Opening Eyes: Culture Yard & Chinese Movie Night

There are language schools and there are exchange centers, but few places have tried to fuse learning with cross-cultural promotion quite like Culture Yard, a hutong language and culture center that opened last Sunday near Beixingqiao.

Culture Yard's founder, Ilya Cheremnikh (Russian-Israeli who has lived in New York and traveled around Europe and Central America), has taught at more than 10 schools in his two years in Beijing, and when he started looking for a place of his own he deliberately went the anti-Jianwai-SOHO route.

He ended up finding a homely four-room place that has two trees growing out of the living room and a transparent roof that's sometimes traversed by cats and dogs.

The operation is still small, with "four and a half" permanent staff, according to Cheremnikh, but grand plans are in place.

"The idea is to promote the understanding of different cultures, including languages, traditions, customs, all aspects," says office manager Chen Pingping, and to do it not only through language training but also indoor workshops and outdoor activities that are open to the public.

English and Chinese are currently being taught, with Spanish soon to follow (Cheremnikh also lists French, German, Russian, Hebrew, Dutch and Italian as future possibilities). On Saturday (April 24), Culture Yard will be hosting a workshop run by award-winning photographer Peter Carney, and at the end of the month staffers will organize a hiking trip to Badachu and the area around Xiangshan.

A good way to get acquainted with Culture Yard is to attend Chinese Movie Night, every Tuesday starting at 7pm (space limitations require interested parties to email beforehand, movie@cultureyard.net). Each month has a theme, with this month is "migrant workers" - which makes Tuesday's movie, Jia Zhangke's The World, an appropriate selection.

Over a cup of Arabian coffee (offered gratis to visitors), Cheremnikh and Chen explained their vision to us.

How does fostering cultural awareness relate to you personally?
Chen: I've studied English and its culture in university for seven years, and I think I still cannot really understand foreign culture. I have not lived abroad, but even for those who have, if you don't really open eyes, if you don't use the mind's eye, you don't see things and people with your heart. You don't really see them.

In Beijing, an international city, it's like we have this big stage, and we would like to connect people of different cultural backgrounds and life experiences by providing this platform.

Cheremnikh: I think for me what Pingping is talking about is a little bit easier. I can speak a few languages, and I've been always interested in this. And I'm a bit more automatically trying to do this... trying to understand the place I live in, to get familiar with it, to learn the language. And I think some people sometimes need a little bit of a push to do this kind of thing.

What are your plans for Chinese Movie Night?
Cheremnikh: I would like foreigners to understand this place and for Chinese people to understand foreigners. But it's not only this. It's more of a communication platform that we would like to create here. In a way we're trying to involve the person a little bit more when they're watching the movie. You're coming to actually learn something when you come to watch a movie here.

Chen: It's about Chinese cinema and society. Before (the movie starts), we have a brief introduction about the social and historical background of the film.

How was the first Movie Night last Tuesday?
Chen: It was very encouraging for me. We prepared as much as we could, then gave a brief introduction and after the movie we talked a bit more about this issue.

Cheremnikh: I was a little bit involved in this. I (used to be) involved in a charity project helping children of migrant workers... There isn't any message I want to get across. I'm not trying to push an agenda. I just want people to open their eyes on different things that exist here that you might just not see - and sometimes you can see it through cinema. So in a way we're trying to do connect you to where you live.

Culture Yard, No. 10 Shique Hutong, Beixinqiao, Dongcheng District, www.cultureyard.net