Shot by photographer Jake Stengel against the backdrop of San Francisco’s famous Chinatown, Hou Hanru discusses the artists and themes guiding China’s contemporary art boom. The largest manifestation of Chinese visual culture outside of Asia, San Francisco’s Chinatown is a perfect example of the curator’s concept of “super reality”—the difference between reality as we experience it and as it is represented—and the globalized hybrid-world that inspires his socially progressive approach. The leading authority on Chinese contemporary art, Hou was one of the earliest curators to tackle the ideas of diaspora, globalization and nomadism central to the 21st-century environment of art fairs, biennials and multinational galleries.