Art Districts and Failed Student Exchange

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So I apologize for not updating for a little bit. I've been super busy with professors filling up the scheduled study time with excursions that take 4 hours (more on that in this post). This is the first time that I've had real downtime to even breathe since Monday afternoon.

Tuesday for the whole day we went to Qi Jiu Ba (798) Art District. Think of MOCA in Jacksonville and that's what it's like, except it has Chinese artists. hahaha.I've never been to MOCA, but one of the girls in the group has and tht's how she discribed it to me. I had to write a paper on my experience so I was taking loads of notes and pictures (when I could). There were some really interesting pieces of work (pictures in later post). There were two artists that really stuck out and inspired me. One artists (forgot to write the name down) did 3D paintings. There is a painting of sunflowers that literally still out up to 2 inches off of the canvas. I love having textured paintings. Another rtists did a lot of night scenes that were neon colors with a dark blue or a black background.

Wednesday in the morning we had to go to the university to watch Readymade with a group of students and the director of the movie. Well, no students showed up :/ fail on my professors because they didn't send out anything about it until Tuesday afternoon. But it was interesting to listen to the director talk about how he got into the film and what he was up to now (making more films that are simialr to Readymade). Readymade is a film about two Chinese people that impersonate Mao. One is a man that goes around 24/7 like Mao. He does performances and recites speeches and poems that Mao had. The other is a woman. She impersonates a silent Mao because she can't get her voice deep enough. She also has to wear shoes that are really tall specially made for her to make her look more like Mao. Her husband does not accept this and does not sleep in the same bed with her since she started impersonating Mao.
That was a good expiernce and all but the director said that we could visit his studio whenever we wanted. Well after lunch we were suppose to have the rest of the day off to write papers. However, one of my professor says "Why not this afternoon?" And then my other professor said "Let's go as a group! Who has plans?" Everyone says that they are writing the papers but they still say "Let's meet in a few hours to go." A few of us felt like we were being guilt tripped into going, so we went, on he conditions that the transportation was going to be paid for (which is was) and that we would be back at the hotel by 5 (which we weren't). We left at 2:30, got there at 3. Sat there until 5 before one of my professors said "It's 5, we need to go." But we stopped by a random art exhibit for an extra half an hour. We then went to leave, but the taxis here can be a bit racist. They would look at the gorup of us and drive off. Took us 20 mins to get a taxi.
When I got back I had the two papers to write plus deal with laundry. It's either handwash yourself in the tub or send off ONLY 5 shirts and 3 pants for 151 kuai to be washed in the hotel.

I'll update more after I nap and have dinner about today and yesterday 😊

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