Absurdity, Allegory and China

Yesterday (August 11, 2010) morning I waded through the mess masquerading as Beijing air down to the CCTV Headquarters project to see if the rumors, via Weibo, of the demolition of the TVCC were true. Was the building about to be dismantled as the rumor hinted. I am happy to report that I still don’t [...]

[Read more →]

The Television Culture Centre, Beijing, CN August 11, 2010, 11:04 AM An extremely shitty air day in the business heart of the Kingdom. ________

[Read more →]

The CCTV Building project has been rife with rumors since before the first hole was dug, and the latest one (via niubi at Twitter) was spotted on Weibao, a Chinese microblogging service. The rough translation (and I stress “rough”) is “Heard that my foolish masters’ big underpants scorched little brother [TVCC] must be demolished tomorrow, [...]

[Read more →]

It usually takes me a bit of time to go through my photos after a trip to my favorite site in Beijing, the CCTV Bldg. project (or what I sometimes refer to as metaphor central) on the East Third Ring Road. In the last few days I have finally gotten around to looking through what [...]

[Read more →]

There is a perennial incompleteness that haunts mainland Chinese cities, second and third tier cities as well as the nation’s capital. In the foreground of the above photo you can see scaffolding, green construction mesh,  and the top of a tent where migrant workers live in the very heart of the Central Business District, across [...]

[Read more →]

Here are some photos of the CCTV in color, all taken in the late afternoon/early evening, April 23, 2010

[Read more →]

Photos of the continuing project. (click for bigger pic)

[Read more →]

I am trying to imagine how I would feel if I went to New York and was confronted with billboards that said, “Civilized Brooklyn.” Or if I were walking through Paris and ran into large public displays that said “Civilized Belleville.” Of course I would wonder, “Why is this being addressed at all?” A weekend [...]

[Read more →]

Curious article in the Shanghai Daily today (h/t @niubi on Twitter), reporting on a Beijing News article regarding repairs to the TVCC building, the burned and lesser brother/neighbor of the iconic CCTV Bldg. This has been expected since Rem Koolhaas stated in a WSJ piece The Sky’s No Longer the Limit back in May 2009 [...]

[Read more →]

Earlier this week while China was (and still is) doing Copenhagen, climate change and carbon chits, Beijing and Tianjin were muffled in a thick toxic fog that held the wintry coal-smoky air low to the ground to mix with the normal, everyday dose of vehicular and factory air pollution. If the air were a hospital [...]

[Read more →]