Once Upon a Time the Zhou Brothers

When I first came to America in the autumn of 1988, I met the Zhou brothers in Chicago. At that point they’d only lived in the city for a couple of years, yet they were already practising their amplified version of traditional hospitality. The two of them kept me company for three days as we descended into Chinese restaurants and rose into bars in the sky. Chicago was heaven to me. They were generous, gracious, never allowing a word of protest, always whisking the cheque away.

On my next visit, in the summer of 1991, I fell from heaven into hell. I had come back to take part in a symposium at Chicago University and would be in the city for more than a month. There was regional discrimination among the participants right from the start: those from Taiwan and Hong Kong were put up in high-class hotels; others, like me, who were from mainland China, were checked into student dorms. I slept on a sofa in a communal lounge and didn’t dare turn over once, even in my nightmares. But outside was where the real nightmares began: the roads were in ruins, the street lights were dim, everywhere people acted suspiciously, including me.

Then the Zhou brothers, liberators, appeared, and once again we were living the American dream. They had recently bought a club from some Polish people to convert into artists’ studios and here they held a grand party for us – genuine red-lantern, green-wine, debauched revelry – with a host of waiters and a live American band. It was as if the wind had swept the clouds away, leaving us foreigners wide-eyed in wonder.

When the conference ended, I moved out of the dorm and in with the brothers. Besides playing games on the computer with Shan Zuo’s son, Mo Hu (‘Ink Tiger’), I wandered around nearby Chinatown. Shan Zuo’s wife, Xiu Ling, handled all the household affairs, and the brothers, despite their slightly eccentric outward appearance, were naturally open and kind, letting the glow of their goodwill fall freely on those around them. Since then I’ve had one more home in the world, and have come to Chicago nearly every year, always staying with them. We don’t keep in touch otherwise, but once we see each other, it’s as if we only parted yesterday. Often I bring other friends with me: a dozen or so more mouths to feed, yet we drink plenty, eat more, crash for the night – nobody is treated like an outsider. As it is written: ‘Within the four seas all are brothers.’ In the world of contemporary art the generosity and benevolence of these two have become legendary. Every time they go to New York, it’s said they throw a huge party for all the poverty-stricken Chinese artists in the city, each one rushing to tell another, so they can all be a part of what is more like a magnificent festival.