Our last day in Beijing was the day of my first encounter with the magic number of Chinese contemporary art. 798 Art District is the happening venue of Chinese art. With only a piece of paper scribled of the address and my limited Mandarin, we arrived at a cold mid day. The cold seeped through our thin jackets and the luggage that we carried did not help us to warm our shivering bodies.

The site was built as a complex of factories during the fifties and designed by engineers …