—By Wang Su

As society advances, our living standards continue to rise. While improved living standards are still connected to improvements in life’s material accumulation, some people have started to associate improved living standards with better health and increased spirituality.  Along this path towards alternative improved living standards is Hsu Hsiaoming, a well-known Taiwan film director, who initiated and created with his friends a community called Family de Cool (the “Family”) . 

Concept of Family

The concept of the Family was developed by a group of Taiwan compatriots. Hsu Hsiaoming, explains, “the Family members were all born and raised in Taiwan.  We later moved to Beijing to work and fell love with this city. Beijing is a very special place with diversified and wonderful culture.”

However, the swift development of the city in recent years concerns the members of the Family.  “Especially after Beijing won the 2008 bid for the 29th Olympic Games, its development accelerated and became economy-centered. This is not necessarily good for a city, as the focus on economy could cause the city to ignore its development in other aspects.”  Hsu says, “maybe we cannot change the situation, but we should not stop trying.” In 2004, he and his friends as well as a European public interest fund organized a forum on sustainable development at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing. Academics, entrepreneurs and the officials of Division of Sustainable Development of United Nation Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the PRC State Administration of Environmental Protection  were invited to the forum. CNEX, Hsu’s film studio, produced a documentary of the event. Hsu believes that it is a meaningful way to record the development of China and “it will be more meaningful if more people work together on this.”

 “The idea of the Family is to maintain and develop small community values. We hope to make Beijing a conglomeration of small communities. Better small communities help to build larger harmonious communities and a stronger country. The Family members live in a conceptual space and engage in spiritual efforts to improve their and their community members’ lives. We provide an alternative way of living.”

A Cultural Incubation Center

Ideally, a spiritual Eden like the Family should be located at a special venue. Hsu and his friends had been searching for such a place. In their mind, “this place should be old and have witnessed the history of Beijing.” While they found an old factory with a distinguished appearance in the outskirts of Beijing that might have provided an appropriate space for the Family offices and weekend getaways, Hsu and his friends were not 100% satisfied with the space. After visiting Image Base Beijing, where the photography studio of the Family member Chen Fu-tang is located, Hsu and his friends knew they had found their Family home.

Image Base Beijing provides the Family certain attractive features. “This place is quite close to the city and only 10 minutes drive from the CBD area. The buildings here were warehouses for cotton and hemp, so they are clean and without any pollution. These advantages made us fall in love with Image Base Beijing at first sight,” Hsu jokes. What impressed Hsu and his friends the most was the story behind those warehouses. The red brick building in front of the Family complex was a platform, where cotton and hemp transported by train were loaded and unloaded since the Qing Dynasty. It’s a pity that the platform is completely gone. Hsu and his friends have communicated with the property owner about a good way to exhibit the historic relics in Image Base Beijing and to help visitors learn about its past.

To establish a community that functions properly, the Family also needs the right members in addition to the right location. “For the purpose of function, we hope the family members have their own specialty and can help other members with their professional knowledge. And on a spiritual level, we need to find those who share the same ideas with us. At the beginning, the Family had only four members — a movie director, a photographer, a public interest foundation and an entrepreneur. Later, Dandeli Gallery, the Fooding Kitchen (Italian restaurant and bar), and Wonder Milk (organic food producer) joined us. Now, we are a family of seven.”

As for the future of the Family, Hsu has high expectations. According to him, “the Family will develop its unique culture and charisma and gradually evolve into a cultural incubation center.” This ambition can certainly be seen in the Family’s event schedule. CNEX plans to show documentaries once or twice a week and invite international professionals to make presentations of images and movies once a month. Dandeli also hopes to schedule a feature event or art exhibition every month. “People need to be educated to appreciate arts. In the Family, we can help each other on this,” Hsu adds.

A Utopia of Arts

As a cultural incubation center, the Family also hopes to help the artists who experienced mental trauma and lost their creativity to recover.

Hsu Hsiaoming has been working as a director in low-budget movies for 20 years and knows well how much difficulty artists face on their path of artistic pilgrimage.  Different from commercial films, low-budget movies are a challenge for the patience and sensibility of the director and are more time consuming. “Although Chinese directors are making progress rapidly and embracing success, they probably can do more.” Hsu says, “Maybe I could do something for the young Chinese directors. I can help them enjoy what they do and get more mature by setting them free from their concern about the box office.”

According to Xu, success can make artists lose their direction quickly and he has seen this happen with many people. Hsu also lost himself and his ability to listen to anyone when he was young. Success brought him over-confidence that closed his ears to advice. “This kind of mindset is quite dangerous. However, this is a process everyone must experience. Those who are lost need guidance to cool down their inflated ego. This is also what I plan to do,” Hsu adds.

However, success is not the only roadblock for artists. Commercial pressure can also break their wings.
 
“Business is brutal, because profits are the only benchmark. If you cannot make money, then you are out of the game. But creating art is a journey for one’s heart and soul. If artists are not given the time to complete this process, they can create nothing,” Hsu points out.

Hsu knows a very talented graduate of Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts. The young man became a professional artist in Beijing shortly upon his graduation. But he was unable to fit into his new role in such a short time and could not create any artwork for two years. Sadly, in the end, this artist had no choice but to go home and make a living by working for his father.

 “We are lucky to have such a good neighbor as Dandeli,” Hsu smiles, “A gallery can provide a relaxed environment for traumatic artists to recover and regain their sensibility to and creativity. Urban development is not a bad thing, but probably is achieved at the cost of the slow-down of the development of many things including culture and arts. A city cannot stay alive without arts and culture, which are the spirit of a city.”

A small community may appear insignificant, yet many of mankind’s great achievements developed from a small dream. No matter as a cradle of culture or as a paradise of arts, the Family provides an alternative style of life — a style of better living.

* Wang Su is an exhibition coordinator of Dandeli Gallery.