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Published: August 20th 2023
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At the end of the subway line 4 are a couple of villages that I have wanted to visit; the Aohu Art Village and the Guanlan Printmakers' Village. Today was the turn of Aohu Art Village. To be fair these villages are quite near each other (I think only a couple of kilometres), but it was too hot to stay out too long. The village seems to be having a bit of an identity crisis as it goes by three different names, Aohu Art Village, Nuihu Art Village and New Who Art Village. Confusing? Yes! From the subway station, it was a short walk to the entrance to the art village. I liked the lake and the row of houses at the entrance to the art village. The area looked small, cosy, quaint and arty. We spent a couple of hours wandering around the village. It is pretty compact so it doesn't take that long to get around the place. The inner village area was all one story buildings and most of them had artwork on their outer walls. I love a good mural so I was happy to wander around taking pictures. I also liked that there were lots of
normal life mixed in with the art; people's laundry hanging out to dry and scooters parked up in front of their homes.
We made our way over to the watchtower, which we couldn't access, but it was nice to get up close and see it in more detail. There was an ancient looking satellite hanging off the roof, so I wondered if someone lived there or it had some kind of commercial use. I liked the red accent on the watchtower. If it wasn't for the art and people's belongings on display, I would have felt like I was stepping back in time. We passed a temple, which was closed. It was a scorcher of a day and I think this is the reason why the village was deserted. I had expected a few other people to be there getting some selfies in front of the murals, but we only passed one or to locals. We had a wander through the park and there were only a few people there too, taking refuge in the shade. We got some nice views of the rooftops from the park.
When doing another circuit of the village, we met a lovely
woman who spoke English and she invited us into her gallery. Her husband is a foreigner so we had a chat with him. I enjoyed looking around their gallery. I think all the art on display was made by the two of them and I loved that they had repurposed old objects/junk into pieces of art. The bloke told us about a pottery place (?) I think, but when we tried to find it we couldn't. We did come across a little guesthouse. I think it would be a lovely place to stay, so different from the hustle and bustle of the city. From there, we headed to the subway. The village is a bit out of the way and it would have been better to combine it with visiting some of the other places in the area, but it was just too hot and I needed the air conditioned relief of the subway.
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