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 [...]
Contradictions
January 28th, 2012 · No Comments
Tags: CCTV · CCTV fire · Koolhaas · Scheeren
End of November, Beijing
December 1st, 2011 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Beijing · CCTV · CCTV fire · photo
“But I wore the juice.”
November 29th, 2011 · 2 Comments
The persistent and very public meltdown of Herman Cain (the latest is here) has gone beyond the obliviously wretched clown phase and into the obliviously wretched grotesque phase that continues to reveal his fundamental lack of understanding that he’s morphed into the latest caricature of the guy who doesn’t get it. Politics and political races are rife with [...]
Tags: politics
BuddhaWorld, China and the Persistence of Gigantism
July 18th, 2011 · 1 Comment
Melissa Chan at Al Jazeera does great reporting of CN. Her story The Lumbini project: China’s $3bn for Buddhism is a fine piece on Lumbini, Nepal, the birthplace of Prince Gautama Siddhartha, and the current target of a Chinese business man (with no help from the government! Really!) who wants to turn the sacred site into [...]
The Law’s in the Back Seat Behind the Guy with the Club
May 26th, 2011 · 2 Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Beijing · propaganda
Manufacturing Orphans For Export
May 18th, 2011 · 3 Comments
May has not been a good news month here in China. The continuing drought in Central China has closed the middle reaches of the Yangtze River to shipping, as well as causing power outages and electrical shortages that will continue into the summer months, negatively affecting manufacturing and agricultural production at a time when inflation has already [...]
Tags: corruption · countryside
More Bad Seeds
April 12th, 2011 · 4 Comments
It’s hard to ignore a story with the title 80,000 flee Shenzhen clampdown, even when the source is the Global Times (GT). What I learned, by digging a bit deeper, is that for two weeks in mid-August Shenzhen will be hosting the XXVI (26th) Summer Universiade, a multi-sports competition for international university athletes. (And, yes, there [...]
Tags: Confucius · corruption
Next Stop: Oblivion
March 30th, 2011 · 16 Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Beijing
October 2010 GRE Chinese Results Canceled
October 30th, 2010 · 2 Comments
Yesterday all participants in China in the October 23, 2010 GRE examination administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) received the following email, canceling the scores of all participants, because “a previously used edition of the test was mistakenly administered.” They also go on to say that this was an “isolated incident.” I would expect [...]
Tags: GRE
Nothing but Blue (and b&w) Skies
August 16th, 2010 · No Comments
The last two mornings have seen capital sunrises in the capital city, and below are a few photos of Beijing architecture from both mornings, shortly after sunrise. (Click on each photo for a larger version that opens in a lightbox.)
Tags: architecture · Beijing · CCTV