Still OK in Bangkok

Just received a letter from Gerald and he's OK. Seems he didn't leave for the Airport afterall.

Here's what he says:

"Just had a very unpleasant breakfast. The hotel this morning is full of mostly Germanic types. It was so pleasant here when the place was deserted but for us doctor types.

I was seated for my breakfast by the waitress at one of the few tables available, ordered a coffee which arrived three requests later, had a sip, left my bag on the seat and went to get eggs and juice. Came back and some Polish types were in my seat. Pointing out that my bag was on the seat, and now on the floor, and my sipped coffee on the table, would not get them to budge. So I found another table thinking about how the sooner they weld back that Iron Curtain and start firing missiles at them the better.

Anyway, after another three requests I got another pot of coffee, and then found a moth doing backstroke in the milk; no, he must have been doing butterfly. More milk finally arrived, but my, was it good coffee! Definitely worth the wait. Must be the Dopamine thing, hey Maria? Anticipation is the best sauce and is best served hot. Or is that revenge?

So to soothe my rage, I am off to see "some epelants"!

By the way, Jane, one of your doctors from Innisfail is here, Simon and wife Pam. Says he is related to me via the Raggs, knows a lot about Fiji but has never been there."

So Gerald is still OK and I'm thinking of how foolish I've been with all this fretful searching through news photographs with a magnifying glass and worrying.

Fists Flying in Bangkok

Last word from Gerald, in the post below, was that he was about to make his way to Bangkok Airport. It's now been 24 hours and we've heard nothing more, so I'm now poring over on-line news stories about the angry-tourist punch-ups at the various Thai International Airports and scanning news photographs with a magnifying glass. Luckily Gerald is 6ft 4inches tall so I only have to look at people who tower over everyone else, and there are indeed a few in there although I can't make out their faces. It's a worry.

Gerald, let us know the moment you're out!

But, no, I refuse to worry. Gerald is always alright. It's a gift he has. Although, as Jim once said, "And that gift will last until the day he dies!" and that's not a pleasant thought!

However, on the grounds of refusing-to-worry, and because Gerald told the story of the man who prayed to Thailand's Black Buddha to make him rich and then went off and invented Red Bull, let me tell you of something most strange and creepy that happened to us several years ago.

You may recall my Bangkok story about meeting a lovely Thai gentleman and "dissing" the fountain we were both looking at ...

The "Thai-tacky" fountain.

... and it turns out he was the Thai billionaire who donated that very fountain to the public. Well, you'll also recall that he kindly and hospitably provided us with a car and driver to take us around a zillion wats (temples) only it all got too much and we ended up running away.

Well, I didn't tell you in that post that the very first wat the driver took us to was a little very poor one that was having its "auspicious day"; the day in the year when it was supposed to be its most powerful ...

At the end of this alley
is the "auspicious day" wat.

... and because we'd never been to a wat before and wanted to do the right thing but didn't know the etiquette, I bought and lit a joss stick to put in front of the statues ...

The statues.

The late monk who'd
recently been made a Thai saint
and in front of whom
I placed the joss stick.

That's when our driver, who'd been outside sneaking a smoke, returned and hissed "You will get a daughter!" "But I don't want a daughter!" I told him.

That's when the driver explained that every wat has a different function and this one was the one you visited to request a daughter (which explains why it's so small and poor), and by my actions I'd just asked Buddha to give me one! "But I don't want one." I panicked. "What should I do?"

"Take away the joss stick, break off the lit part and tell Buddha it was a mistake!"

So that's what I did!

However, the day after we arrived back in Hong Kong, I got a phone call from a woman I know who volunteers at a local orphanage. Seems that HK had a horrible incident happen in our absense, wherein a newly arrrived Mainland family had been unable to find work and the distraught mum, in a fit of desperation, cut her family's throats and then dived out a 15 storey window. Only she'd missed the two-year old who'd seen all and hidden.

"We can't find anyone to take the little girl!" our friend told me. "Chinese won't touch her because she's considered "an unlucky child"!, so we're after someone who isn't Chinese. But we also need someone who's tolerant and also educated enough to understand psychology because the little girl is severely traumatised. So I've put your name forward and they want to know if you'll do it."

Lordy, lordy, lordy, talk about cringe! And, recalling and cursing the big error I'd made in Thailand, I said "Sincerely and honestly, I'd prefer not to ... although, you know, if she has no one else who'll have her, then ..."

Luckily, the maternal grandmother stepped up to the plate and the child was returned to the Mainland or else I'd now be dealing with a severely traumatised little daughter! Aaahhhh! Nightmare!

So, scoff all you like but let me tell you, given the synchronicity involved in all this, the only explanation is that requests to those Thai statues are very powerful, so I now take them very, very seriously and so should you.

k.d.lang - For Keith

Late last night, Keith was listening to a CD of some singer when she started the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah".

"Isn't this an amazing version!" Keith said.

"No." I replied. "Sorry. k.d.lang did this song and no one can ever come close to how she does it."

Keith, who hasn't listened to much k.d.lang, scoffed ... so, just to show him what I mean, I'm going to hunt her down and stick her "Hallelujah" in here and that way he'll know his singer doesn't cut it because, thanks to k.d., this song has been aced and no one ever can again do anything that comes even marginally close.

Got it:



Later: Keith heard this and says "Nah! Don't like it. It's now got this whole lesbian subtext and I just know she's singing about Cindy Crawford and that photo where she's in the barber's chair."

Philistine!

Farewell Bangkok.

Latest word from Gerald. See, he's always OK:

Just about to leave. Our plane leaves in two hours so I am closing down this clandestine transmitter but will reopen on another frequency tomorrow ...

Dogs are OK, they have a bin full of dog biscuits. It is the tomatoes I am worried about, they may need a watering.

Oh, and I see there are floods in Krabi and forecast rain throughout the stay.

Don't worry about the dogs. Only kidding. They are in Kennels.

See you Thursday, deo volente.

Heads Down in Bangkok!

Gerald writes from Bangkok that he is indeed keeping his head down. In fact, his letter is hilarious, so let me share. I'm sure he won't mind.

You know I think I am to blame for all this trouble here in Bangkok. Tuesday, I went to the temple of the Black Buddha, except he was all gold. No one was there but for a Buddhist monk who came up and started talking, saying his father had become very wealthy after praying to that Buddha and that he had developed ''Red Bull'' which made him a millionaire; bet you didn't know "Red Bull" came from Thailand ...

Well, he told me it would bring me great fortune if my wife did not wear silver jewellery and if I bought her a ruby. Which I did. Straight away. And that is when the trouble started. The credit card I used to buy the ruby was used by the shop keepers illicitly and had to be cancelled, the local airport was invaded by a mob, and no flights are entering or leaving the country since, the Baht has collapsed (hurray), my conference is cancelled (hurray) and now two of the doctors at our clinic announced today they are leaving in January.

I bet my wife is still wearing silver.

Some people are trying to get us out early ... kill joys. But they say that it will be 72 hours AFTER the airport is cleared before normal flights are resumed. And I still reckon they will clear it by force... 3 am Sunday morning. The Hour of the Wolf ...

Anyway IF they haven't got us out of here within two months I am throwing that ruby ring into the river and taking a bus to Kuala Lumpur.

Why should I worry, I've found some good books to read:

THE GREAT ESCAPE .

BANGKOK HILTON.

VIVA LA THAILAND

BOYS DON'T CRY.

SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET.

WAR OF THE WORLDS.

ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ.

DIE HARD 4

MAN ON FIRE

p.s. If I'm trapped there for the rest of my life, you can look after my dogs, their food must be nearly run out, water my tomatoes and always remember me fondly.

And bored to tears, he's googling himself to pass the time. And here's something about himself he's found. It's cut from a longer article.




Forensic medicine may not be as glamorous as TV shows depict, but it can be interesting and well-paid work for GPs. By Christina Anastasopoulos

IT’s 3am and your phone rings. It’s a detective from the Special Victims Crime Scene Investigation Unit. There’s been a suspected triple homicide and they need a forensic doctor on the scene to help solve the crime.



You jump in your convertible and race through every redlight — time is of the essence. As you arrive, you notice the air is thick with fog. You walk past the police tape and view the scene. In the corner of the room you see a vital piece of evidence left behind. You run some tests and announce to the police: “We got him!”

Okay, so TV has a lot to answer for when it comes to depicting forensic medicine.

Dr Catherine Sansum says television shows such as CSI, Cold Case and Law & Order are entertaining but bear no resemblance to the real life of GPs conducting forensic medicine work —“particularly the fast cars”.

“It’s really interesting work, but we don’t solve the crimes, we don’t go out with police to arrest people, and we don’t get results that afternoon,”says Dr Sansum, a former GP who does forensic work in Canberra.

And rarely do GPs attend to dead people. This forensic work is usually done by pathologists, but some GPs have state-coroner approval to conduct autopsies.

The type of forensic work carried out by GPs can vary, but mainly involves collecting DNA evidence from adult and child victims of sexual and physical assaults, examining suspects in police custody to determine their fitness for police interviews, providing medical advice to police dealing with suspects with a medical problem, and performing toxicology tests if there is alleged drug use.

The work can also involve medical photography, providing medical advice on crime scenes, a lot of report writing and some court appearances.

For Mildura GP Dr Gerald Murphy, court attendances are the most stressful part of forensic work.

“As any doctor who has stood in court will know, it is never pleasant,” he says.

“This is a major intrusion into my daily work as the judicial system runs like a Salvador Dali timepiece. Most court appearances take about two hours from your busy day, and, as one is called to appear at short notice, I sympathise with patients who have to have their appointments cancelled or delayed to allow me to attend.”

And court appearances are not always local. Dr Murphy can be called as far away as Broken Hill or Melbourne.

Note from Bangkok

Big Brother Gerald writes that he's in Bangkok! Timing, huh! And they've just declared a State of Emergency and he can't leave because they've shut down the airports.

Honestly, Gerald has a gift for these things, forever turning up in countries just before stuff happens. But he's always alright and I'm counting on that this time too.

Actually, I could tell you a great many funny stories about stuff that's happened to Gerald on his travels, only I won't because he definitely wouldn't like it.

However, I will tell you one because this is a Baby Jane story:

Many years ago, Baby Jane was traveling around Turkey with a gaggle of Kiwi nurses, when they heard there had been a massive earthquake in Nepal, and so, like good caring Kiwis always do, and inspired by their very own Sir Edmund Hillary, they immediately flew up to see what they could do to help ... and the old Air India plane they were traveling on dropped two engines and the trip was unbelievably fraught with the plane within inches of the mountains and within seconds of crashing, leaving all of them with post-traumatic stress disorder, terrified of air travel, and with the conviction that god has a very strange sense of irony.

Anyway, the nurses finally rock up into Katmandu where folks are glad to see them and they're told they have to register as volunteers at X - whereever - and thusly they turn up to discover there's already a whole pile of volunteers, and the fellow organising them ... "That looks like my brother" Baby Jane says to the others. "Dun't be sully. Whut wud ya brutha be dun hua!" say the other nurses. "Oh, hi Jane!" says the guy in charge, totally casual and, like, not at all surprised. And lo and behold, it's Gerald.

Turns out, unbeknownst to any of us, he'd been white water rafting on the Arun River - the doctor on an expedition that was the first ever film made by that Mark guy who's now Executive Producer and creator of "The Survivor Series" - when they stopped off for a scheduled night in a local village ... only to discover everyone in the village was dead and being torn apart by wild dogs (which never made it into the finished film, by the way, which shows Mark Whoevers remarkable good taste.) The sherpas with them had been saying all day "Something is wrong with the water. It doesn't usually behave like this." but the rest of them, all on the water, hadn't even noticed the earthquake.

Anyway, Gerald, as a doctor who, as is so rarely done these days, had taken the Hypocratic Oath, felt obliged to help so had left the Expedition and walked/hitched through the night to Katmandu, and, when he got there, realised no one was co-ordinating the relief effort and so just took charge.

That's my brother. But he's a lot older now and so I hope he doesn't attempt to "step up to the plate" in Bangkok. Keep your head down, Gerald! And stay away from anyone in a yellow T-shirt. No wait, everyone there wears yellow T-shirts!

Well, at least he's not in Mumbai.

Transport in Africa!

This is not my photo, but I love it so must share:

African Doubledecker Bus!

What Kills Us This Week! China!

I'd like to say "This could only happen in China!" but that's probably me being naive, however, based on news coming into HK, my choice for this week has to be:

THREATDOWN

Pro-active Body Snatching

China, a few months ago, because it's running out of space in burial plots, passed a law saying everyone now has to cremate. The people don't like the idea and there's been a great deal of resistance, however, this being China ...

... there's now a new and thriving business where, when your loved one dies, for the small sum of 10,000 yuan and "ask-no-questions", gangs will deliver a body of the right sex and age for you to hand over to the crematorium for burning. Then, once you have your certificate to that effect, you can then slyly bury your loved one in the family burial plot.

And where are the gangs getting those bodies? From among the handicapped, the homeless, strangers, beggars and orphans.

When I heard that, I remembered that Druidic Ogham they found several decades back that contained advice for who should be put into "The Wicker Man": the handicapped, the homeless, strangers, beggars and orphans. But they also had "unmarried mothers and their offspring and women who's husbands have recently died and who have no sons to keep them" ... but luckily these pro-active body snatcher gangs obviously haven't thought of those yet!

The Happy Artist - Dafen, China.

David A. has sent me the photos he took of the Dafen artist whose original work we really like. (From the post below) As I said below, his work was always interesting but so skin-crawling and angry, like he would prefer to be out there hacking people to bits.

And now, from appearances, he's recently had a child and dammit if he's not happy. And that's all reflected in his work.

At work in his cubicle.

Some of his recent pieces.

As you can see, he's kept his edge and everything that makes his work interesting, but they no longer make your skin crawl.

What a pity you can't see his Rasputin on the wall to the right. That's truly a mighty piece of work.

What a shame I don't know his name. You could then have gone out and discovered him for yourself.

The Museum of Modern Chinese Art, Dafen, China

I'm Irish so nothing makes my heart sing more than a really fine piece of nose-thumbing at corrupt authority! And here's a fine protest I must share with you!

Do you love it?

You don't get it, do you! All you see is a very fine, highly accomplished carved wall.

Well, what if I show you a couple of pieces in close-up?

Get it now?

Still no? All you're seeing is highly accomplished carved copies of various famous paintings? Well, that's obviously because you don't know what's being protested here, so let me share:

It's all about this rather forlorn-looking building that once housed The Museum of Modern Chinese Art.

Only the structure remains!

It was originally built in Dafen to house a mighty collection of Modern Chinese Art. But why choose a flood-prone gully? Probably because, in people's minds the concept of Dafen and Art were firmly entwined, but also, I suspect, with the high-minded intention of inspiring local artists to create for themselves by showing them truly fine pieces of originality. Nice idea, right?

However, this is China! Naturally, the inevitable happened.

You'll recall that, several years back, the world deservedly went wild for modern Chinese art, and the price of paintings skyrocketed: like the Yue Minjin "Jesters" I almost bought for U$6,000 at Schoneli gallery in 2003 only two years later sold at auction for US$16 million. (Keith was so cross and shouted "Why didn't you FORCE me to buy it!")

If you read my first blog entry about Dafen, where I posted an old letter about my dear friend Margaret and me finally discovering this village, you'll know what happened. How we were there and saw it with our own eyes! That we went into the Museum and stumbled across an army of armed Red Guard packing the entire contents of the museum into crates! And that we were chased out with loud shouting, swearing and machine-gun waving! And how, when we went into the village to ask what was happening in the Museum no one knew a thing and kept insisting the paintings were right there, just across the way!

In that letter, I also predicted that they'd be very angry when they found out, but, as far as I know, no one raised the slightest protest ... so, when I saw this wall on Sunday, my heart soared!

Damn, it's good! If you don't get it, that's just because you aren't aware that this wall points directly towards the wall of the former Museum in a way known in Feng Shui as "poisoned arrow".

"Shoot those poisoned arrows!"

And see those empty spaces on the wall of the Museum? Those used to be filled with copies of famous paintings. And it's those famous paintings which are herein reproduced, carved in stone on this wall.

Do you love it now?

I was so deeply heartened when I saw this, I went on a hunt to find the artist. And because I really don't want to get anyone into any trouble ...

... here's a photo of some random stranger I met on Sunday in Dafen!

Random Stranger!

Leonardo would sooo approve!

Hate that new post-flood plinth!

And they're even using the Museum to display new original work by Dafen artists, which is something to be highly commended, although, apart from two seriously good artists, they're really not so ... no, no, let's be encouraging here: it's a start!

A Day in Dafen, China

I hereby nominate Dafen Oil Painting Village, Buji Town, Shenzhen, China, as one of the world's truly special places. And, as Kelly A. says, "It's just so nice knowing it's there and that we can visit any time we like." In fact, and on this point we all agree, it's so you can visit this village "anytime you like" that makes it worth going through the hell of getting a multi-entry China visa.

Welcome to Dafen!
Those buildings in the background
are in Buji Town.
Not part of this special place at all.

These days, it's even easy to visit because all the taxi drivers now know where it is. Nearly six years ago, when I first tried to find the place, no one knew what I was talking about. And then - my first jaunt out there with Margaret after I finally got the address - our lovely taxi driver treated it as an adventure out into the wilderness. And then came the period when taxi drivers got angry and swore at you because it was thought "too far out".

These days? Taxi drivers practically expect every Foreign Devil who gets into their taxi to want to go to Dafen ...

... and have installed TV sets
for the back seat to play you
Tom & Jerry cartoons
for the long drive ...

... they're all fine with it.

The road works are nearly completed too so it's almost a pleasant trip.

The only real problem is crossing that damn highway after the taxi drops you off. That perpetually red broken light at the zebra crossing! Those four lanes of speeding cars and trucks! That long wait for a break in the traffic so you can risk your life dashing across! And standing in the centre of that highway with trucks whizzing by so fast? That is one of life's truly heart-pounding experiences! (If you won't fix that damn light, Shenzhen City Council - and it's been at least five years, you realise - how about building a sky-bridge?)

But then you're finally across and you look down into the gully and it's all so peaceful and beautiful you find yourself exhaling and your body slows, your guard lowers and, well, everything immediately becomes very relaxed and special. And then you pass the hand ...

The hand

... and, like stepping through a Magic Portal, - ta dah! - you're in Dafen; the land where Leonardo di Vinci rules ...

Leonardo di Vinci
watching over the central Square.
Hate that pretentious new plinth!

... and where the first thing you encounter is the completely unexpected North Queensland cyclad!

A long way from home!

... and then you're in among the twelve city blocks of cheap-as-chips art ...

Tiny sample of the art for sale.

... with streets lined with galleries selling every type of art imaginable ...

Winsiest sample of galleries!

... and lanes and back alleys housing the cubicles where the artists actually work.

Artist at work.
More of these cubicle photos down below.

The artists of Dafen produce over five million paintings each year, 25% of which are original. (Notice how I avoided saying 75% are "tributes".) However, the number of original pieces increases every year and they even appear to be encouraging that, what with the new auction house - Shenzhen Dafen Yihai Art Auction Company - now up and running, and the building that formerly housed The Museum of Modern Chinese Art collection now displaying the latest original paintings by Dafen artists.

I have just relished watching this place grow up. It's going to be HUGE one day, you realise, as an International art centre, so I feel like I'm in on the ground floor visiting as often as I can.

This visit? Since Keith is still on his "high-dudgeon China boycott" - because China was mean to New Zealand over the melamine scandal - I again went with the Aitkensens.

Shot I took for their Christmas card.
Note the wonderful rough-hewn
old-wood furniture
and that truly sus "Heidelberg School"
Australian painting.

Lovely people, lovely to be with, very relaxed and fun, although this time artists weren't forever giving little Macy paintings, although she's still as gorgeous as she ever was!

Macy with "that damn scarf".
She kept losing it.
I bet her 10 yuan it wouldn't make it home.
Wonder if it did?

I had warned them beforehand they shouldn't expect as much as last time, because ... well, remember my last post about Dafen - the one from about two months back - when I so angry that France had swept through and stolen all the best artists and paintings so they could set up their own artists' village in the south of France. I thought it would kill Dafen and I was on such a "First Muaroa, then Rainbow Warrior, now this! Hate, hate, hate France!" rant! Should have guessed, since this is China, that innumerable new waayyy-talented artists would step in to fill the void! And that is indeed what has happened.

These new artists even see "La Dafen" as their goal; like, if they get good enough, they too will one day be swept off to France for a spell! And they're all so into the Impressionists et al, it's clear they all yearn for the day when they too can jaunt over Provence, wearing berets and being all "la bohemian", and casually slapping paint onto their canvases instead of taking care, the way they do now.

So France is hereby forgiven, although not for Muaroa, and definitely not for Rainbow Warrior; simply for Dafen ... although NOT for stealing Dafen's greatest Dunhuang Tribute Artist! Him, I want back!

Overall, these days, Dafen looks healthy, happy and prosperous. Everyone's getting into fashion and shopping, and books, and becoming foodies, and doing all those "spare cash" sorts of things.

Love this outfit

These guys are totally
"too cool for school"

Fashion-victim.
Shoes NOT for shuttlecock

And, like everyplace on earth,
you wouldn't want to be an
artist's wife for quids!
And that was a really brutal glare
those two women gave each other.
Wife and husband's model?

And there's a definite re-sinofication thing happening, where they're making old buildings look more self-consciously Chinese:

Sinofication in progress.

I find this an excellent move, particularly if it means that this gallery rips that offensive plastic covering off its genuine Ching Dynasty courtyard house:

I'm sure this sort of renovation is a
criminal offense in most countries!

And you know those old buildings that were being torn down last year? And how I thought "This is the end!"? Well, they've replaced them with almost identical buildings, only slightly nicer, stronger and "more bohemian"!

New building!

Clearly, these villagers now know their genre! And, despite those pockets of sublime Ching Dynasty courtyard houses, it is clearly this:

Old buildings

Oh, speaking of pockets of courtyard houses reminds me! As we were walking around, Kelly suddenly exclaims "Good heavens! It exists! In my memory, it's all so surreal, I thought I'd dreamed it."

Kelly sees her "dream building".

This is the Ching Dynasty courtyard house/gallery where we went last year and saw amazing, so-perfect, so-exquisite, so-right-for-the-space paintings of white water lilies, all now sold and replaced with rather icky "Heidelberg School" paintings of the Australian Outback which just look WRONG in here. However, to reinforce its existence for Kelly, and because David A. secretly wanted to check out the rough-hewn old wood furniture in the place, we went into the gallery and partook of a tea ceremony. That's when we were told that the building isn't really Ching Dynasty ...

- although the back part is -

... and that the owners bought the building a decade back, tore most of it down and rebuilt it exactly the way it was. And kudos to them too! Despite the current crop of art, it's indeed surreal and "dream-like" and I love it, although I kinda like the this-century Dafen buildings too.

Oh, and, being Irish and so adoring nose-thumbing-at-corrupt-authority protests, I totally love what an artist has done outside the building that once housed The Museum of Modern Chinese Art. But that story is so big, I'll save it for another post.

The building formerly known as
The Museum of Modern Chinese Art.

And then it was a stroll through the village and I was astonished at how many people knew me. Heaps of artists did that cute v-fingers-point at their own eyes and then a single finger pointed at me, which I've never seen done anywhere else on the planet, but which I assume means "I recognise you!" and then they'd smile. And my naughty little artist friend (post below) squealed delightedly and raced away for his camera to take photos, although I suspect he really wanted image for some "Gruesome Gweilo" project he's working on. And so many gallery owners recognised us and I had some truly cute mostly-mimed conversations about how they went during the floods.

Gorgeous artist cum gallery owner.
My favourite type because here
no one's being exploited.

Those floods - "big water time" - six months ago were huge, and, from what I was able to understand, everyone remembers them with great fondness; that, despite the water coming up to their chests, they were able to save the paintings, stow them upstairs, and then go out and help everyone else, which bonded them all into a real community and everyone forged massive friendships and everything was just great!

Actually, it's this new-found fondness everyone has for each other that is most different about Dafen these days. Since we first discovered it, it's become a real village. You know, don't you, that Dafen wasn't initially "organically-grown"; that it started life back in 1989 when Wal-Mart ordered 10,000 reproductions of European masterpieces from a Hong Kong art dealer and so he gathered together 26 extremely talented painters, got them rooms and studios in a flood-prone-so-cheap-rent gully, put them to work churning out "tributes" ... and the rest, as they say, is history!

To think Wal-Mart actually achieved something truly great! Accidentally, however, so let's not give them kudos for it!

And, naturally, we had to stop by "our cafe" ...

Our favourite food place.

... to see how "nervous break-down guy" is getting on. He's so sweet and too-gentle-for-this-world ... and since I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for finding me those Chinese-speaking Hungarians the night after I was strangled by that horrible man in Guangzhou and was suddenly and strangely overwhelmed with fear of being out alone in China after dark ... so we never go to Dafen without eating something at his place.

Also, this time David A. wanted to see "the engine room" of Dafen, so we wandered through all the back alleyways and watched artists at work in their cubicles ...

Artist at work in cubicle.

... where, away from the galleries, the prices instantly tumbled ...

Look at the prices on these jade carvings.
Astonished?
Probably reject pieces although
they looked fine to me.

... and Macy encountered her first male nude.

Taken aback although not affronted.
(Always wanted to say that!)

...and that's when my camera stopped working and I realised that a mean skunk-weasel had swopped my 8. memory card for their 2. and so I can't show you anything more ...

... which is a shame because, here in the back alleys, we saw something which I'd better not talk about since Venetian Casino in Macau may not like it - although most likely they won't care - and will just see it as a chance to not pay as much ...

... and then we checked out the new auction house that's just opened - with the intention of marketing original Dafen paintings, so you must support it - website above - and didn't rat on their "resident English-speaker" who goes by the proud name of Elementalisa who we quickly realised is, you know, kinda-faking her facility for languages but who is so sweet we pretended to understand her when the other folk were around.

And then, to end up the day, we checked out the latest work by a very talented original artist we've long liked but had reservations about ... "artist sublimating his serial killer desires" stuff ... and I just wish my 8. memory card hadn't been filched because I'd love to show you his latest work. Previously, aaahhhh! Although vastly talented and original, there was something so sick and deeply disturbing about his paintings, but this time there was baby-paraphernalia everywhere around his cubicle and he seemed deeply contented and his new work is just amazing. He's kept what made his old paintings so interesting but they no longer make your skin crawl. Maybe David A. will give me a couple of his photographs so you can see for yourself.

After that? It was dark so we stumbled up the hill back onto the killer-highway, and managed to hail a red taxi (N.B. they're the only ones allowed into Lowu, so you don't need to change later as you do if you get a cab of another colour) after only ten minutes. Amazing!

All this for no more than pocket change?
How can you stay away?

So, now you've seen it, you agree? One of the world's truly special places? An instant contender on your "1000 places to see before you die" list? Yes? Me? I truly love, love, love Dafen, but let's not tell Wal-Mart.

My Naughty Little Artist Friend - Dafen, China

OK, one story before I go for the day:

You remember the very first post I ever wrote about Dafen? When I told you about the naughty little naked toddler who I saw steal an artist's paints and smear them all over his hands and rub them all over bits of white paper? And then seriously looking at the results? Like, seriously looking, his little brain clearly ticking over, as though contemplating what he'd achieved. And how I predicted that one day this boy would grow up to be a real artist?

Well, over the years I've watched him grow up. And here he is yesterday with his big sister:

My naughty little artist friend,
his big sister and Yue Minjin

I took this Yue Minjin shot for revenge. See, the moment he saw me this visit, he squealed delightedly and gestured for me to hang around while he raced off. When he came back he had his camera and then he got right into my face and snapped away, getting me to pose looking through my fingers and grimacing hideously. Obviously he's thinking along the lines of some "Gruesome Gweilo" project of his own.

And then his big sister went through the photos and critiqued them for him, and he was clearly taking her comments very seriously. Obviously these two are a good team and she's going to feature very large in his future biographies.

Big sister critiquing the
deliberately hideous shots
he took of me!

He's going to be a serious artist one day! I'm telling you this now! I really should find out his name! Just so I can one day say "Told you so!"

Dafen Artists Village, Shenzhen, China

Will write about yesterday's jaunt through Dafen tomorrow, but, in the meanwhile, here is a photo essay about this gorgeous artists' village in Shenzhen in South China.

Entry road into Dafen

Oh, and if you're wondering why I've spelt it "Dafen" this time instead of "Darfan" as I usually do, that's because, when I first discovered the place, no one had yet heard about it nor written about it so the English spelling of the name wasn't yet formalised. Now it has been and everyone is now spelling it Dafen, even though it's more properly pronounced as "Darh-Fan".

This says it all!

But less writing, more viewing, yes: