Art on the move

798 Art Zone，situated  in the northeastern part of Beijing,also has another name called DAD－Dashanzi Art District with a size of about 0.6 million square meters.

In recent years, a dozen satellite artists' villages of smaller scale, have sprung up around the 798 Art Zone.However, Li Wenzi, a Beijing-based art dealer and frequent visitor to Yuanmingyuan in the 1990s, points out that these artists' villages are very different from the one that was in Yuanmingyuan. "From the very beginning, these other villages have been driven by money. The Yuanmingyuan Artists' Village was a haven for idealists, for troubled souls seeking freedom and peace," she says.

Many of the early occupants of the 798 Art Zone were art professors at the Central Academy of Fine Arts such as sculptors Li Xiangqun and Sui Jianguo and some already successful artists who had returned to Beijing from abroad such as musician Liu Sola and painter Huang Rui, Li says.

There is much concern now about the rampant urbanization and commercialization that is forcing artists to be on constant move. More and more disputes between landlords and artists have been reported in Beijing since 2005.

A growing number of artists, unable to afford sky-high rents, are moving farther away from the city center.

The entry of big galleries, boutiques and high-end restaurants are pricing out a growing number artists, who are struggling to achieve commercial success. Conflicts between real estate developers and artists' villages have been escalating over the past year.

But Yi Ling believes this is inevitable. "This is also happening in developed, industrialized nations. The only problem here is that it is happening too fast."