{"id":171745,"date":"2014-04-22T12:10:08","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T19:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=171745"},"modified":"2014-04-22T12:10:08","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T19:10:08","slug":"beijings-thriving-graffiti-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/04\/beijings-thriving-graffiti-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Documentary Explores Beijing&#8217;s Graffiti Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a title=\" Beijing's thriving graffiti culture may surprise you\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pri.org\/stories\/2014-04-21\/beijings-thriving-graffiti-culture-may-surprise-you\">Texan Lance Crayon, in China since 2009, has produced a documentary film exploring the tiny street art scene in China<\/a><\/strong>, where graffiti is surprisingly &#8220;safe&#8221; and &#8220;open.&#8221; \u00a0Aly Thibault at PRI&#8217;s The World reports:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00a0&#8220;It&#8217;s really a middle class and up endeavor, simply based on the money factor,&#8221; he says, &#8220;For a 19-year-old or even a 25-year-old to have something known as disposable income, that&#8217;s a pretty new thing in China. And you&#8217;ve got to ask yourself, do I want to spend 500 ku\u00e0i \u2014 which is roughly $82 \u2014 on throwing up a piece that could easily be covered in a few days, or at some point.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This leaves Beijing with only a small number of graffiti artists \u2014 no more than 25 by Crayon&#8217;s estimate.<\/p>\n<p>For his film &#8220;Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China,&#8221; Crayon interviewed several graffiti artists about their work and lifestlye and even filmed them while they tag. He says taggers in Beijing often work in broad daylight and don&#8217;t usually run into any trouble with police.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As long as you stay away from anything political or anything too sensitive, from painting on temples or anything sacred and government buildings, things like that, you&#8217;re not going to have a problem,&#8221; Crayon says. &#8220;And that&#8217;s what they do. I mean there is so much concrete in Beijing, that when these guys paint on walls that aren&#8217;t designated by the government, the citizens think they are making this city look prettier \u2014 and indeed they are.&#8221; [<strong><a title=\" Beijing's thriving graffiti culture may surprise you\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pri.org\/stories\/2014-04-21\/beijings-thriving-graffiti-culture-may-surprise-you\">Source<\/a><\/strong>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kMfSjagb36s[\/youtube]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Texan Lance Crayon, in China since 2009, has produced a documentary film exploring the tiny street art scene in China, where graffiti is surprisingly &#8220;safe&#8221; and &#8220;open.&#8221; \u00a0Aly Thibault at PRI&#8217;s The World reports: \u00a0&#8220;It&#8217;s really a middle class and up endeavor, simply based on the money factor,&#8221; he says, &#8220;For a 19-year-old or even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1022,"featured_media":171749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[116,20,14744,14745,14746,100],"tags":[1231,6662,3920,14270],"class_list":["post-171745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-culture","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","tag-artists","tag-beijing-street-life","tag-graffiti","tag-street-art","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.9 (Yoast SEO v23.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Documentary Explores Beijing&#039;s Graffiti Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2014\/04\/beijings-thriving-graffiti-culture\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Documentary Explores Beijing&#039;s Graffiti Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Texan Lance Crayon, in China since 2009, has produced a documentary film exploring the tiny street art scene in China, where graffiti is surprisingly &#8220;safe&#8221; 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