travel: 798 Art Zone, beijing (china)

This past winter break, I visited Beijing for a couple days with my Dad, and I spent a Monday around the city with one of my dad’s students. Since it was a Monday, most places (like museums) were closed, so we decided to go visit one of the few places open, the 798 Art Zone.

798 Art Zone is located at a defunct military factory in Beijing, and the buildings each have a very unique architectural style reminiscent of both the time in which the military factory was still in use and more modern elements. There are a bunch of buildings, each of which house their own art pieces. One of the buildings we went into housed a 3D art gallery, in which the paintings are made to look 3-D when you take a photo with it. This highly interactive gallery definitely makes for some cool Instagram photos, since you’ll find yourself in the middle of the Frozen or Ice Age movies or playing chess with a figure from a medieval painting.

The second gallery we visited had many beautiful pieces created by art students who worked there. This was showcased a number of wood sculptures combining both traditional and modern Asian elements, creating very unique pieces that I thoroughly enjoyed looking at. Again, since it was a Monday, a few of the buildings inside were also closed, but I would definitely recommend spending a day here when the whole complex is open to take a look at the future of Chinese art, built upon the thousands of years of preexisting Chinese art.

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