proactively convince the powers that be of the meaning of contemporary art. This is the sort of work the Long March had been engaged in from the start, but had ignored in this instance out of sheer habit. In Ruijin, for example, Qiu Zhijie accompanied the head of the propaganda division of the municipal party committee on a midnight tour of an exhibition to be held the next day, explaining the works to him by flashlight; in that case, the Long March was able to show its works in the end. In Ruijin, the Long March successfully exhibited sculptures by Zhan Wang, Fu Xinmin, and others at Yeping, Shazhouba, and other holy sites of Chinese revolutionary history, in what could even be called adding temporary tourist attractions to the revolutionary memorabilia on long-term display there. The problem in Zunyi was time, as only two days remained until the meeting would begin, and gaining approval would require a long process. The success in Ruijin was the product of several months of communication between the curators and the local authorities. Was there really time for "thought work" here in Zunyi?

The curatorial team decided to abandon the Zunyi Hotel, despite its beautiful conditions, and set to the street in search of another venue.
On the square across from the site of the Zunyi Meeting there was a newly constructed business conference center in the business of hosting meetings for a rental fee. The location was perfect, as the site of the original meeting was visible from a window, but the construction was not finished, and electricity would also be a problem.

The second proposal was to hold the meeting outdoors, in the courtyard of the Catholic Church across from the former site of the Red Army political bureau. But in this case, public address equipment would present a problem.

The third proposal was to hold the meeting in a billiards hall. The idea of a crowd of foreign and domestic curators discussing "curating" and the power of visual space in such an absurd location seemed like a work of art in and of itself, and the three curators had a good laugh. They talked with the owner about rental prices.

The second floor of the pool hall was empty, and the third floor held the "Big Ocean Foreign Language School." The advertisement on the door claimed that this was Guizhou province's only language school with entirely foreign teachers. A foreign language school seemed like a solitary window on the world for this isolated mountain town, and so meeting here to discuss contemporary art had spatial meaning on several levels. Everyone was happy upon moving to the third floor and seeing a room complete with furniture and even audio-visual facilities. Even more exciting was that the American running the space was a middle-aged man who was himself an artist, and had studied painting and sculpture before landing in Zunyi to teach English to young children. When he saw the Long March ranks, he felt like he had found a home, and eagerly introduced the group to Teacher Huang, director of the school, a very nice woman.

Huang was thrilled to hear the plan, and excitedly nodded her head, offering the space up for free use. The Long March group was embarrassed at such a nice proposal, and began asking what the school could use instead of monetary compensation. The group decided to provide her with a set of Chinese-English dictionaries for the students to use. The American teacher's biggest concern was which famous Chinese art stars would be present at the meeting.

The best part of all was that the Big Ocean Foreign Language School was located directly across from the former Red Army Bank. Upon reaching Zunyi, the financially troubled Red Army had issued currency under the imprint of the earlier Jiangxi Soviet in order to collect silver with which to purchase supplies; this became standard currency for the duration of the Long March. This Long March decided to divide the meeting originally scheduled for Zunyi into two parts. The part to be held at the Big Ocean Foreign Language School would discuss "Alternative Spaces, Independent Curating, and the Development of Resources," appropriately situated across the street from the Red Army bank.

Diagonally across the street was a Christian church that had been covered in mosaic tiles. The space at the door of the church had been rented out and turned into a hair salon catering only to babies. The door and walls of the salon were plastered with posters of Caucasian infants. The combination of these images with the Red Army bank, the church, and the mosaic tiles made for a postmodern spectacle, a hybrid visual space, a curious portrait of the cultural landscape of contemporary China. During an inspection trip through Zunyi two years earlier, Lu Jie had already fallen in love with this space.

The group marched forward to negotiate, looking to use the space to hold an exhibition of portraits of Chinese leaders, but the negotiations did not proceed smoothly. The salon employees feared trouble, and said they needed to check with their boss.

The first day in Zunyi passed quickly in this way. Taiwanese artist Yao Jui-chung also arrived in town, prepared to travel with the marchers for three weeks, through to Luding Bridge.

August 8
Zunyi
At 10:00, Chen Qiji, Wang Jun, Guan Yuda and others had already arrived at the hotel entrance, ready to lead the group to Red Army Mountain. This was a taxing walk, and the group arrived exhausted.

The small square atop the mountain contained statues of three Red Army martyrs on pedestals created by Ye Yushan arranged in a circle. On the memorial stele was inscribed a line of Deng Xiaoping's calligraphy: "The Red Army Martyrs will never decay." Atop the stele was a metal hammer and sickle. The summer foliage of the square provided a shady canopy for drinking tea. This tree canopy was actually the logo of the local Long March brand cigarettes, which are ubiquitous in Zunyi. Long March is the top brand of the Zunyi cigarette-rolling factory, and its slogan is "light up hope."

The welcoming ceremony put on by Guan Yuda and others also bore a connection to Long March cigarettes, as the activity mainly involved the presentation of tobacco, alcohol, and a flag from Guizhou artists to the Long Marchers, followed by the reading of an open letter. Everyone chose the space atop the mountain, behind the memorial, and in front of the Deng Ping Martyr's Tomb in which to hold the ceremony.
Guizhou artists first opened a flag, on which was written a famous Mao Zedong quote about the Long March: "The Long March is a manifesto, the Long March is a propaganda team, the Long March is a sower of seeds."

The Long March central command assigned "Qu Guangci" and his soft sculpture to receive the gift of the flag.

In the second part of the ceremony, Guizhou artists offered a toast to their guests. They used Guizhou rice wine, which is very sweet.

The artists then presented a box of Long March cigarettes to each of the marchers present. The Long Marchers in turn presented to each Guizhou artist a box of Zhongnanhai cigarettes. Zhongnanhai is a popular brand in Beijing, and bears the name of the compound near the Forbidden City in which the top echelons of the Communist leadership reside. These cigarettes had been brought along for personal use by Beijing artist Wang Chuyu, and quickly redirected to this purpose. Receiving gifts in return made the Guizhou artists feel funny, and everyone laughed.

Representing the Guizhou artists, Guan Yuda read aloud the open letter the Long March curators and group, entitled "The Long March and Contemporary Art 'Sent Down.'" In addition to welcoming the Long March, the letter also expressed doubt about its curatorial methods; its writers welcomed the Long March as if it really were a process of being "sent down" to the countryside in the manner of the Cultural Revolution. What took the Long March ranks by surprise was that the letter had been signed by famous 1980s Guizhou painters Pu Guochang and Yin Guangzhong, neither of whom were present.

After the welcoming ceremony had concluded, Beijing artist Wang Chuyu invited Guan Yuda and others to participate in his work "Constitution." The Guizhou artists each chose a passage they found particularly interesting, and read it in their thick Guizhou accents.

Afterwards, Taiwanese artist Yao Jui-chung realized the first portion of his work Turning the World Upside Down in front of the memorial. In this work, Yao used his established style of revisiting history via his own body. He decided to shoot pictures of himself standing on his hands at key historical sites along the Long March route. Later, these images would be presented such that it appears as if he is holding up the world. Having understood Yao's creative methods for this work, everyone thought of his old work Historical Survey Series, which similarly involved many different monumental locations and the movement of his own body. In this series, Yao appears leaping in mid-air, and interrogates the complex relationship between humankind and history by presenting himself "neither touching the ground nor reaching the sky" as the old Chinese saying goes. When speaking of this work, several people began to imitate it, jumping up and down. This joke grew more and more serious, until Yao Jui-chung decided that from here on, he would continue this previous work at the next several stops on the Long March.

That afternoon, Lu Jie, locked in his room under the pressure of putting together the curatorial conference, received a piece of good news in a phone call from his wife Shen Meng. Bearing materials and images from Kunming, Lijiang, and Lugu Lake, the three sites at which she had been present, Shen Meng stopped in Shanghai on her way back to New York to meet with Long March Foundation board member Professor Zheng Shengtian. Hearing about the project, the European and American museum directors whom Zheng was set to accompany to the conference in Zunyi insisted on paying their own expenses, in order to help the Long March save some money and increase the number of people it could invite. Such good news from afar made Lu Jie ecstatic. He and Qiu Zhijie decided that Chongqing artists Li Chuan, Li Yong, and Ren Qian could help to realize the Long March events in Zunyi. Accordingly, Lu Jie continued to lock himself in his hotel room, preparing documents for the curatorial conference. After Qiu Zhijie made a long series of phone calls to local friends and officials, he and Lu Jie decided to hold the first portion of the curatorial meeting at the Jincui Lake Vacation Village outside of Guiyang. Gu Zhenqing would be responsible for convening the meeting.