Qi Zhilong, one of China's best-selling contemporary artists, recently posted on his blog: "When the air is clean and clear, my home looks very beautiful."

Around an hour's drive from the din and dust of central Beijing, Qi's home is located in Songzhuang, an artists' colony based in the east of the city. Located near an artificial pond, his home is a 2,500-square-meter complex that includes rooms for his family and friends, a beautiful lawn and a quite spacious studio.

People might have wild expectations of an avant-garde artist's home, but while Qi's home is artistically decorated in every detail, it is also a pleasant, safe and cozy retreat.

With the help of his friends, Qi's home is a place where he can listen to classical music without being disturbed. It is also somewhere he can entertain his friends and neighbors by holding a BBQ banquet on the lawn facing the beautiful lake. He says his home makes him feel at ease even when he sweeps up the fallen leaves in his garden.

Before he finally settled in Songzhuang two years ago, Qi moved several times searching for the right place to paint and live.

Renting a house first in Yuanmingyuan in the mid-1990s, then moving to Suojia village and Feijia village, Qi witnessed and joined the transformation of "penniless nobodies" at that time into the big names of the contemporary Chinese art world.

Qi established his reputation with his works featuring young Chinese women dressed in military uniforms. Now in his spacious studio, you can still find paintings in a similar style but featuring famous Chinese movie actress Yao Chen with her trademark big mouth.

Though he is no longer starving and while he lives in a luxurious house, Qi says that the improvement in his material well-being has not meant he has had to sacrifice his inspiration.

"Material wealth will not kill creation. But as life gets better, the interests will change," he says.

His home now provides him with fresh ideas that can be transferred to canvas.

Because he also owns a property in Australia, living in two countries and traveling abroad frequently offer him a chance to observe and make comparisons. He has also transferred his attention from his private space to the public space, such as environment, traffic and urban planning.

"We tend to devote all our energy to thinking how to make our own courtyard beautiful. But the problem is how to make our public environment look as good as our private one," he says.

On one side of the wall of his sitting room, he hangs photos he has taken of things in the city that he thinks can be improved, such as roads without pedestrian paths or paths for the blind that are blocked by utility poles.

When Qi was young and at college, he felt Chinese artists were trying very hard to catch up with foreign artists but always finding there was still a long distance to cover. Back then, he never envisioned what his studio or home would look like in the future.

"Now we have more and more in common," he says.