For more than 30 years, the Goethe-Institut has enriched cultural life in Beijing and other Chinese cities. In 2015, in addition to the main building, it opened a versatile cultural venue for performance and theatre performances, exhibitions, and film evenings in Beijing’s art district 798, of which the institute’s director Dr. Clemens Treter is audibly proud. „We show experimental but also thematic works on contemporary issues,“ says the 49-year-old. „Through the cultural agreement, we enjoy a certain protection and are independent of an approval process in our own spaces. So we have more freedom than the rest of the cultural scene in China, and it gives local artists the opportunity to show their work away from commercial and political pressures.“