Five avant-garde patriots used a color palate primarily consisting of red to re-contextualize and reconfigure the visual meaning and texture of a memorial to Japanese settlers from World War II. The guerilla art collective set out from Beijing, and managed to avoid security guards with their paintbrushes, two buckets of red paint, and hammers (a simply bravura addition that should be included in every artist's studio), before reaching the memorial sitting in a country park in Heilongjiang province's Fangzheng county (方正县). By slathering red paint over the names of the deceased Japanese settlers carved in stone, the patriot-artists were referencing a dense hodgepodge of post-war art movements, including the great Neo-Dadaist Robert Raushcenberg's seminal work, 'Erased de Kooning Drawing' (1953), chaotic paint-over collaborations between Basquiat and Warhol, Japanese action painting, and even the graffiti culture that sprang from the Hip-Hop ethos of 1980's New York, a form rooted in rebelliousness that eventually turned into a general urban landscape white-noise that spread everywhere. more ›

Seen in the elevator of a building near Beijing's Renmin University: the handiwork of a math geek! Be honest now, how many of you will be able to navigate through this? more ›

Dinglespeaks writes:"H had told me how some Chinese people can be very destructive when they move out of an apartment. In her previous apartment the previous tenant had been pissed with the landlord and smeared paint all over the apartment in an effort to cost his landlord money. We think there’s a similar example of this kind of work on the entrance to an apartment complex on Huangpi Lu, there’s been paint smeared all over the complex entrance for over a month now, I’ve only just got round to taking a photo of it (I didn’t take photos but it continues down the inside of the lane). Haven’t got a clue what happened there, disgruntled employee/contractor?" more ›

Ever see the call girl on Maoming road and Huaihai road? No, we're not talking about prostitutes (though that's probably the place to find them, too): we're talking about the sculpture by Shanghai artist He Yong of a girl on the phone. You've probably passed by it a hundred times, like the rest of the quotidian copper statues around town, but as of yesterday, she's no more: someone ripped her arm off, cut her in two, and left her to lie in the street under a misty rain. more ›

A few months ago we stumbled upon some rather critical-of-the-politico graffiti at the crossing of Luban lu (鲁班路） and Quxi lu （瞿溪路）, in the Luwan District. When we returned this weekend, we found a harmonized wall. The only words now discernible was a half hidden: "Long live Chairman Mao". more ›

An anonymous driver slammed into the Adidas store on Huaihai Middle Road and Ruijin No.1 Road earlier this morning. Shop employees discovered an abandoned motor vehicle lying by the side of the store when they shuffled in at 7am. Thankfully, since the shop was not yet open, nobody was hurt, and while a side column and a billboard suffered some damage, none of the goods inside the store were broken or stolen. The driver, who sneakered off sometime after the accident, was no where to be found. What a heel. Source: Xinmin more ›