The rise and fall of Massbox Art Planet

It was last year August when I first visited Massbox Art Planet. Located on a terrain in Shangli, previously occupied by the PLA (the Chinese army), it occupies several thousand square meters at the foot of a hill, with some stone barracks and beautiful old pine trees. My friend Jia, a graduate of the Art College of Xiamen University, and part-time teacher at TKK College in Zhangzhou, is the driving force behind Massbox. His vision was to create a self-supporting art community with resident artist's studios, a gallery/performance space, a guesthouse for visiting artists, a restaurant, etc.
The project was funded by some Chinese investors, and had the support of the military authorities who own the land. There was one condition: no foreigners!
Over the course of the first few months, there was a lot of renovation and construction, transforming the old stone barracks in tastefully designed guestrooms, and building a small village of wood and glass cabins, functioning as artist's studios. Performances and exhibitions were organized, and a growing crowd of local and visiting artists and enthusiasts found their way to Massbox.

Then suddenly late last year it was shut down unexpectedly. Studios were demolished, all activities suspended. Nobody knew for sure what was going on, but like with many projects in China, there is always someone higher up who can decide at will what will happen to any new initiative. Jia was not going to give up though, and eventually had build up some new relationships and acquired enough credit to start over.
A couple of months later, studios were re-erected, some bigger ones were build, and in this second reincarnation of Massbox, foreigners were suddenly welcome. Lectures by foreign art teachers, movie screenings, art performances, live music, long-staying foreign guests, a night-long rave in the tunnel under the hill, anything was possible. Massbox seemed to have reached maturity.

Then again something out-of-the-blue happened: someone in control of finances decided it was time to turn the artist community into a commercial enterprise, and started to rent out the spaces to whoever was willing to pay a premium price. Small businesses took over the art village. Photo studios, marketing agents, interiour design companies, a Kendo school, and who knows what.
Jia was kicked out of his own studio, which he had designed and build himself, to be used now as a corporate office. He decided to take a leave, and went to Tibet to reflect on his future as an artist. In the mean time, some foreign artists could continue to use some studio spaces which were rented by the American artist, art collector and entrepreneur Stevens Vaughn, who has made his fortune in mass-produced decorative ceramics for Western consumers.
At present, Massbox Art Planet is a commercial market place for any business vaguely related to art & design, but it has very little to do with Jia's vision of a breeding ground for independent art. Capitalism has taken over, again.