From CNNGo:
Gao Huijun is a Chinese oil painter who lives in Song Zhuang, an art village on the outskirts of Beijing. He has a big house behind a tall, brick wall with a red gate. Parked in front is his shiny black Cadillac, which he drives down the street to the private studio he owns. To those who visit him, Gao serves expensive Chinese tea and chocolates purchased when he’s in Europe, which is twice a year.
Life was not always like this for Gao, one of the first artists to move to the village in the mid-1990s after the government relocated them from their neighborhoods in Beijing to make room for new development projects. Looking for a new place to work, the bohemians chose to move to a rural, agricultural village that would be, at least moderately, off the radar screen of the state.
On the mantel above Gao’s fireplace is a photo of him standing in a garden with tall flowers in front of the house he rented from local farmers. Life was rough back then. They were poor. But he says the artists were happy because there, amidst the farmers and the fields, they could focus solely on their work.
