manageable components, such as sub-Factories 706, 707, 751, 761, 797 and 798. The first Head of sub-Factory 798 (the largest) was Branch Party Secretary Fu Ke (傅克), who played a major role in recruiting skilled workers from southern China and returned overseas Chinese. However, the factory came under pressure during Deng Xiaoping's reforms of the 1980s. Deprived of governmental support like many state-owned enterprises, it underwent a gradual decline and was eventually rendered obsolete. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, most sub-factories had ceased production, 60% of the workers had been laid off, and the remains of the management were reconstituted as part of a real-estate operation called "Seven-Star Huadian Science and Technology Group", charged with overseeing the industrial park and finding tenants for the abandoned buildings. Artistic rebirth The Dashanzi factory complex was vacated at around the time when most of Beijing's contemporary artist community was looking for a new home. Avant-garde art was frowned upon by the government and the community had traditionally existed on the fringes of the city. From 1984 to 1995, they worked in run-down houses near the Old Summer Palace in northwestern Beijing, until their eviction. Many then moved to the eastern Tong County (now Tongzhou District), more than an hour's drive from the city center. Then in 1995, Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), looking for storage and workshop space, set up in the now defunct Factory 706. The temporary move became permanent and in 2000 Sui Jianguo, Dean of the Department of Sculpture, located his own studio in the area. The cluttered sculpture workshops have always remained open for visitors to peek at the dozens of workers milling about. By 2003, an artistic community of over 30 artists, designers, and publishers had developed. The first creatives to take residence in the district included artist Xu Yong, designer artist Huang Rui, publisher Robert Bernell, painter Li Songsong, and Beijing Tokyo Art Projects' Tabata Yukihito. One of the first exhibition spaces, Beijing Tokyo Art Projects (BTAP, 北京东京艺术工程), was opened by Tabata Yukihito of Japan's Tokyo Gallery. Inside a 400-m2 division of Factory 798's main area, this was the first renovated space featuring the high arched ceilings that would become synonymous with the Art District. BTAP's 2002 opening exhibition "Beijing Afloat" (curator: Feng Boyi), drew a crowd of over 1,000 people and marked the beginning of the popular infatuation with the area. In