Dec 15 2007
BJ’s buildings go bold for Games
.. .. But Xiao Mo, a retired architecture researcher at the China Art Academy, says officials have gone too far in trying to impress next year’s visitors. “If guests come to see me it’s okay to clean up the house and get the kids to put some good clothes on, but I shouldn’t throw out my table and chairs, buy a new sofa and end up suffering money problems,” Mr Xiao says.
Like other local architectural experts, he is upset that many of Beijing’s most striking new buildings are the creation of foreign designers, without any obviously “Chinese” features.
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Beijing is rushing out a tremendous among of eye-popping architectural structures that generated headlines around the world. But the locals aren’t impressed, and even criticising it. And most of the symbolic ones aren’t designed by Chinese, like the CCTV and the free-standing dome all by da French. Didn’t the Frenchies marched down the Changan Jie in 1860 that drove the emperor Xianfeng (1831-1861) out of town, and soon died in Jehol, some 230 km fm Forbidden City? The sentiment of those memories are vivid and China is still nursing those wounds openly, then why didn’t Beijing have their own architects to design, or invite someone like I M Pei? Pei did some, but nothing grand - ok, he might not care to do those monster buildings that would destroyed the courtyard houses in the area in the process .. .. - but there ought to be someone else around, right??. BJ thinks that Chinese aren’t good enough? The French isn’t particularly known for engineering, perfume and dress maybe ..