China's peasant da Vincis - amazing men and their flying, sailing and sinking machines
A curious collection of inventions has been assembled by New York-based Cai Guoqiang, writes Fionnuala McHugh, and is now on display in Milan.
In the winter of 2004, Cai Guoqiang saw a photo of a submarine, made out of scrap metal and shaped like a fish, that had been built by a peasant (the artist's word) in landlocked Hubei province.
Cai, who was born in Fujian province in 1957, is one of China's most successful contemporary artists. He's probably most famous for his fascination with gunpowder; his "explosion events" have taken place worldwide. He has a particular eye for communal spectacle and, in 2008, he was director of visual and special effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. He has lived in New York since 1995. For a man who loves to test himself publicly by inventing difficult but fleetingly beautiful urban effects, the city is a good match.
Still, he yearns to stay close to what remains of China's rural heart. When he saw that photo of the submarine he contacted its creator, Li Yuming, and the pair met during the following Lunar New Year. Cai had already heard about such men - always men - who toiled over unlikely inventions in China's impoverished villages to little public acclaim. In Li's case, there had been problems with actually testing the submarine's underwater abilities and, eventually, local officials had instructed him not to continue. (He might, they worried, obstruct the flow of the river.)
Cai admits that his initial interest was prompted by amusement. But when he saw the submarine, named Twilight No1, he decided to buy it. He didn't know then that it would be the first component in a strange menagerie of the imagination he would source across China: wooden aeroplanes, spindly helicopters, robots, flying saucers, an aircraft carrier …
That last item was created by Tao Xiangli, another submarine inventor, who lives in Anhui, another landlocked province. Not having sufficient space at home, Tao was obliged to park his first submarine, concocted out of oil barrels and a wok, in a nearby reservoir, where it froze into the ice. When Cai came to visit and suggested that Tao might like to design an aircraft carrier, the latter agreed that China could certainly do with one. (This was before the People's Liberation Army unveiled the Liaoning, in 2012.)