Day Five
Zhu Li, along with Ye Dongsheng, came over early to
work with me on finalizing the build-out of the
studio. Li Kogen arrived shortly thereafter. There
was still no hot water in the two main bathrooms.
There were two reasons for this: the solar heating
system was still not working and the contractor had
not yet installed the electric hot water units.
Although the plans called for electric hot water
units in all three bathrooms, somehow Zhu Li and Li
Kogen thought that the solar heating unit was a
replacement for all of the electric hot water
heaters, rather than a backup alternative. That was
finally straightened out.
I then went to Jenny Lou’s with Abraham Lubelski’s
new assistant Elizabeth, since she had just arrived
in Beijing, needed supplies and had no food. I
needed wine and cheese. Jenny Lou’s has the best
wine selection in all of Beijing and, since Chinese
grocery stores do not carry dairy products, this is
the only place to get cheese. I then had lunch at a
local restaurant in Hegezhuang with the crew at New
York Arts, and went back to my unit because the
electric hot water heater installer was supposed to
be there at three o’clock. I worked on my sketch of
a segment of coral life and did some office work.
Li, Dongsheng and I went out to dinner to celebrate
the anticipated completion of the unit. We went to a
southern Chinese restaurant because Li did not want
to eat a heavy, spicy dinner. Dongsheng is learning
English, so we had an interesting evening of my
attempts to speak Chinese and his attempts to speak
English. Li, whose English is pretty good, was in
the middle and she had a good time laughing at us
trying to communicate in each other’s native
language. In a few instances, she corrected my
pronunciation, but complimented my pronunciation in
general. I told her that Leslie and I had a very
good teacher.
I was still extremely tired, but tried to stay up as
Leslie and I agreed to Skype at 11:15 p.m. Beijing
time. When she wasn’t there, I got ready to go to
sleep, and then she called . It was good to hear her
voice and to get updates on what was going on with
her, her family, and especially her grandchildren in
New York.
Day Six
It was beautiful day. The sun was out and the sky
was a brilliant blue. It was the first time that I
had seen the sky since I had arrived in Beijing. I
met with real estate agents from Century 21 so that
the studio could be rented when I was not there.
After they left, I got on my electric bicycle and
rode to the hardware district to buy some tools for
the studio. Sign language and a helpful staff at one
of the local hardware stores enabled me to purchase
almost all of the small things I needed. My bicycle
basket was full of small tools, so I decided to go
home to drop them off before going back to that area
to look for large tools.
I started to work on the wood cut. The work went
very rapidly. In redoing the design so many times,
the carving became second nature. I was supposed to
meet Li Gang to work on planning out the work tables
and larger tools for the studio. I was starting to
think of creating art again. I focused on the
woodcut and spent most of the morning on that
project. I also did some preliminary work in the
front yard to prepare for moving my large bronze
sculpture from Li Gang’s studio. After speaking with
Leslie, I realized that I had to spend some time on
my next Chinese lesson, so I did some work on that
too.
In the interim I got a call from Zhu Li telling me
that the installer would be at my place by 2:00 p.m.
I went into a local restaurant for a quick lunch of
steamed pork dumplings so I could be back by 1:45.
At approximately 3:00 Kogen showed up to fix one of
the electric outlets and to work with me on fixing
the kitchen sink, which was a two-person job. At
approximately 4:00 the installer came. Apparently,
Kogen had decided to try a new type of electrical
unit that had an internal computer rather than the
traditional type of Chinese hot water heater. The
new unit does not store hot water because it is
strong enough to generate hot water for two
bathrooms, which are situated on top of one another,
as is the case in my studio.
Li and Dongsheng came over to visit, and we had some
wine to celebrate the soon-to-be completed unit.
Dongsheng also brought over a catalog of his recent
group show. He does some very interesting things. Li
does extremely large pieces and has difficulty
finding places to show her work at home in order to
have her pieces become known to the gallery owners.
As they were leaving, John and Madeline, two expats
from Australia, arrived. They are very interesting
people. We had lots to talk about: the war in Iraq,
his writing projects, her writing projects, what is
happening in Beijing, who was going to be the next
president of the United States, etc. They would be
interesting people anywhere. John has never been to
the United States and one of his wishes is to be
able to travel here. Assuming he would have
unlimited time, he would like to go to New York,
Bloomington, Indiana, (where his sister lives), Los
Angeles and the Pacific Northwest. He would also
like to see Chicago. I recommended that he locate a
copy of the movie “Breaking Away,” which is all
about a young man growing up in Bloomington.
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