If you find yourself in Shanghai this summer and want to venture beyond World Expo, you’ll find the city’s art scene bubbling like never before. As the city limbers up for the Shanghai Biennale, which opens October 23, its private museums and galleries are hosting a full slate of important shows. As the new kid on the Bund, the Rockbund Museum opened with a bang last month with Cai Guo-Qiangs “Peasant Da Vincis” project and next week launches a major new show by Zeng Fanzhi. The exhibition, which runs through October 12, will show Zeng experimenting beyond his usual medium of painting with a set of new sculptural works.

Beijing-based Zeng has been spending a bit of time in Shanghai lately, having most recently sat on the jury to award the first John Moores (Shanghai) Contemporary Painting Prize, the winner of which will be announced next Saturday.But if you want to explore what is happening in Shanghai’s burgeoning art scene beyond the big galleries, why not drop in at the artists’ enclave at 696 Weihai Road? This downtown arts haven is fast gaining a reputation as the city’s answer to Beijing’s 798 district, which put the capital’s contemporary artists on the map ten years ago.

When you reach 696 Weihai Road, in the city's central business district, you pass through an enormous guarded entrance to a former state-owned factory, follow a long alleyway and find yourself in front of a century-old colonial-style building.In the summer of 2006, a photographer discovered this abandoned wonderland of dark corridors and winding staircases. As soon as he moved in, word spread through the art network and other tenants followed. They love the prime location and the convenience it offers: although bustling Nanjing Road is only a block away, 696 Weihai Road is sheltered from street noise, and the space hums with a calm energy.

More than 30 multi-media artists work in painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and fashion design alongside newcomers like a boutique advertising agency, a wedding planner, and even a Chinese cookery workshop. The neighborhood has an appealing grass-roots feel: unlike other creative “hubs” in Shanghai that have been initiated and carefully planned by developers or city authorities, 696 exudes a raw, indigenous ambiance, true to the disappearing traditions of the old Shanghainese underground.

In other words, artists remain the soul of 696 — their doors are always open, and they regularly gather for tea or a chat, a game of badminton or a culinary expedition into the Shanghai night. Sylvia Bai went to 696 for ARTINFO China and spoke to some of the tenants who give the place its buzz.

Jiang Xueman: “A True Hermit Lives in the City Centre”

As you enter Jiang Xueman’s studio, your eye is drawn to the brightly-painted “Yellow Calendar” series, her project of the last two years. Further in, you come to a little collection of vintage furniture: a forest-green cotton sofa, another in crimson patent leather. The most striking object is a little handmade stone bathtub. Xueman likes the old Chinese proverb that a true hermit lives in the city centre. At 696, her artistic life is tightly intertwined with the dynamic city that influences her in so many ways, but the enclave allows her to work without distractions.

One of her recent projects was a series of pieces with a frog theme, using the amphibian as a sign of environmental balance. Then she became fascinated by the thousand-year-old Yellow Calendar — an almanac advising Chinese people on suitable activities for each day. She decided to reinvent it: why had “World Environment Day” and “World Mental Health Day” never appeared before? She set about incorporating other modern slogans into the Yellow Calendar, like “Time is money” and “GDP growth.” Xueman’s work, with its ever-changing experimental style and its disciplined perfectionism, constantly reflects the social issues that concern her.

AntonioSevilla: Free Style à la Bruce Lee

Antonio Sevilla arrived in Shanghai from Spain in 2000 and spent five years working as a stage designer. He loved the pace and energy of the city, and decided to stay. “In my home town,” he says, “an empty can seems to lie in the street in the same spot year after year.” Sevilla is a devoted fan of Bruce Lee, whose unique school of fighting was dubbed “the style of no style” — a fitting tag for the artist's work, since what he cares about isn't surface but rather an intuitive response.

Antonio is known as a master of crossover, and he shares his studio space with a French graphic designer, a mural artist from Chongqing, and a British painter — an arrangement that provides endless possibilities for collaboration and creative inspiration. His recent work includes a piece built with recycled cans to depict a possible future world, and he is thinking of a series paying tribute to Bruce Lee to mark the 70th anniversary of the film icon’s birth.

ZhangPing: Singing Her Heart Out on Canvas

As soon as I met her, painter Zhang Ping felt like an old friend as we chatted about dreams, art, philosophy, and religion. At every moment, she seems to be trying to connect with her true self, whether she is creating work, explaining her ideas or meeting new people.

Hailing from the western desert province of Xinjiang, she completed her Master’s degree in Shanghai and afterward decided to stay in the city. All of her works reflect her quest for the understanding of herself: on one canvas, two heads lean towards each other against the backdrop of the Gobi desert. They seem to have adult bodies, but exude a sense of childlike innocence. Ping says she spends almost half of her free time alone, to think and read. She believes in the Confucian precept: “A true gentleman must be in awe of the decree of heaven.”

ShiauJonjen: A Sculptor and World-Traveler

During his youth, bored out of his mind in his native Taiwan, Shiau Jonjen moved to France. As he didn’t know a word of French, it gave him a chance to experience the world as a baby might, giving him a precious eight years of creative experience. In 1996, he formed a bond with mainland China when he landed the chief designer role for a sculpture park in the southern city of Guilin.

It was a demanding period, calling on much more than his skills as a sculptor. Overall scenery planning, maintaining the harmony with the environment, keeping the balance between materials, functionality and space — these were just some of the many challenges Jonjen faced. In 2007, feeling the need to create things just for himself, he became a member of the 696 community.

He works in both pure white marble stone and rough wood, a free-spirited blending of sharp edges and sinuous lines. His inspiration does not simply come from the spur of the moment, but is built on the solid foundation of daily life. An artist, he says, must first love life so that life itself becomes his artistic spark. Sweating from a game of badminton and on his way to rally a group for dinner at his favorite restaurant, Jonjen is living out his personal artistic credo.