In China, to live a better life, you have to be better-off.
Is there another way?
Tang Guanhua, contemporary artist, believes so.
He took the road less travelled by. And that has made all the difference.
In 2011, Tang closed his profit making design company and founded the "China Self-sufficient Laboratory" in the rural outskirt of Qingdao. For 5 years, Tang and his wife had tried to survive by their own wiles, producing everything from shoes to electricity, giving up prestige job and. The experience strengthened his belief that the more one relies on money, the less independent thinking they can have.
Now he goes a step further.
He strives to build a utopia - or in his words, an Intentional Community, the first of its kind in China. On a rural farmland in Fuzhou, Tang and his followers pursued their dream. Having the same visions and values, they want to form a self-sufficient community, sharing skills and talents. It should be environmentally sustainable and it should have its own social structure, education and welfare system. Decisions are to make through deliberation.
While cities in China are crippled by smog, mercenaries and wealth gaps, is such community an alternative for our future generations?
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