Content-wise, the PDF version features one article that’s not published in the physical book: The Politics of Living Space in Hong Kong, by activist and journalist Chu Hoidick.

Click here to download the PDF, the file size is about 18 MB. Big thanks to our designer Sun Xiaoxi for his hard work, even during sickness!

(Chutzpah! spring 2009 is currently in Chinese only.)

If you are suffering from slow connection, click here to download the MP3 file. (84 MB)

From the left: Leung Man Tao (moderator), Tang Shui’en, Deng Siu Wah, Zhang Yueran, Cheng Kin-Yip, Andrew Yu, Chu Hoidick.

Standing-room only!

Audiences.

Being a veteran TV commentator, Leung Man Tao handled the show gracefully, with manifested capability of processing large amount of information — at times esoteric remarks from random audience — and cracking jokes.

Leung is examining the live feedback on the Fanfou (a popular micro-blogging service in China) screen. He’s by no means a techie, but he seems to be adaptable to new technologies. We explained how micro-blogging works in conference scenario, and he has been skillfully channeling comments between the screen and the guest speakers during the discussion.

Candy Yang from China Youthology, a market research and consulting company focused on youth culture and trend.

Audience asking questions.

This ‘post-1940s’ lady made some unique remarks on the Cultural Revolution.

And we have post-1950s lady too. She’s here with her son, who’s presumably a post-1980s.

Andrew Yu from 1KG.org, a charity initiative which encourages domestic travelers to donate their under-used belongings to the less-developed area of China.

Social activist Cheng Kin-Yip from Hong Kong.

Renowned post-1980s writer Zhang Yueran, who studied computer science in the University.

Writer Deng Siu Wah from Hong Kong.

The gentleman beside Leung Man Tao is known as Tang Shui’en this time. He’s doing research on independent media and ‘unstable workers’ in Wuhan, China.

Social activist and journalist Chu Hoidick from Hong Kong. Chu is well-versed in Persian and has sponsored himself for journalistic trips to the Middle East. He’s a frequent contributor to InMediaHK.net (censored in mainland China).

Ou Ning, the Director of Shao Foundation.

Everyone on earth with Internet connection can access the micro-blogging screen, whether he / she is physically present at the discussion venue.

Leung Man Tao talking with audiences after the discussion. Standing behind, wearing glasses is Wang Xing, the founder and CEO of Fanfou.com.

(All photographs by Sun Xiaoxi.)

* The text was originally written by Sun Xiaoxi in Chinese and was translated and adapted for the English readers by Lawrence Li.

Don’t forget to check out CROSSTALK Beijing #2, a panel discussion with the presence of Jia Zhangke about 24 City, urbanisation, and other topics. It’s gonna take place from 16:00 to 18:00, Feb 28, right after the screening. Our staff will guide you to the CROSSTALK venue from the cinema. If you are going to come by yourself, here’s the address:

Beijing Angle Modern Art, 4/F, Tower 1, Zhongguo Hongjie (China View), Jia 2 Gongti Dong Lu, Chaoyang District, Beijing.

See you all on Saturday.

Here’s a straightforward description of the events that’s going to unfold soon:

1. An exhibition based on the film 24 City at Beijing Angle Modern Art. Time: February 23–March 8.

2. A free preview screening of 24 City. Time: 13:30, February 28 (Saturday). Place: Megabox cinema, The Village, Sanlitun.

3. A panel discussion (CROSSTALK Beijing #2) on the film and related topics. Time: 16:00–18:00, February 28 (Saturday).

It seems that many people got the news from our Facebook event page, on which the actual date of the screening (not the exhibition) was tucked at the end of the press release. The confusion may also come from the fact that we’ve compressed the above three events into one press release. Again, we apologise for the inconvenience.

To avoid having people going to the theatre on Monday only to find that they have the wrong date, we are going to publish the final list of audiences by tomorrow evening on our website. Everyone on the list will also be notified via email.


After negotiation, we managed to secure a 102-seat hall in Megabox cinema at The Village, Sanlitun for the preview screening. The 102-minute film is scheduled 2.5 hours before CROSSTALK Beijing, so that the audience will be able to walk at a casual pace to BAMA gallery, where the discussion will take place.



We realised that 102 seats is not many, but we’ve apparently underestimated people’s enthusiasm for Jia’s film—registration emails have been swarming in at a speed so fast that, as of today, all seats have been filled.



We are sorry that we couldn’t make the preview screening available to more people. If, however, you don’t mind joining in the discussion and seeing the exhibition before watching the film, you are still encouraged to go to CROSSTALK Beijing on Feb 28, and to see the exhibition itself.

You can find all the info about these events on our website.

In most cases, things with title like ‘My China’ always promise to be uninteresting and tacky. Not in this one. The board features 84 selected Google logos designed by students from various elementary and middle schools around Beijing. As you can see from the examples below, there are quite a few decent designs, some with sensibility beyond the age of their authors.

‘Afro-chine impression’?

This is a bit of a stretch, but I like the wild colouring.

Probably the most artistically accomplished one in the lot.

The astronaut reminds me of ‘EVE’ in Wall·E.

Again, nice sense of colouring.

Hip-Hop China!

No it’s not by Wang Guangyi.

(I took these pictures with my cellphone, so unfortunately few of the credits are legible. Sorry about that.)

So, end of nerd speak, here are some photos from the event.

Ou Ning launching the event.

Thank you, anonymous person with cellphone number ended with 2117, you really spiced up the micro-blogging screen! Thank you too, Zafka.

Anyone else noticed the striking resemblance between Jay Brown and Glenn Gould? ^_^

The turnout is pretty good, we have 40 chairs and about 10 stools, and some people had to stand behind. A lot of people got the news from Facebook, which is surprising to me as I ignore Facebook invitations most of the time. ^_^

Michelle Liu of Approach Architecture and writer / editor Brendan McGetrick.

Ron Henderson (right), landscape designer and professor at Tsinghua University, and Lawrence Li, Shao Foundation curator.

Wu Wenda, the Party Secretary of Yi township (黟县), Anhui province.

Jay Brown responding to questions and confrontations from Ou Ning and the audience.

Artist Weng Wei (in black).

Liang Jingyu from Approach Architecture asked how Jay Brown would define himself against the countryside: is it simply ‘a venue of otherness’? Is there a threshold of his involvement with the locality there?

(All photos by Sun Xiaoxi.)

The workers are installing light-blocking curtains, which help to improve the image quality on the projector screens.

The chairs and stools are being put in place.

(Photos by Sun Xiaoxi.)

Shao Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to cultural production and social engineering. We curate exhibition, engage people in conversation, and make our works accessible to the general public. If you are working on an insanely great project, talk to us.

So, exhibition, conversation event and book publishing constitute our own ‘Three-Legged Stool’. Exhibition, of course, is self-explanatory. We have two spaces in Beijing and Shanghai, respectively. Those who’ve been to our opening solo exhibition of Huang Rui is already familiar with the Beijing one (called BAMA). Info about the Shanghai space will be revealed on our website in due course. In addition to the regular exhibition, we intend to use the Beijing space as the main site for CROSSTALK Beijing, aka ‘conferences and symposia that do not suck’. (Or at least we hope so.) The goal here is to reinvigorate a format that’s supposed to be intense and stimulating but instead has been, more often than not, weakly implemented. Has conversation expired? Are forum and conference being reduced to the exchange of truism? Is ‘lecture followed by Q&A session’ the optimised way to enable communication? How can we extend the lifespan of a temporary event, so that its intellectual outcome can reach out to people who may not be able to attend it? These are some of the fundamental issues we would like to address with CROSSTALK Beijing.

The people behind Shao Foundation come mostly from a contemporary art or design background. As a team, however, we don’t necessarily focus only on the aesthetic aspects of everything we do—although that’s important too. With every project, social engineering remains a priority. Proto-Shao Foundation examples of social concerns include Ou Ning (current SF director)’s Dazhalan Project, which engages the original resident of a demolished community to produce his own video documentation of the process; and the decision to use shopping malls as the exhibition venues of the second Get It Louder exhibition in 2007. With the third GIL and the Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism coming afoot next year (both of which SF will be in charge), we are going to further experiment with various ways to activate public participation.

As an organisation associated with Modern Media Group—one of the most successful media groups in China, it’s only natural that there should be a publishing arm within Shao Foundation. We will be publishing a series of books on a wide range of topics, including art, design, architecture, futurism, and even Science Fiction! They could either be the Chinese edition of books written in other languages, or original Chinese book, or bilingual edition. The first two books in the series will be the Chinese editions of Hou Hanru’s On the Mid-Ground and Hans Ulrich Obrist’s …dontstopdontstopdontstopdontstop.

Needless to say, we are always open to ideas and projects from the outside. If you are an artist, designer, architect, scholar, or ‘cultural producer’ of any sorts looking for collaboration, feel free to drop us a line at info [at] shaofoundation.org.cn.