{"id":1112,"date":"2014-05-31T18:19:51","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T18:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2014-05-31T18:19:51","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T18:19:51","slug":"lunch-with-the-ft-guo-jian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/lunch-with-the-ft-guo-jian","title":{"rendered":"Lunch with the FT: Guo Jian"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tom Mitchell<\/span>
\nNow an artist creating work out of minced pork and litter, the former soldier and Tiananmen Square protester recalls the horrors of that night in Beijing 25 years ago. By Tom Mitchell<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nLuke Waller’s illustration of Luke Waller\u00a9Luke Waller
\nThe front doors are propped wide open when I arrive at Guo Jian\u2019s studio. My immediate thought is that the Chinese-Australian artist is taking advantage of a rare blue-sky day in Beijing to let more sunshine spill into his workspace in Songzhuang, an art colony on the Chinese capital\u2019s eastern outskirts.
\nThen I notice the antiseptic smell of chlorine bleach. Guo, who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests that ended so bloodily on June 4 1989, tells me he has just finished cleaning up the mess from his latest installation and is trying to air out his studio. Just a few days earlier, he had covered a large diorama of Tiananmen Square with 160kg of minced pork.
\nIt had been a hot week in Beijing and it wasn\u2019t long before the meat turned a greyish green hue and started to smell. Guo proudly shows me pictures of his creation. They make me queasy. It\u2019s not the type of thing you want to look at just before lunch. \u201cI wanted to do something privately to mark the anniversary,\u201d Guo says, in Australian-accented English. \u201cBut I should have covered [the diorama] in plastic first. It would have been easier to clean up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guo and I head out for lunch. I thought we would go to a nearby restaurant that I know he likes to frequent. But, as we turn the corner, I see that it has been demolished. That\u2019s China for you. One day, it\u2019s your favourite neighbourhood canteen. The next, it\u2019s a pile of rubble.
\nGuo, 52, has been dwelling on China\u2019s helter-skelter destruction-reconstruction quite a bit in his recent work. Before he decided to slather it with pig meat, the Tiananmen diorama was no peaceful replica. Instead, he had rendered it as a giant construction site littered with miniature bulldozers, jackhammers and other wrecking equipment \u2013 the reality of China\u2019s much-hyped urbanisation drive unleashed on the symbolic heart of the capital.
\nOther recent pieces in Guo\u2019s studio include some that at first glance appear to be traditional wintry landscape paintings, rendered in black and white. On closer inspection, they reveal themselves to be denuded environmental landscapes painstakingly created with small pieces of litter he has collected. These works represent a marked departure from his earlier paintings of Chinese soldiers and curvaceous women, the latter modelled on members of the entertainment units that sing and dance for the troops.
\nA native of southwestern Guizhou province, Guo was 17 when he joined the People\u2019s Liberation Army and in 1979 was sent to the front during the brief Sino-Vietnamese war, although he never saw combat. The propaganda used to stir soldiers\u2019 bloodlust is something he explores in his work.
\n\u201cThe army is regarded as a loveable institution. But at Tiananmen I realised it\u2019s not, they will kill you if ordered to. And how do they build up this machine? In part, they use women,\u201d Guo says. \u201cFrom these army images I want people to see how this violent culture not only existed before but is still strong in China.\u201d
\nGuo\u2019s military background is one of the reasons I wanted to speak with him ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. After leaving the army, Guo studied fine arts at Beijing\u2019s Minzu University. In 1989, aged 27, he saw the tragedy unfold from both the perspective of the young protesters and the soldiers sent to crush their movement.
\n\u201cI was a soldier once and I was a student once and I can see myself in each,\u201d Guo says. \u201cThere are two of me.\u201d While his art is often bleak and macabre, in person he comes across as a profoundly gentle soul.
\n. . .
\nWe get in a small san lun che \u2013 a three-wheel vehicle with a small compartment for passengers \u2013 for the 10-minute ride across Songzhuang to Mina\u2019s Restaurant, which specialises in Sichuanese cuisine and is run by an almost entirely deaf waiting staff. A young man silently brings a small tablet computer with Mina\u2019s menu to Guo, who orders five simple dishes and a big bottle of Yanjing beer for us to share.
\nThe army is regarded as a loveable institution. But at Tiananmen I realised it\u2019s not, they will kill you if ordered to
\nThe restaurant is crowded and noisy but is surrounded by bamboo that pleasantly filters the sun\u2019s glare. Two revolutionaries look down at us from the west wall \u2013 a picture of Che Guevara, chomping a cigar, and a poster of John Lennon with a version of his quote: \u201cI like rock\u2019n\u2019roll and I don\u2019t like much.\u201d Pictures of other musical figures hang on the south wall: Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Metallica and U2\u2019s Bono.
\nThe food arrives quickly \u2013 a bowl of pork ribs and potatoes, beef with tofu, stir-fried aubergine, green beans with minced pork and a plate of raw cucumbers and radishes. It is perfect. The watery Yanjing beer goes down easily.
\nI ask Guo how he got caught up in the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement. It was just curiosity at first, he says. Unrest began in April 1989 after the death of Hu Yaobang, a much-admired Chinese Communist party chief who had been purged in 1987. Students from the prestigious Peking and Tsinghua universities marched past Guo\u2019s college en route to Tiananmen Square to lionise the late leader and to demand greater reforms and liberalisation.
\n\u201cMy university locked the gates. It didn\u2019t want us to go out,\u201d he says. \u201cBut that just made me more curious. So I jumped over the wall just to have a look. I didn\u2019t have the courage to join the first time but the second time I walked along with them.\u201d
\nWe discuss some of the pivotal moments in the seven weeks preceding the massacre. One was the publication of a front-page editorial by the People\u2019s Daily, the Chinese Communist party\u2019s flagship newspaper, which condemned the protest movement as \u201ccounter-revolutionary\u201d. The students, who saw themselves as fundamentally patriotic, were shocked. A few weeks later, they began a hunger strike in an effort to force the leadership to enter a dialogue and discuss their demands.
\n\u201cThey put us in a corner. When the Chinese government says you are a counter-revolutionary, you are in really big trouble. We had no choice,\u201d Guo says. \u201cThe first night of the hunger strike was really, really hard. I was so hungry.\u201d
\nMy chopsticks stop in mid-air. I hadn\u2019t known that Guo was one of the Tiananmen Square hunger strikers. I ask again to be certain and Guo confirms that he starved himself for seven days before being taken to hospital. It is at this point that I register properly that my guest has barely touched our shared food \u2013 an abstinence I had originally attributed to his having recently disposed of 160kg of rotting pork.
\n. . .<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\u2018The Square\u2019 (2014)\u2018The Square\u2019 (2014)\u00a9Guo Jian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018The Square\u2019 (2010)\u2018The Square\u2019 (2010)\u00a9Guo Jian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018The Square\u2019 (2010)\u00a9Guo Jian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018The Square\u2019 (2010)\u00a9Guo Jian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018Picturesque scenery No 15\u2019 (2011-2012)\u00a9Guo Jian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018Picturesque scenery No 20\u2019 (2011-2012)\u00a9Guo Jian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018Picturesque scenery No 25\u2019 (2011-2012)\u00a9Guo Jian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018Picturesque scenery No 18\u2019 (2011-2012)\u00a9Guo Jian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018Untitled 6\u2019 (2001)\u00a9Guo Jian<\/p>\n

When interviewing someone over a meal, I often frame my questions with long preambles or offer my own rambling observations in order to give the other person a chance to get some food down. Guo, however, doesn\u2019t take the bait. At most he nibbles on a cucumber or radish or sips his beer. I estimate that I am drinking two glasses of beer for every one of his. After a few more minutes I give up on the rambling approach: I keep the questions tight and let him tell his story.
\nWe move to the fateful night of June 3 and the early morning hours of June 4, by which time Guo had been released from hospital and was back in the square.<\/p>\n

Tensions had been building in the movement\u2019s last few weeks. The government had declared martial law on May 20, after which some students he didn\u2019t recognise began taunting some of the unarmed soldiers who had made it close to Tiananmen. He tried to stop these students and later wondered if they had been agents provocateurs, trying to manufacture a pretext for a crackdown.
\nOn the night of the massacre, Guo heard what he assumed were fireworks to the west of Tiananmen. He got on a bicycle to take a look and arrived at Fuxingmen, a major junction en route to the square where crowds were trying to try to block the soldiers\u2019 advance with a hastily erected barricade.
\nUnlike the naive young peasant soldiers he had previously encountered near the square, these were older, more experienced troops \u2013 Guo\u2019s age, perhaps, maybe even fellow veterans of the brief border war with Vietnam 10 years earlier. He saw people hit by bullets, the dead and injured rushed away on pedal carts.
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t believe it, even though I had been a soldier,\u201d Guo says. \u201cIn the army I had never seen that sort of violence. Then I saw the tracers and people falling around me \u2013 they were just gone. I suddenly realised, shit, this was war.\u201d
\nGuo abandoned his bicycle and ran, only to be trapped in a small alley near Fuxingmen hospital. Troops were firing as they moved in on his hiding spot, their pace slowed but not stopped by the bottles and bricks thrown by people screaming \u201cfascists\u201d.
\n\u201cThere was no way out for me,\u201d he says. \u201cBut then something really funny happened. A gust of wind blew some tear gas towards the soldiers. They couldn\u2019t see anything and I just ran. That\u2019s how I escaped.\u201d
\nGuo sought refuge in Fuxingmen hospital, where the full horror struck him. He and a few others ventured out to help a wounded man, \u201chis blood running like a water fountain\u201d. In the attempt, one member of the rescue party was shot dead.
\nBy the time the violence had died down and Guo was able to leave the hospital, there were about 100 corpses stacked in an area normally reserved for bicycles. \u201cSeeing them lined up \u2013 you feel you are not strong enough,\u201d he says. \u201cWalking into the hospital, walking into the emergency room packed with bodies, the smell was much stronger than in my studio. I just couldn\u2019t do anything and wanted to throw up. I was shocked, angry, sad and hopeless. The thing I felt the most was hopelessness.\u201d
\n. . .
\nGuo\u2019s tone is sombre but not sad, and he speaks softly. It is now past 3pm and most of the other patrons have gone. Soon we will be the only ones left as the afternoon light softens. Most of the staff are catnapping in a back room, disturbed only when we order another round of beers. For the first time I register that the background music is American folk and I hum along with Simon & Garfunkel\u2019s \u201cEl Condor Pasa (If I Could)\u201d \u2013 \u201cI\u2019d rather be a hammer than a nail, yes I would, if I only could, I surely would\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009\u201d
\nI saw people falling around me \u2013 they were just gone. I suddenly realised, shit, this was war
\nPerhaps it is the beer. We have ploughed through six bottles. Guo still hasn\u2019t eaten much and I, too, have stopped, feeling like a glutton in comparison.<\/p>\n

Rudely, it doesn\u2019t occur to me to ask whether there are any desserts on the menu he might like.
\nI ask Guo about the contrast between all the violence and destruction depicted in his art and his own calm demeanour. \u201cI used to be an angry person,\u201d he admits. \u201cI think my personality changed when I was in Australia.\u201d He moved to Sydney in 1992, was granted citizenship and stayed for 13 years.
\nWhile there, he marvelled at the fact that in Australia people could vent their anger in peaceful street protests that were not crushed; that anyone could smile at police officers \u2013 and they would smile back; that there were so many libraries to explore. \u201cI used to hate history class because when I was in primary school our textbooks were always being confiscated and then returned with pages missing because [some leader] had been purged. We didn\u2019t know what was going on.\u201d
\nGuo had nightmares that paired the violence he had experienced in China with the peace he was enjoying in Australia. After waking up one morning, he sketched a particularly vivid dream sequence. His friends were shocked when he showed it to them. He had drawn a tank in front of the Sydney Opera House.
\nAs much as Guo liked Australia, his art projects took him back to China on occasion and in 2005 he and a few friends decided to go into the restaurant business in Beijing. \u201cMy life was just that restaurant for three years. I felt totally stuck in China,\u201d Guo says. \u201cBut then I suddenly realised I had another opportunity to experience and witness what was happening here.\u201d He still has an interest in one establishment in central Beijing but otherwise concentrates on his art in Songzhuang.
\nListening to Guo, it is hard not to be struck by the contrast between the China he knew as a student in the mid-1980s, before the massacre, and the China he returned to 20 years later as an established artist. \u201cThat time in Chinese history was really, really open. People were talking about democracy openly,\u201d he says of the years before Tiananmen. \u201cNow they say you should let China change slowly.\u201d
\nWe leave the slumbering restaurant and walk along an empty road to find a san lun che. The cacophony of traffic steadily builds as we near the highway leading back to the centre of Beijing, where Guo drops me off. He returns to his clean, quiet studio while I am soon stuck in gridlock that\u2019s bad even by local standards, the peace of our long afternoon lunch completely shattered.
\nTom Mitchell is an FT correspondent in Beijing<\/p>\n

From \u00a0http:\/\/www.ft.com\/intl\/cms\/s\/2\/8f280a54-e5b5-11e3-a7f5-00144feabdc0.html#slide0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tom Mitchell Now an artist creating w … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,95],"tags":[94,101],"views":1412,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1114,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions\/1114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}