Rural project becomes annual festival

"The way of narrating a story in experimental art is to find a unique solution to the development of Chinese villages," he said. "We are not learning other country's art forms and ways of presentation, but are reconsidering and reconnecting with rural people, the land, and society."

Some changes have taken place in the village. By the summer of 2019, infrastructure had been improved, houses renovated and roadways widened.

A circular outdoor theater was also built in a large, abandoned fishpond. During the fallow season, usually from July to October, villagers used to rest and socialize and seldom went out. Now that many young villagers work elsewhere, however, few people get the chance to get together any more.

The theater brought all the villagers from Caijiapo together again.

The students put on shows and invited friends from other art academies in Xi'an to stage dramas. Some nights, villagers staged Qinqiang Opera, amazing the visitors with their beautiful voices.

"It was cool! We sat in the wheat field and listened to the villagers singing old opera," Wu said. "It was quite amazing. Then we started thinking about organizing a drama festival."

The drama festival became a part of the annual arts festival in 2019.

The Central Shaanxi Art Cooperative came into being. For the past three years, paintings and installations have been created during the festival to show the transformation of the rural environment.

"Turning daily life into art" is the way villagers understand the festival.

This year, besides grapes, kiwi fruit and wheat fields, the villagers themselves have become topics of murals created by the arts students. "When the villagers saw the murals, they felt proud to be part of Caijiapo and proud to show their village to more outsiders," Wu said. "Compared to traditional art, contemporary art has always been controversial. But in Caijiapo, whether it is making paintings on walls or installations in wheat fields, being controversial doesn't seem that important.

"After all, it's the people who live there that really matter."