China, People's Republic of Desire: an exhibition co-sponsored by Ahlers /07 Mar 2007/

China revisited : twenty years after having studied in China, Catherine Vuylsteke, a Sinologist and journalist at the newspaper De Morgen wanted to show a different China than the country usually pictured in the media. Accompanied by 3 photographers, Tim Dirven, Dieter Telemans and Jimmy Kets she returned and went looking for Li Doe, the people she has learned to appreciate during her almost yearly visits to China rather than picturing a consuming society and investment opportunities.

Their journey brought them to large cities in the east, rural areas and towns in the much poorer west; they talked to all kinds of men and women, homosexuals, prostitutes, people who had been forced by China’s hunger for transformation to leave their homes in the cities and move to the suburbs, former drug addicts, nannies or maids working hard day and night for rich families.

The pictures show a country characterized by a frantic transformation and yet, not fully corresponding to the hype of a coming world power as business and political leaders would want us to believe. China is struggling, torn between an ever growing welfare gap separating urban from rural areas.
China is under the spell of blind desire, the longing for a better life, a better education for the future generations, a place of their own, a fortune.

The Chinese Pavilion belongs to our national heritage and is an oriental treasure where east meets west, hidden in Brussels’ outskirts.

Ahlers Belgium is co-sponsor of the exhibition and will organize an event at the Chinese Pavilion for international forwarding and Asia-related customers and contacts.

More info: www.kmkg-mrah.be

Chinese Pavilion
Van Praetlaan 44
1020 Brussels/Laken.

Open:
Tuesday - Friday: 9.30-17.00 hrs
Saturday & Sunday: 10.00 - 17.00 hrs