中國的灰牆：中國官員正在培養本土化的塗鴉景觀

原文：The grey walls of China: Chinese officials help to cultivate a local graffiti scene

In the mid­-1990s outlines of bulbous heads, spray­-painted with a single swipe, began to appear on Beijing’s walls. Next to them was written “ak­47”. This tag, as graf­fitied signatures are known, belonged to Zhang Dali, an art student who had spent time in Italy and discovered graffiti culture there. On his return to China, swathes of its cities were being razed to make way for de­velopment. Workers were daubing the character chai, meaning “demolish”, on buildings due to be torn down. Mr Zhang took his cans to the same walls in protest at this often brutal upheaval.

上世紀 90 年代中期，一個個用噴漆輕輕一掃、塗描出的「大腦袋」開始出現在北京的各種牆上，旁邊寫着「ak47」。這個符號是張大力塗鴉所用的簽名。他是一位曾在意大利接觸到塗鴉文化的藝術專業學生。當他從意大利回國的時候，急速發展的城市正在進行大規模拆遷。工人們正把大大的「拆」字畫在即將被夷平的房屋牆面上。張大力則將他噴罐中的塗漆射向同樣的牆壁，以抗議這種粗暴的改變。

Mr Zhang is widely regarded as China’s first modern graffiti artist. More recent ones are influenced by skateboarding cul­ture or rap music. The art form is still in its infancy in China—it is far less commonly seen than in the West. But Liu Yuansheng, co­author of “Beijing Graffiti”, published in 2020, reckons the number of practitioners in the capital has at times swelled to 200.

張大力被看作是中國第一個現代塗鴉藝術家。近些年的塗鴉藝術家則更多受到滑板文化或說唱音樂的影響。這種藝術形式在中國仍處於發展初期——比起西方，塗鴉在中國少見得多。不過劉苑生估算出北京的塗鴉畫家已增至 200 人。他是出版於 2020 年的攝影畫冊《北京塗鴉》的合著者。

Cities are riddled with cctv cameras and teeming with law­-enforcement offi­cers. But it is not the threat of punishment that deters people from becoming graffiti artists. Doodlers rarely face more than a fine of 500 yuan ($80) and a day in police custody. Those caught tagging often get away with a promise to paint over their work. Sometimes the public defends such art. Residents in the central city of Wuhan called on officers to remove advertise­ments that had been pasted over a work by Rui Huang, a local artist. They felt that the ads had defaced his graffiti.

中國的城市裏充斥着監控攝像頭和執法人員。但阻止人們成爲塗鴉藝術家的並不是對被懲罰的恐懼。這些塗鴉畫家很少面臨超過 500 元的罰款和超過一天的拘留。那些因爲塗鴉被逮到的人通常只要承諾把自己的作品塗抹掉，便不會遭受其他懲罰。有時候一些民衆也會保衛這種藝術。武漢城中心的居民就呼籲政府移除掉那些粘貼在當地藝術家黃睿塗鴉作品上的廣告。他們覺得這些「牛皮癬」破壞了他的塗鴉。

It may simply be that few people even consider spraying walls without permission. There is no tradition of guerrilla art used by criminal gangs to mark their terri­tory or by protesters to attack the govern­ment. Mr Zhang’s poke at developers was a rare kind of dissent. The ruins gave him cover—officials turned a blind eye, know­ing his works would soon be bulldozed.

真正的原因僅僅是：很少有人會在沒有官方允許的情況下在牆上塗鴉。在中國，並沒有將這種草根藝術用於黑社會標記領地或抗議政府的傳統。張大力對開發商的嘲弄已經是一種少見的異議。這些殘垣斷壁給了他一種保護——政府知道他的作品不久就會被推土機剷平，故而對其睜一隻眼閉一隻眼。

China does have a history of using walls to express dissent in written form, how­ever. A famous example occurred during the Democracy Wall movement of 1978­-79 when people flocked to the brick wall of a bus station in Beijing to put up “big­-character posters” demanding greater political freedom. A constitutional right to put up such posters was scrapped in 1980. These days mural self­-expression rarely goes beyond unauthorised “throwies”, or two­ tone tags in bubble­-like writing, which can be seen on walls in Beijing.

無論如何，中國的確也有通過在牆上寫字來表達異議的歷史。一個著名的例子發生在 1978 - 1979 年間的民主牆運動，當時人們成羣結隊地來到一處公交站的磚牆前，貼上大字報來爭取更多的政治自由。1980 年，張貼大字報的公民權利被廢除了。如今，這些牆上的自我表達大都是經過官方批准的「throwies」（一種塗鴉風格）或雙色氣泡狀文字，正如我們常在北京牆壁上所見的那樣。

Local governments sometimes even sponsor street art, regarding it as a sign of modernisation. In the run­-up to the Olym­pic games that were held in Beijing in 2008, officials in the capital encouraged artists to paint a 300­-metre­-long “graffiti wall”. Designs were vetted first. A street in the south­western city of Chongqing is home to one of the world’s largest graffiti projects (pictured). It was created, with of­ficial approval, by 800 painters. This year Wuhan paid local crews to draw graffiti on a tram and several public buses.

地方政府有時甚至會資助街頭藝術，並將其看作是現代化的標誌。在 08 北京奧運舉辦的前夕，首都的官員鼓勵藝術家們畫了一堵長達 300 米的「塗鴉牆」。當然事先要對設計進行審查。重慶的一條街上擁有世界上最大的塗鴉之一。在官方的許可下，有 800 位塗鴉畫家參與進來。今年，武漢政府花錢請了當地的畫家在一輛有軌電車和一些公交上進行塗鴉。

There are others, however, who barely qualify as artists who scribble on walls. A Chinese citizen in Sydney, who goes by the name Lil Quacky, collects graffiti in an In­stagram account called “chinesegraffiti­ hub” (the app is blocked in China). Quacky began the project last year after noticing that someone had rewritten a roadside slo­gan in China that had urged people to carry away their rubbish. It had been changed to “Carry away your love.” Most graffiti submitted to Quacky consists of untidy spray­ painted sentences. “Are they enough to shock passers­-by, to make them think, to make them stay for a while?” are Quacky’s criteria for posting them online. Hundreds of examples have passed the test.

還有一些在牆上隨意寫字的人，嚴格來說算不上藝術家。Lil Quacky 是一位在悉尼的中國人，他創建了一個用於收集塗鴉的 Instagram 的賬號：「chinesegraffiti hub」。Quacky 去年留意到在中國有人重寫了路邊敦促人們帶走垃圾的標語，將其改成了「帶走你的愛」。他受此啓發，開始了運營起這個賬號。許多提交給 Quacky 的塗鴉都包含一些塗繪得頗爲粗糙的句子。「塗鴉能否足夠打動路人，促使他們思考，並讓他們停留一會兒？」這是 Quacky 決定是否要將其發佈到網上的標準。已經有數百個塗鴉通過了他的篩選。