It was minus 9 degrees Celsius the night artist Zhang Wei's heating and electricity were cut. “I woke up freezing,” he says. “I put my hand on the radiator and it was cold. It felt like needles were stabbing my heart.” Eight days later, water ceased to flow, and six days after that his generators were confiscated.

Zhang wasn't alone. Over 40 other families living in the Zhengyang Creative Art Zone, northeast of Chaoyang District, faced similar tribulations as developers attempted to illegally clear their homes. But now the art community is fighting back.

Zhang and fellow artists Dai Zhuoqun and Xiao Ge countered with “Warm Winter," a touring exhibition aimed at building public awareness of developers' abuses of power. “Once you make things big, the city and central government really will intervene,” Zhang says, perhaps optimistically.

Featuring performance and display art—sometimes quite graphic, like a full-frontal naked mannequin painted with the Chinese character for “demolish” hanging from a tree— "Warm Winter" quickly roused scrutiny. At the second show on January 12 at 008 Art Zone, artists clashed with a dozen hoodlums hired to disrupt the event. A large media contingent was on hand to witness the violence, which resulted in four arrests (two from each side) and sent at least one artist to the hospital. The incident made the front page of The Beijing News.

Far from discouraging the collaborators, the skirmish galvanized hundreds of artists from Beijing’s 20 major art colonies. “Everyone has banded together,” Wu says. “That’s an improvement. Together, we can aid the natural progress of human society to create a fair and just system. That is our central goal.”

Xiao admits it is unlikely the artists’ efforts will save their homes, but that has not deterred her. “Demolish-and-relocate is a long-standing practice,” she says. “It’s up to us to yell it out and expose the unfairness of the process."
■ Anthony Tao