Riding the 938 bus out of Beijing’s Guomao station, the Central Business District gradually dissolves on the hour-long journey east to Songzhuang, giving way to a landscape not unlike that found in hundreds of county-level towns across China. An artist community on the city’s periphery, Songzhuang was formed largely under the auspices of Li Xianting, one of China’s foremost
On a bamboo-covered mountaintop the mud-walled houses of Diaotan village are just barely visible through the thick fog that often shrouds this remote hamlet in China’s Zhejiang province. Worn but sturdy earthen walls still enclose the largest structure of Diaotan, the ancestral hall, or citang. Inside, a few lanterns and red couplets hang above a stone courtyard covered with