Beijing's Original T-shirt Brand

About one year ago my eldest daughter Prudence (wang Tian Tian) gave me the idea to create some stain glass images for the shop. I had 4 artists work on 4 different Chinese leaders and the graphic results were stunning. Now finally I have all 4 as glass windows. They arrived all the way from JiangXu province this week and put a big smile on my face. Here are pictures took of all 4 windows today in my courtyard and Deng xiao Ping in the shop. I will be selling limited editions of these windows at the Affordable Art Fair Beijing in San Li Tun village on April 24th and 25th.
For more info on the Affordable Art fair please go to this link.
http://www.affordableartchina.com/
Hope to see you there!

I first came to know Gu Lou when I enjoyed my first game of snooker in Beijing in 1993, an old Beijing mate took me up this old building to the 3rd floor and we played snooker and drunk beer all day, I used to call that building the “snooker building”. Years later the 3rd floor became a museum and I discovered the amazing history behind what i thought was “the snooker building” or Gu Lou.
The two towers and the surrounding area is probably one of my favourite areas in Beijing and it seems its all about to change. For the better or for the worse no one really knows just yet but one thing is for sure a lot of money is going to be spent to try to improve it.
I feel quite honoured to be invited along to a gathering organised by the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (CHP) to talk about my experience with building Nan Luo Gu Xiang and what we can learn from that. Its always a tricky subject hu tong preservation, I have lived in hu tongs for nearly 12 years, 7 of those on Nan Luo Gu Xiang. The hu tongs feel like the soul of the city, where all the history is, you can only hope the hu tongs continue to thrive in a positive way to inspire the next generation of Beijingers.
So if you are free come along to show you care.
 
Date: Saturday 27 March, 2010
Time: 2.30-5.30pm
Venue: Contempio No.4 Zhangwang Hutong

This week I got to give a talk on creative entrepreneurship to the university of southern California. A group of 40+ students who were all super excited about being in Beijing and meeting business and creative types. My talk went really well and they really enjoyed listening to one foreigners perspective on how to do business in Beijing.
Today the whole group descended on my store on nan Luo Gu Xiang, they all bought up tones of t shirts which was nice and then I took them down into the tunnels underneath Beijing near my home on Nan Luo Gu Xiang, its a bit of a secrete place and its about to be destroyed so it was a big thrill for me and them. I wish i had been smart enough to go to University, they were such a nice bunch of people.

We are proud to announce that Plastered products will be on sale at the South By Southwest music festival in the USA this March. South by Southwest is one of the largest music festivals in the world and this year the Chinese rock scene will have its own stage! Plastered sponsored bands such as Carsick Cars and P.K.14 will be their as well as other great bands from China.
We recently sent a few boxes of products to go along with the Maybe Mars bands on their recent tour of the USA including the famous Glasslands club in New York. We sold everything we sent and got tones of emails and orders online from fans who had seen Plastered at the different venues. This time we are sending over loads of Plastered product and we are looking forward to getting more great responses from the USA. We also have new PK.14 and Carsick Cars T-shirts coming out this spring along with our new collection of products and soon to be newly renovated stores.
For more info on the South By Southwest festival go to http://sxsw.com/.

As a child I had to go to church every morning at school, it was a time to reflect and space out and think of things that I wanted to do with my life other than sit in a boring church. It was in church that I hatched many of my plans to go travelling, climb mountains, ride motorbikes and look for a life of liberty. If i wasn’t staring at the floor then i was starring at the colourful windows. So as today is Lei Feng day I thought it appropriate to stick up a piece of art work I worked on with a Chinese artist Lu Yang. Its Lei Feng in the style of a church window. I’ve actually had this made into a stain glass window down in Jiang Xu province and it wasn’t cheap, all made by hand by skillful stain glass makers. It should be arriving at my home in about 10 days. My lovely wife laura has got a bit fed up with all my pieces of art work at home so I agreed to sell them at the affordable art fair coming up in Beijing this May. As part of this collection I also have Mao Ze Dong, Deng Xiao Ping and Zhou En Lai. I’m very proud of them, I got 4 different artists to work on them and the results I think are beautiful.

I’m feeling British today! Which is strange because after spending half of my life here in Beijing I sometimes forget where I’m from. The reason I’m feeling more British than usual is because of the chap in this photo, the new British Ambassador to China, Sebastian Wood CMG. A couple of weeks ago I was invited to attend a function at the British Embassy to meet the new Ambassador, and that I did: a really nice bloke. We talked very briefly, I gave him my card, and then invited him round to my humble home for a cup of tea. What I didn’t expect was for him to actually give me a ring and come over on his bicycle over Chinese New Year and visit our rather chaotic home on Nanluoguxiang. We spent a great afternoon with Ambassador Wood in the hutongs, where we live. Royal Britannia!

Sun Zi and the artof War Reality TV program
 
Last summer I spent 3 weeks being filmed by BBC reality TV crew who were filming a show called Sun Zi Art the of War. Its a 13 part series and in each program they film 13 businesses around the world and then break down those businesses and call in celebrity CEOs and give you a challenge and advice on how to improve your business using the principles of Sun Zi, that famous Chinese book. It was pretty stressful but all in all quite good fun. The host James Sun was a runner up in the reality TV show The Apprentice in the USA and a very nice guy. It starts airing in Singapore this month and here is a trailer for the program which I am quite heavily featured in. My challenge was to hold a big event to show off my brand which was our Plastered Rock Weekend last year in which we attracted over 1000 people to, a big success that helped us drum up new customers and attract a lot of media attention. Once I get my hands on the DVD of my episode I will stick it online for those of you who might want to see.

Here is link to trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwNdwpvjs0c

For those of you without access to youtube in China will post a youku link soon.

The glorious set of stain glass icons is nearly finished, here is the last member to the team of 4. Zhou En Lai, designed by French/Chinese artist Tian Tian I can’t wait for this one to be made into a glass window. The stain glass makers are all the way down in Jiang Xu province so it’s another 3 weeks till I get my hands on him. I will be showing off all these stain glass windows in April so keep an eye on this blog for when and where.

I have had Jimmy Page in the shop on Nan Luo Gu Xiang before during the Olympics but I had never met him, I’ve also got a previous blog of him wearing a Plastered T-shirt. Yesterday as I walked past the shop I saw him in there again buying more Plastered gear, notably one of our blue zip up tops, he was later spotted at passby bar wearing it! I got to have a short chat with him after stupidly calling him Mr.Plant (i didn’t sleep well last night) and he’s a really nice guy. Anyway here is pic of me and Jimmy in the shop yesterday.