Tianzifang

This guide to Tianzifang in Shanghai follows the painter Chen Yifei, who in 1998 moved into two derelict sheds in a dying wet market lane behind the old shikumen houses of the French Concession and turned them into studios, drawing artists from as many as ten countries. It traces the wrought Gate of Art he built at the lane's entrance and the demolition orders that arrived the year after his sudden death in 2005. Start at that archway as you listen, where the ordinary street ends and his invented world begins.