Jingmilu: Beijing's graffiti gallery

Most metropolitan cities throughout the world have at least one wall that represents its graffiti talent. For Beijing, it’s a long concrete wall along the Jingmilu highway, just around the corner from the 798 arts district.

Although the graffiti wall wasn’t Beijing’s first public graffiti space, it has over the past three years become the most well-known in the city and abroad.

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The graffiti at Jingmilu covers a wall that was once dirty and drab. A few years ago it was an area people hardly noticed, and now it is a colorful showcase of art as a result of graffiti writers from all over China and the world coming here to paint.

The wall’s transition has made this part of Jingmilu engaging and also lucrative for the city as commercial and film productions have used the wall as a background for filming.

The graffiti here has had the kind of positive influence many people in other countries feel the art form is incapable of having. It is this aspect alone that makes the Jing Mi Lu graffiti wall an innovative concept, and its something graffiti critics choose to ignore.

Graffiti does not always make a city look worse; in fact it has the potential to make it look better.

China Daily caught up with two Beijing graffiti writers, Biskit and ANDC, to hear what they had so to say about graffiti and the Jing Mi Lu wall. China Daily also met with German art critic Norbert Kirbach, who has written about the development of graffiti in China since 2006.

Reporters: Hu Zhe and Lance Crayon

Videographer & editor: Lance Crayon

Voice over: Lance Crayon

Subtitiles: Hu Zhe