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Beijing is a city in a rush to transform itself. Ballsy new builds – from the otherworldly tangles of the ‘bird’s nest’ Beijing National Olympic Stadium to Norman Foster’s dragon-shaped airport – are rising up against its milky skyline with the speed of time-lapse photography. In the early 90s, the sprawl of the Chinese capital was enclosed within two ring roads. Today there are five of these concentric circles, as Beijing’s hungry expansion devours everything around it.

This quick-shift towards pseudo-westernisation has, of course, caused a few ruckles in the fabric of Beijing society. In preparation for the Olympics, baffled Beijing households have received a pamphlet on ‘good manners’, which includes imprecations ‘not to gesture with chopsticks’, ‘not to slurp coffee from a spoon’, and ‘not to eat pumpkin seeds at sports events’. The plan to curb the Chinese indulgence in lavish expectorating includes ‘mucus police’, who will prowl Olympic Beijing handing out bags to anyone needing to clear their throat.

But there is something knock-you-sideways beneath this surface glossing of Beijing; a sense that the foundations are being laid for something big. Yes, you can chart this in construction cranes stretching their uncomely legs up into the yellow-white skies, but you can also seek it out in the seismic ructions in everyday culture. The term ‘linglei’, for example, which roughly translates as ‘alternative’ (an insult under Mao) has been appropriated as the tag for a boisterous Beijing youth culture that’s so progressive as to have thrown up a lesbian pop charttopper (Qiao Qiao with ‘Love Does Not Discriminate’).

In the north-east corner of the forth ring road, flanked by new Nestlé, Nokia and Ericsson factories and the Starbucks franchise which lubricates the ebbs and flows of their workers, is tourist-friendly Dashanzi arts village, or ‘798’. This is both the locus of Beijing cool, and the stage upon which the choreographers of the new China are practising their steps. For four decades, the area was Dan Wei, or ‘working room’ complex, Asia’s largest military electronics plant. ‘In just a few years, there are over a hundred modern art galleries here’, says Tamsin Roberts, a Hong-Kong-born Brit and the curator behind 798 Red T Space gallery. Roberts spotted the opportunity to ride the wave of the artistic coming-of-age in Beijing that recently led Charles Saatchi to admit he had been wrong to dismiss modern Chinese art.

We’re standing in 798 Space, one of the first of the former factory halls to be squatted by avant-garde artists. The district was built in the fifties with the help of East German engineers, and 798 Space, like many of the buildings, has the serrated roofs and stark right angles typical of Bauhaus architecture. The north-facing skylights, originally designed to provide the most consistent light for working with fine tools, are also a curator’s wet dream. Over our heads, painted in fading red Mandarin, are the legends ‘abide by Mao’ and ‘long live the party’. And beneath them, the works of unsmiling artists in the famous steely-lipped Mao pose, framed by blood red. ‘This will be torn down soon’, says Tamsin, one eyebrow raised. In Beijing, exhibitions commenting on domestic politics last as long as crispy chicken claws in the hands of a ravenous teen. ‘They keep threatening to bulldoze the district, too’ says Tamsin. ‘But it won’t happen before the Olympics. The streets around here have been repaved – and the local government has paid for it, not the gallerists.’

Outside, tattered waterpipes cast a shadow over the faces of Beijing: listless workers from Dashanzi’s few still-operational factory units, dressed in their matching pink caps and jackets; clustered groups of funky young Beijingers, their clothing a loose amalgam of countercultural styles – spiked hair, slashed knees; and well-heeled young couples browsing the galleries. Tamsin and I tag along with the couples, and meander from white space to white space, absorbing the hysteria of artistic energy. Less political, but nevertheless packing a visceral punch, is the main exhibit in Xin Dong Cheng Space for Contemporary Art: Huang Yan’s meditation on China’s 100 common surnames, which renders their sweeping calligraphic forms in pork entrails. Meanwhile, the bleached white spaces of the nearby Beijing Communal Gallery house animal artistry of a different form, the work of Zhao Bandi, a 34-year-old Bejinger who’s fast becoming famous for his series of captioned photographs and videos of himself and his toy panda bear. My favourite is a pastiche of mid-20th century cigarette adverts, featuring Zhao in an effete grey-suited get-up, speech bubbled: Zhao: ‘Do you mind my smoking?’ Panda: ‘Do you mind my extinction?’

‘What most surprised me,’ says Tamsin. ‘Is that art has to be staged in a completely different way. Chinese can’t just look at a piece of wall art – it’s not in the culture. Take pop concerts here, they always have a video playing behind the act, to keep audience interest. You’ll find most exhibitions here are multimedia.’ The Long March Gallery, named for Mao’s great military retreat, uses multimedia to startling effect with Yang Sjaobin’s works on mineworkers: unsmiling workers, mud-caked and rising from furnaces juxtaposed with exhibits allowing the viewer to step into a mine shack, feeling the coal underfoot and listening to the terrific clatter of train on track.

We recover with Szechwan spicy chicken (with its firey tumbles of crisped red chilli), lotus roots and ‘100 year old eggs’, pickled until their yolks turn pastel green and whites assume a jewel-like translucency, in nearby Tian Xia Yan (Salt Under the Heavens) café. Despite the traditional fare, the café is much as one would be in trendy districts of western cities: London’s Hoxton, say, or NY’s Williamsburg. Earnest students chat over tea and a disarray of international magazines, electro music tinkles and thwacks in the background.

Meanwhile, half a mile from away, the bizarre coils of the Beijing National Stadium take shape, thousands of men labouring on the ambitious structure, their communist work ethic creating Beijing’s new capitalism. Modern-day China – its architecture, its quickened cultural pulse – is defined by such mixed messages, a sign that the country’s ambition to create a unique capitalism ‘with Chinese characteristics’ may be realised. One part bird’s nest, to one part brave new world. Let’s hope they keep the brave new mucus bags.

Sino the Times: a Taste of New Beijing
Green T, 6 Gongti Xi Lu, Sanlitun, +86 10 65 52 8310. Beijing’s white-hot new restaurant, with an Alice In Wonderland fairytale interior and dishes that chart the depths of delectably divine and ridiculous: ‘When rain is snow and snow is rain – imagine the union of a cucumber and melon’ runs the blurb accompanying a typical dish. A culinary coming-of-age.

FACE Bar, 26 Dongcaoyuan, +86 10 65 51 6738. Impeccably presented style bar, the sister to a Shanghai operation. Raised beds for interior seating and fairylit trees overhanging a goldfish pond on the breezy outdoor terrace.

The Commune by The Great Wall Kempinski, 00 800 426 313 55, kempinski.com). A 50-minute drive north of Beijing (adjacent to the nearest point on the Great Wall of China), The Commune is a spectacular style hotel set in walnut tree-clad hills. Its individual ‘houses’ were designed by the pick of contemporary Asian architects. The best bit? Getting to walk a private stretch of Great Wall.

Dashanzi directory
Xin Dong Cheng Space for Contemporary Art, Dashanza Jiu Xian Qiao Lu No4, +86 10 64 33 45 79, www.chengxindong.com

798 Space, Dashanzi Art District, No.4 Jiuxianqiao Road, +86 10 6438 4862, www.798space.com

Long March Space, 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, +86 10 64 38 7107, www.longmarchspace.com

798 Red T Space, Dashanzi Art District, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, +86 10 89 11 5762. www.redt.net

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