Beautiful Country by J.R. Thornton

category, the winner of which was a laundry shop with CLEENING SERVICE FOR CLOVES written in English below the Chinese sign. The silver medal in that category went to the restaurant whose motto was SMART NOSHERY MAKES YOU SLOBBER, and promised that their food was “guaranteed not to cause pregnancy.” The small jiaozi (dumpling) store around the corner from the language school that advertised FRAGRANT AND HOT M ARXISM lost out because of its lack of subtlety. Then there was the PROHIBITED ACTION category in which NO STRIDING narrowly lost out to DO DRUNKEN DRIVING. Honorable mentions in that category went to NO LOUDING, THE GRASS IS SMILING AT YOU—PLEASE DETOUR, and KEEP OFF THE LAKE .
    My favorite was the HEALTH & SAFETY category. BE CAREFUL OF CAUTION took the gold over PLEASE SLIP CAREFULLY , and a sign that clearly meant to say CLEANING IN PROCESS but instead read EXECUTION IN PROCESS . In the INDIVIDUAL FREESTYLE—a category for translations that didn’t fit into the other categories—a fire extinguisher labeled HAND GRENADE stormed away with the gold medal. It strikes me now that many of the Chinese I encountered that year were just like these translations. They forged ahead and didn’t let their lack of understanding or grammar worry them. They didn’t wait for conditions to be perfect. They just kept pushing forward.
    One of the first places in Beijing that Victoria took me was to her husband’s art studio. One Saturday morning, a couple weeks after I first arrived in Beijing, Victoria picked me up at the Zhangs’ and told me that she was taking me to a place called 798. As Driver Wu sped away from the Zhangs’, Victoria told me a little bit about where we were headed. She explained that about ten years ago a group of artists had taken over a number of abandoned military factories on the outskirts of the city and turned the spaces into studios. The area was now called Art Zone 798 or just Qi Jiu Ba (798) for short. The name came from Factory No. 798, one of the largest factory buildings in the complex.
    Art Zone 798 turned out to be a collection of cinder-blockbuildings organized along a grid. We pulled in and parked, and Victoria called to a man smoking a cigarette in front of one of the buildings. I assumed he must be her husband. He was quite small and looked to be in his early forties. He wore paint-spattered gray work pants and a hooded sweatshirt. He waved to Victoria and threw his cigarette on the ground and walked toward us.
    The man exchanged a few words with Victoria and then the two of them stopped talking and looked at me. Victoria laughed and slapped the man on the shoulder. She switched to English. “Well . . . say hello to Chase!” He spoke to me in Chinese, but I didn’t catch a word of what he said. “Ah!” Victoria said with mock severity. “ Yong Yingwen! Use English! His Chinese is not that good yet.” She smiled at me. “But he is practicing—right, Chase?”
    â€œHello. My name is Z,” he said. “Very pleased to meet you.”
    I extended my hand and shook his. “Z? Is that your real name?” I asked.
    He laughed. “It is not the name my mother gave me, no. But it is the name I used for art.” He shrugged. “So yes, you can call me Z.”
    â€œYour English is very good,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
    â€œI spent ten years studying and living in New York.” He lit another cigarette. “Want to see my studio?”
    As we followed Z, Victoria pointed to the cinder-block buildings. “This all used to be factories. To make guns.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” Victoria said. “Long time ago. Maybe more than forty years. Now it’s all artist studios here. And restaurants. All of them but they used to be factories for guns. That’s why it’scalled Factory 798. All factories that make weapons for the army are given