The ancient town wall of Xi'An is one of the "Must Haves" during a stay in this pulsing City. Xi'An was the great main capital of China about 1000 years ago and the town wall, with a total length of about 10 kilometers, is from this time. It is still considered the city center today. It kind of reminded me of the old city walls in Germany, just a lot bigger and still in very good shape. You can rent a bicycle in order to drive around on top of it, which is really nice in order to get away from the crazy noises for a short while, because it seems like that the town wall is almost working like a compensating filter that sucks up all the noise. It is a very peaceful and beautiful place which gives you a great feeling of freedom and when you take a ride here it almost let's you forget about the fact that you are in a huge city with 8 million people living in the inner core. But as soon as you get back down from it you will be aware of this again within seconds and the noise will hit you hard like a shovel on the back of your head. Next stop: Terracotta Worriors. This place is always full of people that rush through the streets, especially during the Weekends. While being downtown you see quite a lot of people sleeping everywhere in the streets and in the shops some times. They seem to get tired of the constant rush and the continuing sounds of noisy vehicles,people, music and advertisements also. I wonder what they dream about, because I feel the same weariness, if not a lot worse. At the end of the day I just fall right into my bed, falling to sleep all in an instance. It seems like my brain is trying to understand and process these new, given impressions during the night, as far as I dream here a lot... Pretty crazy things most of the time as far as I can remember them in the morning in order to jump into a new day. It is exciting to see how this country seems to be in this great contrast right now. Even though tradition seems to be important to a lot of people, modernity still finds it's way into everyday life more and more, witch crates a strange contradiction in my eyes. But for right now it looks like both worlds are able to exist next to one another and it is thrilling to see what this is going to be like in the near future. My Classes started on Monday and I decided to take a Fotografy class and an oil painting class. Both are very different from what I am used to in Germany, witch does not mean that they are less interesting. It is surprising to be able to see the different teaching styles and to be able to compare them to one another. Where we have a lot of freedom in Germany and can basically do what we want in order to develop our own style in what we decide to do, the Chinese teaching style gives them a clear topic on what to work on and everybody works on the same topic. They seem to have a strong group feeling in what they do I believe. For example in my oil painting class we are working with semi nude male models and do one and the same painting for two weeks. The Chinese have perfect technical skills for that, witch I, as not exactly being the typical kind of traditional painter, can not compete with at all. But I think sometimes it is good to take one steps back in order to take two steps forth. The students decide in their second year what major they want to take for the rest of their time at the academy. So once you decided to do painting, that's your thing. The Xi'An Academy of Fine Arts has about 15 different departments to choose from. Pretty much anything is offered here, ranging from fashion design, animation and movie making to art history, traditional chinese painting or drawing. After all everybody welcomes me with wide open arms and makes me almost feel like home while being really nice and interested in how things work in Germany. The cultural exchange is in full progress and the inspiration for further works is flowing within me. |
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June 2014
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