Van Dijk (or Dai Hanzhi, as he was affectionately called by his Chinese friends) was both a witness and a catalyst in the development of Chinese contemporary art; he was active as a curator, art historian and gallerist in China from the late 1980s until his death in 2002. This richly illustrated publication documents the recent history of Chinese contemporary art through the lens of Van Dijk's extraordinary life and work. The book includes never-before-published correspondence between Hans van Dijk and artists such as Ding Yi, Wang Xingwei and Huang Yong Ping, historical photographs and documents as well as a full-length scholarly essay about the history of Chinese modern and contemporary art by Van Dijk.