Absurdity, Allegory and China

As the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China looms and Beijing is saddled with uncommonly odd restrictions, all eyes will soon turn towards the Great Hall of the People on the west side of Tian’anmen Square, one of the goofiest sacred spaces in the world. I am reminded of a piece entitled Beijing’s [...]

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The Master of Bigness by Martin Filler in the May 2012 issue of The New York Review of Books is well worth a look for two good reasons. One is the publication itself, the NYRB, which is always worth a look. Two, it’s a very good piece on Rem Koolhaas and his architectural team at [...]

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A few months back (October 14, 2011) Rem Koolhaas, brand architect behind OMA, the architectural firm that has been involved with the design and building of the iconic CCTV Headquarters Building on the East Third Ring Road, was the subject of an article in Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek: Pritzker Star Koolhaas Frets Over EU, Tops Giant Beijing [...]

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I had to make a quick trip to Guomao this morning, so, of course, I brought along my camera. I wanted to follow up on a story from a couple of days ago. Late Friday morning, December 23, 2011, during the demolition of a building near the CCTV Headquarters Building, a part of said building [...]

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Here’s a shot from late last week in Beijing when the air was somewhat clear, the man was somewhat short – though longer than the bed of his trike – and the Hyundai Elantra was max shiny. And the CCTV Bldg was the CCTV Bldg., since it’s hard for it to be anything else. (click [...]

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Below are some shots I’ve taken over the past 8 days. When a friend comes to Beijing you find yourself going to places you normally wouldn’t go, though many of the sites are too good to pass up for a one time trip to the Jing. I also ended up taking a couple of spins [...]

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In an essay in the East Asia Forum today, China’s jasmine crackdown and the legal system, Donald C. Clarke, law professor at George Washington University succinctly explains the current state of Chinese law, vis-a-vis the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) vs The People: When the Chinese authorities detained human rights lawyer Teng Biao last year, they [...]

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“We shall soon put aside some of the things we know well and be compelled to do things we don’t know well. This means difficulties. ” –Mao Zedong, 1949 On May 12, 2008 I was working at my home in Tianjin. At two in the afternoon I lay down to take a break, more rest [...]

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There used to be hope for China. Or at least the appearance of hope. Hope that things were getting better, though what getting better actually meant had everything to do with how bad it used to be in the earlier stages of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Dynasty: the Great Leap Forward, the politically-inspired [...]

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In July 2006 a rumor started on the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau that the Dalai Lama, the revered spiritual leader of Tibetans, would appear at Kumbum Monastery, one of the Gelukpa holy sites in Qinghai province, a mere 40 minutes from Xining. The rumor had it that the news had spread via text messages through the Tibetan [...]

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