China's Modern Art Zone----798 Complex
 One such artist is Li Xiangqun, a professor from the
Fine Arts Academy of China's prestigious Tsinghua
University, and also the creator of the Guangan Deng Xiaoping sculpture. Li
said that the artists in "798" include those who once studied at domestic
well-known artistic colleges and universities, or who have studied abroad for
many years, noting there are also some artists from Germany, France, England,
Italy and so on. Li added that many of the artists are active characters in
their respective domains.
The 798 complex gathers multitudinous contemporary artistic sorts, including
design, publication, performance, and artist studios, as well as some
service-based businesses like luxury furniture, high-end fashion, and purveyors
of food and drink.
 Keeping in mind the prerequisite of preserving
the historical and cultural remains left in this place, inhabitants have re-made
the factory spaces, putting their own interpretation to the new architecture.
These spaces have become works of architecture, hovering somewhere between
the ties of history and the imperatives of development, between pragmatic
necessities and aesthetic diversions. In other words, the spaces enter into a
living dialogue with their old surroundings.
The livelihoods of those denizens are living proof of China's
economic reform, revealing a new connection between individual identity and
social and economic organization: between utopia and reality; between memory and
future.
The 798 complex represents the accumulation and maturation of youth culture
in this new era. The reshaping of 798 perfectly represents the coexistence of
avant-garde consciousness and traditional sentiment, the combination of
experimentation and social responsibility, the double-victory of spiritual
fulfillment and economic planning, and the interaction of the elite and the
masses.
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