About: Beijing East Village

The Beijing East Village (Chinese: 北京东村; pinyin: Běijīng Dōng Cūn) was an avant-garde artistic community of the early 1990s located in the eastern part of Beijing, just past the Third Ring Road on what was then the city's margins. It was formed in 1993 when a group of like-minded artists took up residence together in a "village" of low-quality migrant worker housing, fixing at the entrance a handwritten sign. Their community's name was inspired by the East Village of Manhattan, with which they felt an affinity in their experimental aesthetics. Only the year after its founding, following the arrest of Ma Liuming for cooking naked in a courtyard, the community was closed by the police, though former residents continued to collaborate.