Modern Art in Nanjing

A last glimpse of Nanjing.

While Pauli and Noam have a mid-day nap, me and Lili go visit the Museum that is just adjacent to our hotel. (Poor Pauli who is feeling sick.)

It is raining outside, the traffic of the city, and its scale are preventing us to attempt any visit to other venues. 

As we approach the building, the exterior, with its typical pagoda look, leaves me expecting some old Ming Dynasty artefact, at best some relics of a more recent era. Its roof is covered in moss, it is a bit sad looking under the wet and grey polluted sky of Nanjing.  This used to be known as the National Central Museum under the KMT (before the Communists), and now it is one of the leading museums of China.

De touristic nanjing

I am the first one surprised: it is an exhibition of Modern Art. A group of students from the University have taken over the whole building and set up their art installations. 

It is hilarious to see how much Lili is perplexed by some of these strange contraptions. She goes around them and keeps repeating: "I don't understand?!"... I really like her naive and fresh way of looking at things, not just art. She is not wearing the mask some other of her compatriots are wearing. This is why I like her so much.

De touristic nanjing

De touristic nanjing

So I try to explain to her Modern Art in a quick visit. Not sure she understood it all, but it was certainly fun to go around the installations and try to answer her questions! She was obviously not the only one to be puzzled by the exhibition. An old couple, from an other era, still wearing the cotton flat shoes, was bent over backward trying to understand what was making a immense black rubber bladder breathe! Too bad I was not fast enough with my camera!

These are the small moments of this adventure that I like the most.