Interview by Andrew Thompson
From the Caracas left to the Beijing boom: Victor Ochoa has crossed and re-crossed continents, business activities, and cultures. The son of a Venezuelan Maoist who left the country on the run in the late 1960s, he remembers a year spent in the swinging London of Carnaby street and The Beatles (“it seemed like the epicentre of the world”) before the family moved to the stark contrast of Mao’s China, then beginning the massive upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. His father was an official guest of the revolution, a “foreign specialist” working for Xinhua, the official news agency. This was a key period for the young Victor, because he began to learn Mandarin Chinese, laying the basis for a very special insight into the country’s culture. But there was much criss-crossing yet to come. When Rafael Caldera won the Venezuelan Presidency and began the pacification policy designed to bring the guerrillas back into peaceful politics, the family returned to Caracas.
Having dabbled with the idea of becoming an oceanographer, Víctor enrolled instead to study architecture at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, doing two years of the course under Professor Jesús Tenreiro-Degwitz. But he had itchy feet (“I was 21 and wanted to liberate myself” he says), and was soon applying for a scholarship to go back to China. This was awkward, as the Chinese authorities didn’t particularly want foreign architecture students, but in the end they relented, allowing him back in, to perfect his language skills and to enrol at Tsinghua University. “I was able to pick up Chinese again quite easily because I remembered the words of all the revolutionary songs praising Mao” he says. He was back in another year of upheaval - 1976 - marked by Mao’s death and the beginning of the struggle against the “gang of four”. The 1976 Chinese university enrolment were the first in many years who actually took exams to get in: before, only the selected children of “workers, peasants and soldiers” were allowed into higher education. What that meant, says Victor, is that a lot of it was down to guangxi - who you know - or to put it in more familiar language - palanca política. Now, he is philosophical - he notes that some of his fellow students of humble origins have worked hard and made good - one is a ministry director - while he knows of others who never put their university years to use and are probably washing plates somewhere.
The conversation takes a sudden turn into the shape of today’s Beijing. “What you have to realise” says Víctor, “is that Tianamen Square was deliberately created as a space for massive political demonstrations, Workers day on the 1st of May and Revolution day on the 1st of October”. To achieve this everything in the way - in one of the most historically rich cities in the world - was destroyed. The Maoists deliberately pulled down the walls around the traditional city, walls which had been in place for centuries. They also built ten massive Soviet-style new buildings (including the Peoples’ Congress), to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Revolution in 1959. “It was an act of sheer architectural vandalism, to create that massive square without any trees at all, right beside the Forbidden City” Victor says, “all undertaken as a symbol of a new beginning for the Chinese people”. Yet he also points out that most of China’s dynasties have done just that - started out by ripping out the symbols of the previous regime. So in some ways the Maoists were themselves following a long tradition.
After graduating there was another return to Venezuela, looking at ways of bringing Chinese design ideas to his home country, and yet another trip out to China, working for China Film, and then using his inside take on Chinese society to become one of the early foreign bank representatives, signing a two year contract to represent Banco Exterior de España. Those two years turned into 14, representing the bank as it metamorphosed into Argentaria (“because that is a difficult name to translate into Mandarin, many Chinese were convinced I represented an Argentine bank”) and then finally into BBVA. At the end of that process, as part of a managerial restructuring, Víctor left with a generous package, which he invested back into his architectural passion, setting up a small design house with Chinese partners - some friends from his university days, and one an old Red Guard leader. One of the things he did was invite his younger brother Antonio, who had just graduated as an architect in Venezuela, to come and join them.
Víctor says that “until 1985 the party line was pretty deadly for architecture in general”. Few architects were trained, there was a war economy, the same basic and badly-designed buildings were reproduced many times over, in slab after pre-fabricated slab. Architecture was seen as being about square metres, bricks, and mortar, mathematics. Víctor, who as a student used to wander around the Summer Palace meditating on shape and form, argues Latin-style that architecture is also about psychology, culture, and the soul. “They saw me as different” he laughs, “maybe someone to be tolerated”. From the mid 1980s onward, the economic boom has opened things up, and the environment has become more receptive to Víctor’s ideas, but there are new and old problems. Now there is a tendency to go for massive prestige buildings. “The developer doesn’t give you a free hand - he tells you what to do , and he usually wants a gold and glass tower, he wants it to look expensive. Or a big international design house is brought in, without developing local talent”. An oddity in Beijing’s booming skyline is that many of the big towers are much “thicker” than their equivalents in New York - they have a lot more floor space, but this is not necessarily well-arranged. In residential blocks, because the developers presume that everyone wants a south-facing view (to benefit from good feng shui and more sunlight) they cram in as many as 20 long, awkwardly shaped apartments on each floor. And then there is the bureaucracy. To get a building erected, various stamps of approval are needed, known as “chops”. Some approvals can require as many as 23 separate chops. Even though Víctor has lived for two decades in China, and has an architectural degree from a Chinese University, his partnership often cannot work with a client directly but has to deal via “a big chop”.
But there are some success stories. Antonio, for example has “clicked” with a developer that appreciates good design - Redstone Industrie, working on the SOHO and SOHO New Town projects in eastern Beijing, involving a total of ten tower blocks. This started out as the conversion of an old tower block that had housed a spirits factory into residential units. Antonio says his concept was to cater for the rising middle classes - graphic artists, software developers, self-employed professionals, and others in similar roles who needed compact and well-designed spaces to live and work. SOHO stands for Small Office, Home Office, and what he has done is to create duplexes, and a small internal courtyard on every fourth floor, so that there is some public space and a sense of community. He has also invited artists to decorate the courtyards with sculptures. The project has been wildly successful - it sold out in record time. Antonio is also involved in the Great Wall project - 12 different prestige houses built by 12 different Asian architects (from Korea, Japan, Taiwan and elsewhere) north of the city near the Great Wall. Antonio’s entry - a structure perched on the hillside with spectacular views and two balconies (one glassed in to appreciate the view during the cold winters and another open, to do the same during the hot summers) is officially classified as a “mainland China” entry.** The repressed demand for better living space, now that there is money on the streets, is massive. As we drive to a restaurant amid a mass of glittering night lights and pulsating traffic, Antonio says “when I arrived here in the early 1990s Beijing would just shut down at 7 pm every night. People used to work a six-day week, but then the authorities made Saturday a holiday, mainly to try and kick-start some consumer spending. At first people didn’t know what to do - they’d still go into work on Saturday and sit about playing cards”. But now, he acknowledges, the boom is rolling and everyone wants to get on board. That has changed the nature of the game for architecture says Victor. “In China we have not had good buildings for the last 50 years. Now at last we can afford them, everyone wants them, and there is a really big building boom in progress”.
Victor clearly loves China. “The difference between us” says Antonio, “is that Víctor learnt Mandarin here as a child and I didn’t. That means in every conversation he understands three or four subtleties that completely pass me by. He has a much deeper insight”. But as Víctor himself acknowledges, Chinese society still finds it difficult to accept foreigners. Fan Haoyi, one of his Chinese partners says “I met Victor in 1978, and have known him for over 20 years. He thinks differently, and has a different approach to architecture. We can take than on board, but for all his years in China I have to say, he is not really Chinese”. And they both laugh, as if they are referring to secret codes and private jokes.
** There are two other Mainland China entries
From the Caracas left to the Beijing boom: Victor Ochoa has crossed and re-crossed continents, business activities, and cultures. The son of a Venezuelan Maoist who left the country on the run in the late 1960s, he remembers a year spent in the swinging London of Carnaby street and The Beatles (“it seemed like the epicentre of the world”) before the family moved to the stark contrast of Mao’s China, then beginning the massive upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. His father was an official guest of the revolution, a “foreign specialist” working for Xinhua, the official news agency. This was a key period for the young Victor, because he began to learn Mandarin Chinese, laying the basis for a very special insight into the country’s culture. But there was much criss-crossing yet to come. When Rafael Caldera won the Venezuelan Presidency and began the pacification policy designed to bring the guerrillas back into peaceful politics, the family returned to Caracas.
Having dabbled with the idea of becoming an oceanographer, Víctor enrolled instead to study architecture at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, doing two years of the course under Professor Jesús Tenreiro-Degwitz. But he had itchy feet (“I was 21 and wanted to liberate myself” he says), and was soon applying for a scholarship to go back to China. This was awkward, as the Chinese authorities didn’t particularly want foreign architecture students, but in the end they relented, allowing him back in, to perfect his language skills and to enrol at Tsinghua University. “I was able to pick up Chinese again quite easily because I remembered the words of all the revolutionary songs praising Mao” he says. He was back in another year of upheaval - 1976 - marked by Mao’s death and the beginning of the struggle against the “gang of four”. The 1976 Chinese university enrolment were the first in many years who actually took exams to get in: before, only the selected children of “workers, peasants and soldiers” were allowed into higher education. What that meant, says Victor, is that a lot of it was down to guangxi - who you know - or to put it in more familiar language - palanca política. Now, he is philosophical - he notes that some of his fellow students of humble origins have worked hard and made good - one is a ministry director - while he knows of others who never put their university years to use and are probably washing plates somewhere.
The conversation takes a sudden turn into the shape of today’s Beijing. “What you have to realise” says Víctor, “is that Tianamen Square was deliberately created as a space for massive political demonstrations, Workers day on the 1st of May and Revolution day on the 1st of October”. To achieve this everything in the way - in one of the most historically rich cities in the world - was destroyed. The Maoists deliberately pulled down the walls around the traditional city, walls which had been in place for centuries. They also built ten massive Soviet-style new buildings (including the Peoples’ Congress), to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Revolution in 1959. “It was an act of sheer architectural vandalism, to create that massive square without any trees at all, right beside the Forbidden City” Victor says, “all undertaken as a symbol of a new beginning for the Chinese people”. Yet he also points out that most of China’s dynasties have done just that - started out by ripping out the symbols of the previous regime. So in some ways the Maoists were themselves following a long tradition.
After graduating there was another return to Venezuela, looking at ways of bringing Chinese design ideas to his home country, and yet another trip out to China, working for China Film, and then using his inside take on Chinese society to become one of the early foreign bank representatives, signing a two year contract to represent Banco Exterior de España. Those two years turned into 14, representing the bank as it metamorphosed into Argentaria (“because that is a difficult name to translate into Mandarin, many Chinese were convinced I represented an Argentine bank”) and then finally into BBVA. At the end of that process, as part of a managerial restructuring, Víctor left with a generous package, which he invested back into his architectural passion, setting up a small design house with Chinese partners - some friends from his university days, and one an old Red Guard leader. One of the things he did was invite his younger brother Antonio, who had just graduated as an architect in Venezuela, to come and join them.
Víctor says that “until 1985 the party line was pretty deadly for architecture in general”. Few architects were trained, there was a war economy, the same basic and badly-designed buildings were reproduced many times over, in slab after pre-fabricated slab. Architecture was seen as being about square metres, bricks, and mortar, mathematics. Víctor, who as a student used to wander around the Summer Palace meditating on shape and form, argues Latin-style that architecture is also about psychology, culture, and the soul. “They saw me as different” he laughs, “maybe someone to be tolerated”. From the mid 1980s onward, the economic boom has opened things up, and the environment has become more receptive to Víctor’s ideas, but there are new and old problems. Now there is a tendency to go for massive prestige buildings. “The developer doesn’t give you a free hand - he tells you what to do , and he usually wants a gold and glass tower, he wants it to look expensive. Or a big international design house is brought in, without developing local talent”. An oddity in Beijing’s booming skyline is that many of the big towers are much “thicker” than their equivalents in New York - they have a lot more floor space, but this is not necessarily well-arranged. In residential blocks, because the developers presume that everyone wants a south-facing view (to benefit from good feng shui and more sunlight) they cram in as many as 20 long, awkwardly shaped apartments on each floor. And then there is the bureaucracy. To get a building erected, various stamps of approval are needed, known as “chops”. Some approvals can require as many as 23 separate chops. Even though Víctor has lived for two decades in China, and has an architectural degree from a Chinese University, his partnership often cannot work with a client directly but has to deal via “a big chop”.
But there are some success stories. Antonio, for example has “clicked” with a developer that appreciates good design - Redstone Industrie, working on the SOHO and SOHO New Town projects in eastern Beijing, involving a total of ten tower blocks. This started out as the conversion of an old tower block that had housed a spirits factory into residential units. Antonio says his concept was to cater for the rising middle classes - graphic artists, software developers, self-employed professionals, and others in similar roles who needed compact and well-designed spaces to live and work. SOHO stands for Small Office, Home Office, and what he has done is to create duplexes, and a small internal courtyard on every fourth floor, so that there is some public space and a sense of community. He has also invited artists to decorate the courtyards with sculptures. The project has been wildly successful - it sold out in record time. Antonio is also involved in the Great Wall project - 12 different prestige houses built by 12 different Asian architects (from Korea, Japan, Taiwan and elsewhere) north of the city near the Great Wall. Antonio’s entry - a structure perched on the hillside with spectacular views and two balconies (one glassed in to appreciate the view during the cold winters and another open, to do the same during the hot summers) is officially classified as a “mainland China” entry.** The repressed demand for better living space, now that there is money on the streets, is massive. As we drive to a restaurant amid a mass of glittering night lights and pulsating traffic, Antonio says “when I arrived here in the early 1990s Beijing would just shut down at 7 pm every night. People used to work a six-day week, but then the authorities made Saturday a holiday, mainly to try and kick-start some consumer spending. At first people didn’t know what to do - they’d still go into work on Saturday and sit about playing cards”. But now, he acknowledges, the boom is rolling and everyone wants to get on board. That has changed the nature of the game for architecture says Victor. “In China we have not had good buildings for the last 50 years. Now at last we can afford them, everyone wants them, and there is a really big building boom in progress”.
Victor clearly loves China. “The difference between us” says Antonio, “is that Víctor learnt Mandarin here as a child and I didn’t. That means in every conversation he understands three or four subtleties that completely pass me by. He has a much deeper insight”. But as Víctor himself acknowledges, Chinese society still finds it difficult to accept foreigners. Fan Haoyi, one of his Chinese partners says “I met Victor in 1978, and have known him for over 20 years. He thinks differently, and has a different approach to architecture. We can take than on board, but for all his years in China I have to say, he is not really Chinese”. And they both laugh, as if they are referring to secret codes and private jokes.
** There are two other Mainland China entries
2 comentarios:
Victor es un ejemplo de un hombre Venezolano que tiene ahora una cultura global, yo tambien soy Venezolano,y por situaciones incontrolables de la vida conocidas como destino, me han sacado de mi patria y ahora soy Norteamericano de Houston, Texas pero comparto en todo con el, el amor a la arquitectura, la pintura, la moda del Asia, yo tengo sangre asiatica en mi, y a pesar de haber nacido en America tengo en mi conocimiento que en el pasado vivi en la India y en la China, realmente amo la India con su arte extravagante, de monumentos inmensos y ademas por el budismo, siempre me ha fascinado la idea que la vida es un circulo y que siempre continua, entonces podemos vivir miles de vidas,tambien tengo gran amor y respecto por la cultura proletaria de China, reservada, minimalista, simple, y espiritual, en realidad dos estilos que contrastan, tambien me fascina partes del diario como leer el libro de Pier Paolo Passolini " Aromas de India ", en leer un libro de hace cuarenta anos y el pais casi no ha cambiado en ciertas areas y algo magnifico que ocurre en miles de lugares del mundo donde la realidad y el tiempo se estancan, tambien los relatos de usar un ordenador y el telefono celular para comunicarse con amigos, familiares pero lo especial es la llamadas en volver a la amada Caracas en llamando a su madre y padre en medio de las cenas del palacio es un atento de compartir la felicidad de estar en la India, al mismo tiempo de sentir el calor de cordon umbilical espiritual del autor. Me he enamorado de los palacios, las comidas,la gente.
Puedo repetir las palabras de la Madre Teresa " que aqui en America cuando hablamos del hambre, la miseria, los pordioseros , pensamos en la India pero ellos existen en grandes cantidades aqui en el Pais mas poderoso del mundo" Como un ejemplo vivi de Noviembre a Diciembre del 2002 en una de las ciudades mas lindas del mundo, San Francisco, California y que tiene un magnifico barrio Chino, miles de inmigrantes Chinos vinieron a SF a finales del Siglo 19 y nuevos inmigrantes vienen cada dia, tambien ahora un gran numero de Ingenieros de India estan poblando el Norte de California desde los 60s la poblacion India de San Franciso a crecido cada ano, hay grandes poblaciones de Filipinos, Koranos, Mongoles, y de todos los paises de este misterioso continente para nosotros los Americanos.
En San Francisco los contrastes en la India y la China son mas fuertes entre la clase media y la clase baja sin techo de Americanos. En seguida de los apartamentos de valor de 1 a 3 millones de dolares hay edificios que sirven de vivienda temporal para Americanos que no tienen un hogar y que nosotros llamamos "desplazados" o " sin techo" es la primera vez en mi vida que he he visto Chinos y Indios nacidos aqui,que no han logrado el sueno americano, tambien he visto estos desplazados orinando y defecando en las calles de la ciudad en medio de la gente, del los tranvias, del metro, la ciudad de SF ha construido banos en muchas esquinas para tratar de resolver este problema, los indigentes ahora usan los banos para tener sexo o vender drogas y defecan o orinan afuera.
Este problema de desplazado y de gente sin techo me hace ver esta ciudad como un pedazo de India en America.
Pero lo mas interesante es como FL se ha convertido en Venezolano por osmosis espiritual, o por el toque del DNA del autor que lo han cambiado en un Chino Venezolano como Yo especialmente me han tocado especialmente el hecho que le fascina comer como yo, que viaje por dos anos a todos los paises donde preparan el flan y encontrar el mejor, la persona que ama las ventas americanas de garage donde se compran cosas rechazasas, basura de otros pero tesoros para mi , y tambien que es un regatero como yo, o que regatea los precios y ofrece lo mas barato por las cosas y consique lo mejor y paga menos, hace mucho tiempo deje de comprar cosas cuando viajo y de tomar fotografias mi razon es porque mi casa esta llena de cosas de todo el mundo y en realidad parece una venta de garage, y antes tomaba miles de fotografias pero ahora no disfruto mas observando a otros tomar fotografias y ademas amo las fotografias que ellos toman talvez viene de estudiar fotografia con el famoso fotografo de Houston, Bill Thomas un gran amigo que me enseno a pintar con una camara, Bueno lo unico que puedo decir que amo este blog y me da orgullo conocer al autor y en que hermoso y bella manera ha escrito este diario, voy a expresar todo este amor y carnaval de la vida en mi arte a traves de mis pinturas,esculturas y murales.
RiccardoVelez
RiccardoVelez@hotmail.com
Houston Texas
In English:
... Victor is an example of a Venezuelan man who has a global culture now, I am also a Venezuelan, and by uncontrollable situations of the life known as destiny, I was removed from my mother country Venezuela and now I am American from Houston, Texas but I share everything in my global culture with him, his love for architecture, painting and fashions of Asia, I have Asian blood in me, and in spite that I was born in America, I have in my knowledge that in the past I lived in India and China, I really love India with his outlandish art, of immense monuments, and by the buddhism, It has always fascinated to me that the life is a circle and that always continuous after death, then we can live thousands of lives, also I have great love and respect by the proletarian culture of China, reserved, minimalist, simple, and spiritual, in fact two styles that contrast for me is that I believe that India is richer is Spirit and you need Spirit to create, This is my personal opinion I believe I am possesed by my Indian Spirit when I created any Art, also fascinates me the part in the personal journal when the author read the book of Pier Paolo Passolini " Scent of India" in reading a forty year old book and It seems he is talking about the India of today, It shows that in certain places of the world have not changed at all and that men had not touch yet and something I really believe that it happens in thousands of places of the world where the reality and the time stagnate, also the stories to use a computer and a cellular phone to communicate with friends and relatives but the special part, It is the calls to the loved ones in Caracas in calling to his mother and father in the middle of the suppers of the palace is a kind gesture of the author, who wants to share the happiness to be in India, at the same time to feel the spiritual umbilical cord of the author with mother. I have fallen in love with the palaces, the meals, and the people in this blog. I can repeat the words of the Mother Teresa, She said " when we spoke of the hunger, the misery, the beggars, we thought about India but they exist in great amounts here in the United States the most powerful country of the world" As an example I lived from November to December of the 2002 in one of the pretty cities of the world, San Francisco, California and she has a wonderful Chinese district, thousands of Chinese immigrants came to SF at the end of 19 Century and also new Chinese immigrants come every day, also now a great number of Engineers of India are populating Northern California, and from the 60s the India population of San Francisco had grown each year, They are also big populations of Philippines, Koreans, Mongolians and of all the countries of this mysterious continent that is Asia for us the Americans. In San Francisco the differences between India and China are as strong as the differences between the middle-class and the low class Americans that are homeless or beggars. Next door to the apartments where I used to live, Apartments with a value of 1 to 3 million of dolares there are buildings that serve as temporary housing for Americans who do not have a home and that we called "displaced" or "homeless". It is the first time in my life That I have seen Chinese and Indian born here in America, that has not obtained the American dream and that is a big deal in these cultures, also I have seen these people urinating and defecating on the streets of the city in the middle of people, of streetcars, the subway. Of course the city of SF has constructed public restrooms in many corners to try to solve this problem, the homeless and beggars that use these public restrooms now use them for other activitiets as to have sex or to sell drugs and they defecate or urinated outside of them so the peoblem is bigger and unsolved. This problem of Homeless and beggars in San Francisco makes me think about this city as scent of India in America. But the interesting thing in this journal is as FL has become Venezuelan by spiritual osmosis, or by the touch of the DNA of the author that has changed him into a Chinese Venezuelan as I am specially touched by the fact that he is fascinated with food and eats like me well I am a dog in the Chinese Calendar so I eat as a dog, as an example I travel two years for 20 countries to test the perfect Spanish Flan and also that he is a haggler and he haggle over prices to get the best price. I also love garage sales and I try to find treasures in the garbage of other people is my time living in Berlin comeback to me and I want to recycle everything of me or others.
Now I had change because when I travel I do not even buy postcards, souvenirs and the weirdest that I do not take video or photographies I actually ejoy more seeing other people taking pictures maybe one of the reason is I studied photography for 3 years with famous Texas photo Artist Bill Thomas and he just taught me how to paint with a camara, well I am going to paint small pictures and huge murals and make some great escultures inspired by the artist, I love the way he writes in Spanish in such a vivid and romantic way also so eloquent anf beautiful I just love this blog, I just want the author to write more and feed me his knowledge.
Riccardo Velez
Muralist Painter
Buddhist Monk
RiccardoVelez@hotmail.com
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