It’s one of the ironies of contemporary China that gaps in the legal system bring infinite little freedoms to everyday life. To many Westerners living in its major cities, China is more liberal than their home countries – a place where you can park your bicycle wherever you like, or drink a beer in the street, without the municipal regulations that shape life in Western cities.

According to American graffiti artist, tag-named Mels, this flexibility extends to street art. “As long as you don’t write anything political, nobody is going to care what you’re doing,” he says, since graffiti in China is not strictly speaking illegal. Having moved to Shanghai a couple of years ago, Mels is a co-founder of Beast Mode Studios – a design studio (by day) and graffiti crew (by night), with artists from all over China.

Mels is my interviewee for this week’s post. Read on to hear about the budding subcultures of Wuhan and Changsha, and why in this American graffiti artist’s view China’s upcoming scene surpasses that of the United States.

CHANGSHA

The following is an excerpt from the introduction to CHANGSHA, the forthcoming photobook from Rian Dundon and Emphas.is Press.

I first went to China on a whim. I didn’t really know what I was getting into. It was 2005 and I was 24-years-old. I made a one-year commitment to stay in the country. In the end I stayed for six.

At first, when I didn’t speak the language, I would hang out in pool halls and practice counting balls in Chinese. I couldn’t talk but I knew how to play and I knew how to swap cigs with the hustlers and lookers-on. Later my Mandarin came and I could go to dinner with people or hit the karaoke clubs. Mr. Tian was a whiskey wholesaler and one of our first friends. His brother owned The Red East – a popular nightclub and karaoke house where I got my first taste of provincial nightlife with the bar’s cast of boozers, working girls, and off-duty cops. I photographed. During the day I moved through the city digesting what I saw. I began to develop an idea for the kind of pictures I wanted to make in China, but I knew it wouldn’t be possible in just one year. It was important that I avoid the typical images – the Mao posters and soldiers, the futuristic cityscapes – and remain true to an experience separate from politics. I wanted to make pictures that didn’t necessarily read as China. Personal photographs. Private photographs.