“During the ‘China/Avant-Garde Exhibition’, a symposium was held on the second-floor of the National Art Museum of China. The most memorable argument from that event was an attack by the conservative critics, who believed that all the works in the exhibition were imitations of Western modern art. Actually, we still talk about this issue today when people say this [Chinese contemporary art] is like China’s McDonald’s. The situation twenty years ago was like that, and yet there are still people today who think you’re just an imitator, and a bad imitator at that. We debated these issues fiercely back then… there are many details that I’ve forgotten, but there were many sudden, spontaneous issues. Yet there are only two events that have made the history books (namely, the two times the exhibition was shut down). The academic issues have been either diluted or entirely overlooked. It’s really a shame…”