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Anoher tag on the wall

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CHINA'S OBSESSION with writing on walls runs deep. In the classic novel Outlaws Of The Marsh, hero and leader Song Jiang makes his revolutionary declaration against the corrupt state with a poem drunkenly scrawled on a teahouse wall. During the Cultural Revolution, pesky neighbours could be eliminated by accusations posted on a community wall. When Deng Xiaoping made his play for openness and reform, he designated a wall in Beijing where people could freely write their thoughts. He may not have envisaged so many 'dangerous' thoughts and the so-called 'Democracy Wall' met a swift end. And last month came perhaps the most audacious assault of them all, the 'bombing' (as the art of graffiti is known) of the Great Wall of China.

Today's graffiti is not only on the streets, but in advertising, branding and design, feeding an urban youth culture that is spreading from the population centres to the provinces like an unchecked wave. The 1980s saw a steady growth of political activism among students and youth that climaxed in the Tiananmen Square massacre. Students of the 90s learned that money would get you in less trouble than politics and could buy some of the freedoms that those a decade before had fought for.

Dug into the new millennium, however, comes a generation volcanic in focus and scope. Too young to remember Tiananmen, their ignorance emboldens them. They've grown up on bootleg DVDs. Online, they have access to the world. They are only children; the focus of their parents' dreams. Family identity is disappearing, and in its place comes the tribe.

Soft-spoken and doe-eyed, few would think 19-year-old 'Sic' capable of a bombing. The images scrawled on the Great Wall near Beijing last month were not hers, but other risky ones certainly are. Lithe in her movements and affectionate in her touch, the Guangzhou native fixes you with an even stare. 'Some people prefer doing the legal stuff,' says the female university art student. 'It's more obedient, but I like it on the streets. I guess my heart's not yet at ease.'

Pinched by her mild manner and mellow smile, it's hard to imagine Sic sneaking out armed with a digital camera and spray cans on pre-dawn raids every weekend. But these are the tools with which she founded Made In Guangzhou (MIG), the mainland's first graffiti crew, and their online graffiti gallery.

Her introduction came through a middle-school skater friend who recommended she check out some American and European graffiti sites. 'It was crazy,' she says. 'You could do it anywhere. It wasn't necessarily beautiful, but it was daring and brave.' Sic began scribbling 'tags' (stylised renderings of an assumed name) in her notebook and working up the courage to try it out on the street.

Perhaps it was her father's advice that finally gave her the edge. 'At the time, graffiti didn't exist in China. My father had always encouraged me to be the first to do something; to be the best.' He wasn't talking about graffiti, but it didn't matter. At the dawn of the new millennium, with extra-wide markers in hand, Sic and classmate Sue began to 'decorate' the walls around their school.

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