An Olympic All-access Pass?

Last month, the government issued what may prove to be a stunning announcement in advance of the Olympics: starting this month, journalists seeking interviews with government officials need only obtain the permission of the officials themselves. Up until now, landing an interview as a foreign journalist required advance preparation, patience, and permission from on high—three things journalists aren’t exactly in love with. At least until October 2008, when the new rules are meant to end, this reporter could, theoretically, dial up the president on the old red phone without having to go through all those pesky handlers. “Hu, a quick one: who would dominate the balance beam—Zhang Ziyi or Li Gong?” I wouldn’t ask that question of course, because I already know what he’d say.

Which raises the question: just how earth-shattering is this policy shift if everything else remains the same. If officials know that someone up above is still listening, will they really turn into ragingly candid interviewees, letting loose on everything from China’s prospects on the 100 meter dash to civil society? The very same day the new rules were announced, a city court denied an appeal by Zhao Yan, a New York Times researcher, of his three-year prison sentence, which many see as an attempt by the government to dissuade Chinese reporters from going “foreign.”

The rules also allow reporters to travel freely in China without official permission, but what happens if the local police don’t know the rules? “As long as local authorities are adequately briefed, it shouldn’t be that difficult to carry out,” says Melinda Liu, president of the Foreign Correspondents Club. Less ambiguous perhaps is the repeal of television limitations, which formerly meant that all satellite signals had to go through China Central Television. “There have been ‘technical difficulties’ with broadcasts in the past,” says Norman Bottorff, manager for the AP’s television operation in China. “If we have our own uplink equipment then there will be no one monitoring our broadcasts.”

The outlined regulations had the press corps stroking their chins at the thought of their new prospects, especially when Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said, “We want to create an enabling environment for foreign journalists.” And in an ideal world, what would “enabled” foreign reporters do with this newly granted freedom? tbj canvassed Chinese and foreign freelance journalists, wire correspondents and reporters including AP TV, National Public Radio and The Hollywood Reporter for a correspondents’ holiday wish list.

“Tibet and Xinjiang. It would be nice to be able to go to these places without having to pretend to be a tourist.”

“Three gorges stories. I'd go to places where people are being relocated, or the places near the gorges where people have just moved back.”

“I'd like to be able to stay overnight in a village. These days, if you're a foreigner, especially a journalist, somebody shows up and tells you to go to the nearest hotel.”

“A tour of Zhongnanhai. Or army bases. I've applied for some. I would obviously like to do an elite unit; paratroopers or something that. We can't get access to any of them currently.”

“I'd like to hire a Chinese reporter, as opposed to just a news assistant.”

“No more 'technical difficulties' with satellite broadcasts. That shouldn't be a problem if we have our own uplink equipment.”

“Sitting on a film bureau censor's meeting. They're a rotating group of senior cadres, but nobody knows who they are. Basically a star chamber for the movie industry.”

“The ability to go to Shandong, to interview Chen Guangcheng, the blind activist. Find out … what's going on with his case. Now, if you try to get into the village, they … send you away.”

“We could have a piece of paper, a regulation in Chinese that I can show to local county level provincial level officials or cops saying that I should be there.”

“I'll head straight to the AIDS villages in Hebei.”

“Well, just to keep things related to the Games, as the government hopes, how about a story just around the time of the Paralympics on the lack of handicapped wheelchair ramps in every major city throughout China?”

City Scene: An Ocean Beneath Our Feet

China’s capital has no shortage of environmental woes: rivers are disappearing, land is sinking, and now the government is spending RMB 100 billion to build an aqueduct to transport water from the Yangtze River. Come spring’s sandstorms, the place starts to resemble the lost, and very parched and sandy city of Petra. But underneath it all, deep within the bedrock below, lies … an ocean?

Well, sort of. “We used the word ‘ocean’ to describe the approximate volume of how much water we think might be contained inside this attenuation anomaly,” explains Jesse Lawrence, a researcher from the University of California at San Diego who discovered the geological mystery dubbed the “Beijing anomaly.” It may sound like a baddie from a horror flick, but the anomaly is in fact an enormous layer of water-infused rock, deep beneath eastern Asia.

Rather than discovering water, Lawrence and his former professor, Michael Wysession, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, happened upon it via seismic measurements from around the planet, through a process Lawrence likens to listening to muffled music through a wall. They noticed that seismic waves traveling beneath Asia appear to slow down and dampen, or attenuate, in a big way. A distortion this huge, says Lawrence, can only mean the Big Dumpling is sitting on rocks full of water – an ocean’s worth of it.

But how did it ever get down there? And (wonders the wily entrepreneur) how on earth do we get at it? Lawrence explains that water seeps down from the earth’s surface to the earth’s depths through a quarter-billion-year process called subduction. Typically, water trapped in rock begins its return to the surface after sinking 200 kilometers, eventually to escape through volcanoes and other fissures. In this case, however, slabs of cooler, water-enriched minerals beneath us have continued downwards to depths of 600 to 1,200 km, taking about 13-20 million years to do so, Lawrence estimates.

Eventually, at such infernal depths, the rocks destabilize, releasing water that later reenters the earth’s surface water cycle. Of the impact on Beijing, says Lawrence, “the anomaly is deeper than the deepest earthquakes, so no fear there.” But the depths are so great that the chance of squeezing water out of them is as tiny as the percentage of water trapped in the rocks – about 0.1 % by weight. “Even if we could reach these depths,” says Lawrence, “it would be nearly impossible to extract the H2O from the minerals. Desert sands likely have as much or more water.” Nonetheless, given the capital’s increasing lack of liquid, perhaps it’s time to start digging. Alex Pasternack

Chik it out!

Music Review: !!!

Myth Takes

If there’s a modern soundtrack to the kind of wanton behavior witnessed at sweaty, shirtless, college dance parties, Myth Takes deserves a place on it. Previous records from the aptly-named dance-punk outfit (pronounced with three clucks of the tongue) had bursts of brilliance but couldn’t match the live performances, wherein seven men armed with searing guitars, horns and a trance-inducing rhythm section back up the indefatigable, party-starting Nic Offer. But that consistent live energy is sprinkled all over this new record, from the twangy, tribal title track to the album’s spacey, funky centerpiece, the courtship treatise Heart of Hearts. If it occasionally gets to be a bit repetitive, well, then you’re listening too hard … and not dancing hard enough!!! Alex Pasternack

Green architecture in China

I'm growing increasingly interested in the developing -- and from an energy and environmental vantage-point, crucial -- story of green building in China. Here's how the director of the wonderful documentary Design:e2 sees things:



One piece I wrote at Isabel Hilton's invaluable web magazine China Dialogue starts constructing one version of the story:

Years before China completed its first certified green building, a team from Beijing went to meet with engineers in the US to discuss environmentally-friendly design. But when the Chinese team showed some early sketches to their American colleagues, the response was not what they were expecting.

The American engineers said the plans were completely unworkable – the lighting design, water systems, ventilation and so on would all to be redone. This setback left Gao Lin, the lead Chinese architect on the project, “looking completely shell shocked,” recalls Robert Watson, a senior scientist with the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council, who advises the Chinese government on green construction. “He blinked and looked at me and said, ‘It’s like I’m seeing architecture for the first time.’”

Recently, I've followed up a little bit at Treehugger:

... as Beijing's 3rd annual international green building expo rolls into town, some recent developments have lifted our optimism for green building in China. First, after declaring it would stick to its goal of reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent by 2010, the government passed a draft law during last week's National People's Congress supporting a "circular economy" that would wed the "three Rs" with China's development...

Meanwhile, a new energy-efficient growth model (with possible new resource taxes) aims to tame that development, which is unsustainable now matter how you look at it. And then there was the passage of China's first property law, which could pave the way, so to speak, for smarter growth. Of course, no solution to China's problems is now possible without the participation of the market. No wonder that the state-run English daily carried a front page headline yesterday urging private developers to comply with current building laws and go green. The developers in China—and green capitalists everywhere—better be listening. “If the government has a policy, develops a standard and enforces it, then the market has to react,” says Yong Tao, a professor spearheading the US entry to a green housing showcase that will open alongside the Beijing "Green" Olympics next year. For a green construction market, he says, “the potential is there.” That's the thinking behind Beijing's 3^rd annual green building expo, which starts today. Slowly--slowly--green energy is building.

Stay tuned/

Is the (Architecture) Party Over?

A stadium modeled after a birds’ nest, a z-shaped skyscraper, the largest airport in the world and an opera house that looks like an egg. Approved in the wake of Beijing’s Olympics win and China’s entry into the WTO and still unfinished, buildings like these, each by a renowned foreign architect, are already helping shape Beijing of the future.

But they could soon become things of the past. An “opinion” released last month by the Ministry of Construction and four other government bodies seeks greater restrictions on large-scale public building projects—an edict apparently aimed at outlandish and costly designs by foreign architects.

above, the proposed ren building in Shanghai, by Dutch firm PLOT

“In recent years, in some places there's been a fever for international tenders for major public buildings, especially landmark projects,” said an unnamed spokesman, according to the Chinese government's official Web site, gov.cn. “Some foreign architects are divorced from China's national conditions and single-mindedly pursue novelty, oddity and uniqueness.”

While the beginning of the decade saw rampant rubber-stamping of ambitious construction and development projects, the central government has lately sought to cut down on wasteful projects in an attempt to rein in economic growth and reduce energy use.

“Some local governments aren't acting in the interest of national conditions and financial strength, crave unrealistic 'achievement projects' or 'image projects', don't emphasize conservation of energy and resources, or use too much land,” said the document, avoiding specifics.

Among those welcoming the new provisions was Peng Peigen, a professor of architecture at Tsinghua University who has been China’s most outspoken critic of “bad and ugly” foreign architecture. The document, which he hailed as a “major decision,” could reach provincial and municipal levels within two years. “But,” he said, “it will take eight to ten years to heal the wounds to the city’s morphology.”

For years, Peng and a group of Chinese architects have captivated the press and national leaders with their publicity campaigns against some of Beijing’s biggest foreign projects. For instance, he says Herzog and de Meuron’s National Stadium is oppressive in form, wasteful for its use of steel, and at odds with Beijing’s layout. (The design beat Peng’s own Olympic submission, which positioned a flowering stadium directly along the city’s central axis.)

But Peng’s public enemy no. 1 is Paul Andreu’s Grand National Theater—dubbed the “ducks’ egg” by some—which he says is extravagant and grossly out of touch with its surroundings. Last year, he wrote to Premier Wen Jiabao criticizing it and other of China’s “monsters” by foreign architects who see China as a “new weapons testing ground.”

Still, Peng, who is a Canadian citizen, is quick to point out that some of his favorite buildings are foreign-made, including Adrian Smith’s iconic Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, and even Herzog and de Meuron’s tubular Munich Allianz Arena, which he says is much lighter and more efficient than their Beijing stadium. “[We’re against] architecture that’s bad,” he said. “It’s not because it’s foreign.”

But the new document places a premium on domestic submissions for construction and design plans over the work of foreigners. Until very recently, foreign architecture companies were required to cooperate with local design firms on any project. While the requirement was meant to encourage exchange and provide checks, most foreign architects have lamented the cultural and technical hurdles of working with China’s quickly developing architectural sector.

But despite the challenges, local partnerships are key, said John Pauline of Australian architects PTW. His team worked with a local design firm to develop the National Aquatics Center, nicknamed the “Watercube,” said to be the public’s favorite Olympic design. “It’s almost impossible to do architectural work here without collaboration,” he said. “And if we hadn’t collaborated, the Watercube wouldn’t look anything like the way it does.”

Hoping it isn’t the start of a wider, stricter campaign against foreign designs, Pauline sees the government’s warning as part of a growing process. He recalls how Sydney’s famous Opera House was met with public uproar in the 1950s, especially for its Danish pedigree. “‘Why are you taking work from Australian architects?’ people wondered then. Now you wouldn’t find one person who would say that,” he said. “It’s just something you have to embrace.”

“Foreign architects, whether they be European, Korean, Japanese, improve Beijing, they don’t set it back in terms of aesthetics,” he said. “The more you’ve got the better off you are.”

A version of this ran in That's Beijing HOME in April 2007

How to Repel the Sand

something i wrote for that's Beijing last June, but soon, too soon it will be relevant again (I'm hiding behind the curtains).

In the old days, village officials in China’s arid north would pray to the gods for rain. These days, when rainfall is badly needed to end droughts – or, increasingly, to clean up the city in advance of Beijing’s “Green Olympics” – the government doesn’t need to offer sacrifices to the heavens: it shoots chemicals at them with anti-aircraft cannons.

While China has been using rainmaking technology since the 1980s to stem droughts, the worst rash of sandstorms to hit Beijing in a decade has given officials new cause for aiming at the skies: giving the city a good rinse. After the roughest of last month’s sand attacks dumped 330,000 tons of sand on the city, the government responded by launching seven rocket shells and burning 163 pieces of “cigarette-like sticks” containing silver iodide. And voila! “The heaviest rainfall in Beijing this spring,” reported Xinhua.

While the effects of rainmaking on local ecosystems and health still remain unknown, there’s something disconcerting about forced rainfall (and it’s not just because cleaning the city apparently must involve chemical apparatus suggestive of a cigarette). “It’s a passive solution, it’s not a solution at all,” says Wen Bo, the local representative for the San Francisco-based group Pacific Environment. Like the “green wall” of trees currently being built to shield Beijing from sand, Wen says rainmaking is at best a quick fix to the sandstorms, which magnify the health dangers of the city’s already heavy smog. Beach weather in Beijing would be better addressed, Wen says, by local governments in nearby Hebei and Inner Mongolia making greater efforts to improve irrigation and vegetation practices and replanting trees.

Complicating the matter, as two recent government studies demonstrate, is disagreement over the cause of sandstorms. One study blames traditional spring ploughing techniques, which loosen topsoil prior to planting, while another identifies the routes that such storms take to reach Beijing, pinpointing the origin not in Chinese farmlands but in the deserts of Mongolia. Whatever the causes may be, Wen worries that rainmaking in Beijing threatens to “wash away not just the dirt, but people’s memory” of the actual problem – a case of saving face, but not necessarily the environment. Alex Pasternack

Arcade Fire: Neon Bible

I can brag that I saw Arcade Fire just after the release of their debut album Funeral, because like the record, that crowded, sweaty night was the clarion call for nothing short of an indie-rock rebirth. Of course Win Butler and Co. band made no attempt to hide their debt to proto indie-rockers like David Byrne or David Bowie or even Bono, all of whom would come to give props or even join them on stage for their second tour (that time through, they sold out the sports arena). And rightly so: for a long while afterwards, little else could touch Funeral’s gorgeously bittersweet energy, a rag-tag marching-band spirit that made death sound lovely. But the after-life, as told on this follow-up, ain’t so sweet. The majestic cities and long loves that coursed through the first album have been upended by wars, hurricanes and other current disquietudes, amongst which Butler’s soaring, heartbroken yowl and the band’s orchestral flourishes are searching for at least a momentary escape. Turning from MTV to the hope of “World War III,” our narrator insists on “Windowsill,” “I don’t want to live in my father’s house no more” and “I don’t want to live in America no more,” just before the triumphal percussion rolls in. Whatever may be missing of the first album’s majesty, whatever sonic novelty may be lost here and whatever despair may be gained, Neon Bible is proof that hope remains, at least for innovative rock music.

Imperial labrynth

Movie Review: Inland Empire

Directed by David Lynch

Like Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire is a place name in that strange American fun-house of a town, Los Angeles. But instead of snaking, it sprawls, and of course it’s much farther from the comfort of shore.

So we find ourselves in Lynch’s new Dadaist horror masterpiece, which he filmed on grainy digital video and (gulp) without a script. Perhaps the plainest indication of what we’re in for is that the movie isn’t even set in its eponymous locale. Whereas Mulholland Drive had Internet message boards buzzing with theories as to its Gordian-knot plot, Inland Empire is a movie best contemplated in the Internet of one’s own dreams … or nightmares. Only here can our interpretations fail gracefully, dissolving into psychedelic fuzz or falling down rabbit holes – much as the heroine does throughout.

At the beginning of the movie, Nikki Grace, an obscure film actress (Laura Dern), lets in a strange visitor. The awkward conversation that ensues is as hilarious as it is frightening, setting the stage for all the sublime discomfort to come. The woman’s two ominous parables, one about the birth of evil and the other about a girl who gets lost at the marketplace, both nod to the freakish Hollywood world that Lynch’s movie concerns and inhabits.

Nikki has just landed a new role (enter Justin Theroux and Jeremy Irons) in a movie called On High in Blue Tomorrows, which, of course, is cursed. But we’re cursed too as we follow her through the slippery worlds of the movie set, suburban barbeques, tripped-out whorehouses, an assortment of anonymous women in trouble and an apartment inhabited by a family of catatonic rabbits. Unlike the real Inland Empire, so I’m told, this one is a very fine place to get lost. Alex Pasternack

Pulling Up Architecture By the Boot

OMA’s 'fun palace' in the Central Business District

While the twisting, otherworldly shape of Beijing’s new Central Business District landmark, the CCTV Tower, took months of head-scratching effort by engineers and designers to develop, the look of its lesser-known sister structure, the Television Cultural Center, or TVCC, was reportedly birthed in a eureka moment. On a trip in Italy in 2002, Rem Koolhaas, the famous lead architect, faxed a quick sketch of the design—resembling a dramatic, angular boot—to the Rotterdam headquarters of his Office of Metropolitan Architecture. His design team quickly got down to work. But ironing out the details of the building, which will house a luxury hotel and various public functions, would turn out to be a challenging affair to rival that of its physics-defying sibling.

“In a way, TVCC proved more challenging to the team than CCTV,” said an OMA designer in charge of the project, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the project. While the careful geometry of the CCTV building, which is thought to be one of the world's most complex buildings, afforded little modification, she said, TVCC's relatively free-form design and various practical needs gave way to bouts of head-scratching. "The building has so many functions, and putting them together in a way that looks chaotic but with actually considerable logic, that was very hard.'

Adding to the challenge, the designer notes, was the firm's special brand of perfectionism, and the pressure that comes with building next to one of the world's most highly-anticipated buildings. 'It was a case of OMA fighting against itself, of trying to create with an equivalent sense of quality or perfection as CCTV.'

Challenges aside, the building was always meant to be a more lighthearted, pleasurable affair than its hulking sibling next door. Nicknamed the “fun palace” by OMA for its orientation toward public cultural events, the TVCC will house a 300 room luxury hotel (the developer is said to be in talks with Mandarin Oriental), restaurants and spas, recording studios and a 1,500-seat theater that can be used for televised events.

Most of the functions meant to serve the people are housed in the strange geometry of the first four floors, while the 'leg' of the boot contains a central 20-story tall atrium and the hotel's suites. Each room protrudes from the building's facade like randomly-arranged shoeboxes--a scheme, according to co-architect Ole Scheeren, inspired by a termite’s nest.

While its central concrete section was completed in January, workers will spend the months until the building's opening late this year applying finishing touches and adding the structure's unique outer skin. For that section, which craws across the building from east to west, the architects chose titanium zinc alloy, a material that will rust with a certain dignity, giving the building a bronzy, matte surface and providing a protective layer. "This will endure time better than other metal buildings," she said.

Already, the building is a starkly iconoclastic addition to the otherwise conventional skyline of the Central Business District. To its designers at least, it’s provided a much-wanted thrill. "It's almost a miracle, after four years of hard work, to see the building stand up against the skyline," said the architect. And while it may not be able to compete with CCTV in terms of sheer drama, the shape of the building should eventually prove to be a welcome, more expressive complement to the strong geometry of its serious older sister.

While CCTV won't be finished by the time TVCC opens, in December 2007, it is expected that the larger building's main structure will be finished by the Olympics. ‘The current plan is that during the Olympics, you would see the CCTV building stand in complete façade,” said the OMA designer. While time will tell what the TVCC’s experimental design will mean on an everyday level for those inside the building, one thing is clear: the view is certain to be awesome.

Quincy Has a Jones For China

When Quincy Jones came to town in late May—to announce, according to a press release, that he would “write songs for Beijing Olympic Games”—That’s Beijing naturally had a hundred questions to ask the 71-time Grammy Award jazz nominee, media impresario, and Michael Jackson producer. What sort of songs would he write? Would the songs be used during ping-pong or wrestling matches? Would your songs certainly be used? How do you keep your white suit so clean? How’s Michael doing, and when could we expect him to come to town, too? When you told reporters in Shanghai that you hoped to “see the people, enjoy the music, touch the land, taste the food and even smell the air," did you also mean in Beijing?

Just as we nervously started to shoot off a few of these questions in the sleek lobby of Beijing’s Olympic Tower, the otherwise animated Mr. Jones, 73, fell silent, escorted That’s Beijing away from his entourage, and calmly grabbed our pen and notebook to scrawl a note in slightly shaky handwriting. “NOME SANE” it read. Given the circumstances, it seemed like it could have been code for “where’s the nearest exit?”

“Um, uhh. What is this? ‘Nome sane’?” That’s Beijing squinted, raising its sunglasses.

Quincy kept his on, and spoke the words. “Know what I’m sayin’?”

It was cool, strange, amusing, and cryptic. In other words, it was like any a public statement by the Beijing Olympic committee, except in jive.

And probably just as well. Before they began their press conference, Mr. Jones, Jiang Xiaoyu, the executive vice-president of Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), and a gaggle of advisors held a quick planning meeting in a side room. There, it quickly became clear that neither side quite knew what Mr. Jones’ involvement would be.

Mr. Jiang seemed to explain that Mr. Jones’s song wouldn’t necessarily be used during the Olympics. Or perhaps it would.

At another point, when discussing his exact involvement, Mr. Jones leaned in. “You don’t understand. When you have someone do the theme music for the Olympics, they do both the composing and the orchestration!” Hearing the translation, the Chinese contingent smiled and shifted in their chairs. That was not part of the plan.

“I just want to figure out what to say when I’m on the air,” said Mr. Jones. So we, the press, could know what he's saying.

The preparations for the 2008 Games—from building the stadiums to tackling the traffic problem—are many and complex, and choosing the music is no exception. While every Games employs the original Olympics theme song, “Bugler's Dream,” a fanfare written in the 1950s by a French composer named Leo Arnaud, each host city traditionally chooses another piece of music to mark their turn. Or in the case of Beijing, a few: the “Song for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games,” the "Song for Volunteers of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games” and the “Theme Song for Volunteers of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.”

To choose just the right songs—and theme song—the organizers are running an open competition that has just entered its fourth round and will continue until 2008. So far more than 500 pieces of music and 5000 lyric works have been contributed; Mr. Jiang seemed to say that, once finished, Mr. Jones’s song would be thrown onto the pile too.

But what kind of theme song would Mr. Jones, who has won 23 Grammy awards, submit? First of all, he explained, he would be working on theme music, not a theme song. Hmm? “Let me ask you this, do you know the words to Star Wars?” He da-daa-dahed the famous theme by John Williams (an erstwhile Olympics theme composer himself). “You catch my drift? Theme music, it doesn’t have words—theme songs do.”

The jazz master, who has collaborated with Miles Davis, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, and who was encouraged to submit a song by pal Jackie Chan, would not be accepting money for his piece. “This is not about [making] money. I've already done that.” While he hasn’t started writing it yet, he said he imagined his theme would be a “global gumbo,” incorporating pop music, western themes, and of course, traditional Chinese stuff. “I love that instrument, the one with the strings,” he said pantomiming the guzheng, the Chinese zither.

But that certainly wasn’t all the impresario loved of China, which was “awesome,” he told a room full of reporters. “I've several times considered selling my home in California and staying here. Between the food, and the culture, and the beautiful people—the beautiful ladies, incredible ladies, the most beautiful, beautiful women I've ever seen in my life, whaaaaow! Oh, good God. I don't know how you're going to translate that.”

He said he was going to spread the word about China among his friends, certainly a not unimpressive group (Bill, Mandela, Kofi, and Sean were among those mentioned). “You can rest assured, you have a great ambassador.”

Sadly, in addition to leaving un-assured about his precise involvement in the Olympics, That’s Beijing missed its chance to ask Mr. Jones about Mr. Jackson. Would he be coming to the Olympics? Given the one-time King of Pop’s recent tour of Asia, and Jones’ star-drawing abilities, we think we might know the answer. Nome sane?

a version of this piece ran in That's Beijing, July 2006

Front of the Bus

The traffic in Beijing is so bad, it is said that even its most efficient denizens can only accomplish one task per day. Hoping to change that local wisdom, the Beijing Municipal Committee of Transportation managed to do a few things one day in late December: it announced new bus fares, a reorganization of the bus network, and a massive increase in public transit spending, all aimed at transforming Beijing’s uncomfortable but necessary relationship with the bus.


Beijing buses a move

While much hullabaloo has been made over the city’s future (and perennially under-construction) subway lines, which have received as much as 80 percent of transit spending in recent years, the city has decided to place unprecedented emphasis on the city’s buses, which have long been a symbol of Beijing crowdedness and inefficiency. Though Beijing’s buses serve 10 million passengers per day, 3.5 times more than the subways, traffic-weary officials are desperate to make bus riding more common—or even, somehow, cool.

“We are trying to make using public transportation fashionable for Beijing citizens," Liu Xiaoming, a transportation bureau spokesman, told reporters.

Since last month, Beijing bus riders have only needed to fork over 1 yuan (12 U.S. cents) per ride, instead of the distance-based fares that once set riders back anywhere as much as 4 kuai. In addition, the transportation bureau announced that over one hundred overlapping lines within the third ring road will be axed; the 1,500 buses currently driving those routes will be relocated to connect the more than 300 communities that lie outside Beijing proper. The city will also be injecting 1.3 billion RMB (166 million dollars) into Beijing’s bus companies this year.

Perhaps the city’s most controversial decision under the “buses first” plan—-to eliminate the city’s half-century-old bus passes—is supposed to make way for two new electronic smart cards: a monthly pass allowing commuters 140 trips for 45 RMB and a deposit card that offers a 20-percent discount on bus trips. But the death of the bus pass, instituted as part of the city’s social welfare system in the 1950s, might as well have been an attempt to shed the bus’s rusty image.

“In the past, bus transit has been viewed as an inferior transit system compared with subway and light rail,” said Jin Fan , director of the China Sustainable Transportation Center.

The new attempt to pump life back into the bus system also comes after a decade of what many experts agree has been a dramatically unbalanced approach to the city’s transit investment, with its large focus on building roads for the city’s exploding car traffic. “The Chinese central government now recognizes the urgency to restore balance to this equation,” Jin said.

Just how much a change in that equation will affect Beijing’s increasing love for the car is even less clear than the air over the 2nd ring road on a spring day. Some wonder, for instance, whether lowering the bus fare by a kuai or two will really attract those who can already afford to drive. Ten days after the fare reduction, sources at bus companies said the number of passengers had not increased dramatically.

Meanwhile, the transportation bureau estimates that the cost of the fare reduction will be at least 1.3 billion yuan—money, some experts argue, that could have been better spent on more crucial improvements, such as bus frequency and quality. If it hopes to get through its transportation bottleneck, experts agree that Beijing must take a holistic approach to public transit, after a model like Singapore.

“They’ve focused on the quality of their transit service, the timing, the punctuality, comfort, and implemented a set of complimentary policies to entice people to use transit rather than cars,” said Song Yan, an urban planning expert. Such measures include gas taxes, a congestion pricing system for cars entering the city center, and a quota on imported cars. Though Beijing already places a high tax on foreign imports, officials say they have no other plans to reduce cars in the city. “When you have one policy, even when implemented to a full extent, it wouldn’t necessarily do that much,” Song says. “You need a whole package of policies.”

One policy officials hope will make bus riding more attractive is bus rapid transit, or BRT. Increasingly popular among city planners and environmentalists alike, such a system simply relies on dedicated lanes with few stoplights and sleek, double-length buses. “It is as fast, reliable, comfortable and easy-to-use as a rail-based system, but is more flexible and can be built more quickly at a fraction of the cost,” said Jin Fan. Reducing traffic for buses also increases fuel efficiency and reduces the idling that leads to nasty emissions. Last summer, the World Bank reported that the single BRT line that Beijing currently operates, running south starting at Qianmen, can shave over 20 minutes off what would otherwise be an hour-long commute. The city is building three more lines.

Officials have also announced plans for a series of transportation hubs and low-fee parking lots to make transit connections easier and discourage car use within the city. “This is just the first step of our reform,” said Li, the transportation director. “We will make adjustments as we implement the plan.”

In other words, like much else in Beijing, solving the city’s public transit will take much longer than a day.

A City Within the City

Architect Li Hu's Mega Hall Moma project emphasizes public spaces and green design

Beijing is vanishing, the architect Li Hu said one recent evening. It might have sounded like a sensational statement you would expect to hear from one of China's leading architects. The partner-in-charge of Steven Holl Architects in Beijing slid over to the window at his office at the Mega Hall Moma, a luxury apartment development near Dongzhimen, and peered into an empty courtyard.

“There's no coffee shop near here,” the 33-year-old architect said. “The office can't just go out after work for a drink. There's a massage parlor, and that's it.” The firm's office comes rent-free from its client, which owns the development, largely because it can't be rented. “No one wants to work in a gated community,” he says. “And nobody want to live in one either.”

The rush in recent years to buy upscale property around the Central Business District, or anywhere near the city center, over once-popular suburbs like Shunyi, may prove his point. And yet, he explains, in a city growing at the speed of over half a million people a year, the word central has started to lose meaning. “Beijing's turning into a giant suburb,” he says, lamenting the street life that's vanished in the process. “Everywhere in China, the city is disappearing.”

Li Hu's not being sensationally gloomy, nor does it seem, could he be. This is his statement of purpose. When he and his partner and mentor, the American architect Steven Holl, were asked to build a sibling to Mega Hall Moma, the architects might have just mimicked the successful enclave of sleek luxury towers. But Holl and Li Hu set their sights higher--or, more precisely, in-between, as in the spaces that separate buildings, and separate buildings from people.

“How to bring back the street life of the old city under a new modern design, that was our idea,” Li Hu says, with unfriendly words for the very “super block” zoning and hutong-killing development that makes his building possible. “There are certain things we can't change,” he explains, including the placement of the actual buildings, which were planned by a different architect. But to make the best of the situation, the 210,000 square-meter site beckons the public not only with shops and cafes, but a patchwork of green space, becoming what the architects call a city within a city. “We're injecting a different system onto the existing grid.”

No wonder the Linked Hybrid, or “Modern MoMA” as it's been branded, looks unlike any apartment building in Beijing - nor anywhere else for that matter. Its eight 20-storey towers of apartments and commercial space are connected by gently sloping footbridges, which allow free circulation between shops, cafes, a health club, and exhibition spaces. The elevated plaza in the middle features a reflecting pool, a series of gardens, a four-screen cinema with an outdoor projection and a hotel, from which anyone can enter the bridge loop.

Brochures call the design “filmic,” which somehow captures the dramatic sweep of the buildings, with their silver facades and colorful film-frame windows, as they swirl around in a walk-able storyline. But the non-linear design emphasizes surprise and disjuncture too, the random relationships and occurrences more typical of a city than a standard Beijing apartment block. “It's not just about convenience,” Li Hu says of the building's connectivity, “but about the connection between people.” In that sense, the building vaguely resembles a ring of dancers celebrating the public space at their feet.

Still, considering that the apartments' current price tag (RMB 7.3 million on average) is over three hundred times greater than a typical Beijinger's yearly income, some might wonder if the dancers are merely trampling on everyday Beijing rather than cheering it. Li Hu doesn't just acknowledge the irony of a luxury public space in a city like this; he sees the mix of public and private uses as the project's central challenge, and its raison d'etre. Mention the building's sex appeal, and he gets uncomfortable. His architecture is not “sexy,” he urges - it's social.

Li Hu's and Holl's other big project, a mixed-use development in Shenzhen that will house the offices of Chinese mainland real estate developer Vanke, embraces a social role too. The snaking, cubist aluminum structure, what Li Hu calls a “horizontal skyscraper,” floats above the ground on pillars, creating a large public space beneath. At a time when public space is competing with private development, Li Hu sees such designs as vital. “How do you convince private developers to make a social contribution?” he ponders.

Similar questions prompted him to start his own firm with his wife, the architect Huang Wenjing, in 2002. For now, Open Architecture Studio's affordable and modular housing designs remain the subject of research, though Li Hu speaks of actual construction (and of future full-time work on his own firm) with a sense of urgency. “Architects tend to only serve the top classes,” he says. “We're trying to make architecture available to everyone.”

With the Linked Hybrid, the architect's ambitions are no less grand: “We want to change how people live, react, relate, and interact with other people.” It was an ambition that the developer, the Modern Land Group, didn't exactly share. At certain points, everything from the bridges, which test the limits of building code, to the mix of commercial and residential space to the project's openness, was questioned. “There was no desire, no activity, no support for this,” he says of the client, and a campaign of “educating and fighting” ensued. Even as costs have risen, Li Hu says he's not made a single compromise in the design. Still, he adds, “we're still trying to convince them today.”

Such determination is one of the biggest clues to Li Hu's background. After graduating from the architecture department at Tsinghua University, he left his hometown of Beijing to spend ten years abroad, first at Rice University in Houston, then in Princeton and in New York, working for Steven Holl. The experience in the U.S. and New York in particular (where he lives part-time) not only heightened his appreciation for good urban design; it raised his suspicions of government planning boards and demanding clients - two staples of China's architectural scene. “They criticize me for not knowing their way of working,” Li Hu says of pesky apparatchiks. “And I don't want to work that way.”

One thing that both architect and developer could agree on from the start was that the building should have a light “environmental footprint” (impact). Green space covers almost every flat surface, from the roof gardens to the seven mounds of the central plaza. The pond water there is constantly recycled along with the building's wastewater, and displacement ventilation ducts embedded in apartment floors circulate fresh air and reduce heat loss while pipes in the concrete slab ceilings provide super-efficient temperature control. Underneath the site sits one of the world's largest geothermal systems, an array of hundreds of 100-meter wells that draw heat to the apartments in the winter and pull heat out in the summer, eliminating the need for boilers or electrical air conditioners.

The green focus has garnered a nod from Popular Science and earned the building a coveted US Green Building Council LEED pre-certification, one of a handful in China. “We did everything you can imagine in one residential building.”

But Li Hu is less interested in the technology inside the buildings than the life in-between them. The Linked Hybrid's “city within a city” approach not only reorients the urban scene to a human scale, but also attempts to make cars obsolete for its residents. “Saving the environment,” says Li Hu, “that dimension is much larger than a geothermal system,” he says. “It's about density, and public transportation, and your lifestyle.” He hopes that the building's philosophy will soon provide a low-cost model for future low-cost housing in the city.

Whether Beijing can embrace an approach to development that's just as holistic and hybrid, will depend on the collaborations of city planners, developers and architects, he says. “Saving the city is not an individual effort.” What role he and his building will play ultimately depends on the city's biggest interest group: the public. “If you create a space that works, there's a potential for people to use it,” he says. “And then it will not be doomed.”

a version of this article appeared in that's Beijing HOME

Crash

Babel

Directed by Alejandro Iñarritu

To harsher critics, Babel might seem like just that. Mexican director Alejandro Iñarritu’s new film takes to an extreme the jumbled recipe of films like Traffic and Crash: loosely-connected storylines swirling around heavy social issues, painted in epic brushstrokes. As with his earlier Amores Perros and 21 Grams, Iñarritu adds to this his butterfly-effect existentialism, by which whatever thing happens here will end up changing the world over there. In this case, the here and there are Morocco, Tokyo and the border between the US and Mexico (each shot on location, remarkably). While only one is a literal boundary, Babel tells us that unseen borders threaten to divide us everywhere – from those people we don’t know, those we know best and even from ourselves.

Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, who play an emotionally-estranged couple on an African vacation, wear no makeup as they struggle through their own calamity, a choice that matches Iñarritu’s love of close-ups and gritty, high-contrast images of alien locales. Except for the scenes in Tokyo, the film’s most moving portion, Iñarritu’s style almost threatens to distract from the movie itself.

Though the chaos it portrays may seem bewildering and overwhelming, the movie seems to be saying that confusion is inevitable. Even if they speak the same language, people don’t hear each other, and that slightest disconnection can unleash anarchy upon the world. Alex Pasternack

Beijing Goes Underground

Fulbright scholar Jason Lee was overheard at a house party last month waxing enthusiastic about one of Beijing’s newest subway lines. “I mean, listen to this. I’m going to be able to go from Zhichun Lu to everything I’d wanna do: Gongti, Guanghua Lu, Guomao … ”

Lee’s ebullience didn’t exactly rub off on the party’s other guests, but his excitement is understandable. While only subway lines four, five and ten will be finished for the Olympics, officials recently announced that when the subway expansion is complete in the year 2020, it will include 22 lines and stretch to 561 kilometers, overtaking London’s and New York City’s subways as the longest metro system in the world.

But the city isn’t stopping there. Last month it made two other groundbreaking announcements: First, Beijing’s strategic underground city (the network of tunnels that currently weave beneath the Tian’anmen area) is currently being expanded so that by 2012 it will occupy 20 million square meters, making it the world’s largest network of its kind. President Hu Jintao has called it an “important strategic effort” for national security and for the safety of future generations.

Embarrassingly, Beijing’s underground city actually lags 40 years behind that of cities in Europe and the United States. In the event of a sudden large-scale disaster or war, shelters in the Western world can hold 80-90 percent of local citizens, while Beijing’s underground city can currently only provide safety for 8-10 percent of its people.

Another development flying below the radar (unless you attended November’s International Conference on Underground Space): Beijing is exploring the possibility of tripling the city’s 30 million square meters of public underground space “to ease ground traffic congestion, land use tension in downtown areas, and environmental problems.” The plan, proposed by the Beijing Urban Planning Commission, includes construction of six underground expressways by 2020 to further ease traffic congestion, mainly within the Second and Third Ring Roads. Aside from the logistical problems of such a project, Duan Jinyu, director of the transport planning department at Tsinghua University, told tbj it’s misdirected simply because “people don’t feel pleasant in underground space.”

Nevertheless, Jason Lee is looking at the bright side of the underside: “The flexibility of this new transportation will give Beijingers a better lifestyle.” However his excitement over Beijing’s subterranean dreams is somewhat hypothetical, perhaps like the plans themselves. “Actually, I won’t still be around in 2008,” he revealed after the party. “But I live so close to where the subway could be.”

A Real (Estate) Hassle

New regulations aimed at cooling speculation are throwing foreigners for a curve—some say unfairly

The “one residence policy”

A few months ago, Andrew Archison, a technology consultant from California, finally found a place in Beijing he could call his own. Like many of the luxury apartments that appeal to foreigners here, the one-bedroom near Chaoyang Park, in a complex called Chateau Regalia, wasn’t finished yet. Still, without much Chinese and only a scant familiarity with the city, Archison had landed an apartment in the world’s hottest and most convoluted real estate market, a system tangled in an increasing mix of market forces and decades-old government regulations. With “a big smile on my face,” he says, he signed his name and made his requisite down payment.

“Then, the bomb dropped: ‘No sales to non-Chinese citizens,’” the sales manager told him some days later. In his mind, nine weeks of scouting apartments and tens of thousands of renminbi vanished as fast as a block of unprotected hutong [courtyard homes]. He felt helpless. “Can you imagine the horror?”

It might have been just another bump on the rollercoaster ride of Beijing real estate, but Mr. Archinson had actually banged up against a set of regulations issued last summer by the central government aimed especially at stemming foreign property purchases. Intended as an “urgent” measure to cool Beijing’s steaming property market, the rules stipulate that a foreigner must have lived and worked or studied in Beijing for at least a year before buying a new apartment (and soon, perhaps, a second-hand one), and that they may only purchase a single unit for personal use. In addition, any profits from home sales must be registered with the government before being expatriated. The rules also close an old tax loophole by mandating that foreign companies investing in real estate have offices in China, and that foreign companies investing in projects worth more than USD 10 million put up more than half the capital. Though Mr. Archison eventually received his deed through some guanxi-powered rule bending, his housing fate still rests in the hands of the government.

Increasingly, home buyers from abroad are finding themselves similarly caught in a labyrinthine, anti-free market system that some call unfair, and perhaps unproductive. From message boards to boardrooms, foreigners have cried foul, claiming laowai discrimination. “And what if the rest of the world made it illegal for Chinese to purchase real estate?” one Internet comment read soon after the regulation was issued in July.

Experts meanwhile point out that the intention of calming the market is wholesome. “If that’s the aim of the government, it may not be an unreasonable policy to implement,” says Nick Jones, Beijing director of Knight Frank Property Consultants. “The question is whether it will actually work.”

Indeed, no one can question the fact that the need for lower housing prices is especially dire in Beijing – a crunch that officials claim stems from a spate of over-construction at the luxury end of the market and increasing market speculation, especially from abroad. The tent cities that have cropped up outside the Fifth Ring Road are only the most extreme symbols of a costly housing market, and the government has already committed to providing more low-cost apartments. But the greatest brunt of the market’s effects is being borne by a young middle-class, says Wang Xiaowei, a broker with real estate agency 5i5j. “Lots of Beijing’s young professionals, for personal financial reasons, can’t afford a mid-sized apartment at around 45-70 square meters in size,” which, Wang says, are in highest demand. But as much as he hopes for a slight cooling of the market to attract more buyers, Wang is mostly indifferent to the new rules aimed at foreigners – and not because he has few foreign clients. “The real estate market for foreigners is quite minimal, and much of the money coming into the market is from Chinese investors,” he says. “I don’t think [the policies] will work.”

Considering that foreign buyers make up a mere 5 percent of real estate investment in Beijing (and only 12 percent of foreign investment in Beijing real estate goes into residential property), some say the rules are aimed at the wrong people, with little effect on the market at all. “In a way, it’s a public appeal to Chinese sentiment,” says Anna Kalifa, associate director and head of research at real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle, of the government’s move. “There’s this media perception that foreigners are buying up everything, but the fact is that foreigners don’t make up a huge part of the effect.” Instead, domestic investors, and especially locals, are the actual source of the market’s “hot money,” she says. Only 15 percent of investment in the “top luxury category” in Beijing comes from abroad, while 88 percent of all Beijing housing – “the good, the bad and the ugly” – is purchased by Chinese citizens, she adds. “I’ve met many Chinese who own three apartments in Beijing, but I don’t know one foreigner who does.”

Another group of big buyers are Chinese from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. But unlike non-Chinese foreigners, overseas Chinese are not affected by the one-year residency rule. And while the law requires overseas Chinese to use their property for their own use, it’s unclear how that – or the rest of the regulations – will be enforced.

So far, experts say this sort of vagueness has meant that, no matter where you’re from, dodging any of the new regulations is possible, somehow. For Mr. Archison, it was a matter of going to another sales manager, with fingers crossed. “I have no idea what discussions were taking place behind the scenes, but the sales agent assured me it would work out.” Says Kalifa, “a sale is a sale is a sale” to agents, developers and landlords. In other words, where there’s a will – and luck, guanxi and hard cash – there’s a way.

For potential buyers, it’s a question of how much of those things you have. “There’s always going to be a gap” between regulations and enforcement, says Phoebe Gluyas, a manager at property investment firm Sinolink. For instance, banks and landlords – those presumed responsible for enforcing the regulations from the start – are unlikely to keep track of whether an owner is using a property for their own use.

Although they have not necessarily made buying a home impossible for foreigners, the new rules have had one definite effect: purchasing property has certainly become more expensive. “Once there are rules like this, people,” as in real estate agents, lenders, developers and landlords, “can simply demand more money,” says Gluyas. To get around the one-year residency requirement for instance, foreign individuals and companies must arrange to have their purchases registered as assets of a local company, rather than as personal assets. “It’s a loophole we have used before,” says one agent. “Now the prices have just gone up.”

Another deterrent issued last summer has also made things more expensive: the minimum down payment for foreigners purchasing new apartments larger than 90 square meters has been raised from 20 to 30 percent of the unit price. Meanwhile, based on the government’s recommendation, many banks have upped their deposit and lending rates for those intending to take out a mortgage. This is what’s really a pain for foreigners,” says Kalifa. “If you have your eyes set on a home, these sorts of changes would push back your plans a bit.”

Already, buying an apartment in Beijing is a confusing and frustrating process. Littered with multiple bank trips, long waits, and a hefty dose of uncertainty even for the most grizzled China hand, the process is said to take at least a year – six months just to find the right place, plus another six to close the deal. The new national rules only make purchasing more Byzantine, paper-heavy and costly, analysts say, capable of deterring purchases by middle class foreign residents. “People living here for a few years and interested in investing just don’t have the money,” says Kalifa.

For those who do have the money, experts advise homebuyers use added caution – even when sellers promise that the new rules don’t matter. Using an escrow account to transfer payments and a good lawyer with bilingual abilities are two of the most crucial tools. (“And always wait until the seller has the deed in hand before buying,” warns Kalifa). And for those who currently own property, the new regulations may also throw a wrench into future plans. The government has levied a 20 percent capital gains tax on sales of second-hand properties, and imposed a 5.5 percent resell tax on units sold within five years of purchase, up from the previous standard of two years. The new rules also state that foreigners must obtain government approval before repatriating any proceeds of property sales or rentals. And for anyone considering selling their upscale property, the new market restrictions mean they could be selling to a tougher market.

According to recent reports, prices for housing throughout Beijing saw their lowest month-on-month increase on record, .03 percent, in October. Still, say analysts, the market outlook for Beijing remains strong in spite of the new rules. Property prices for upscale housing are expected to continue their rise. “In the real estate market in general, we saw a bit of a quieting-down of the residential luxury sector, but it’s starting to go back up now,” says Oliver Thirwall, a senior real estate manager at institutional investment firm GSS. Buyers’ attention has shifted to second-hand properties, which are currently unaffected by the rules, while demand has remained high even for new property centered around the Central Business District and Finance Street in Xicheng. “I don’t think [a slower rise in sales] is a long term thing at all,” he says.

To many, it’s a sign that the new rules are ineffective. Despite government assurances, the vice-chairman of the Beijing Real Estate Association acknowledged to the China Daily last month that the regulations have achieved little success. In part, experts say, that’s because the property market is so heavily driven by local buyers and developers, whose appetites continue to grow along with the city’s booming economy (13 percent a year) and skyrocketing salaries (11 percent). “You just can’t have that type of growth in massive infrastructure investment and expect the housing market to only grow one percent,” says Kalifa.

In addition, the new restrictions are easily avoided by large companies, which the government partly blames for driving the property boom through their investments in luxury properties. While the cost of doing business may have risen, interest in Beijing’s real estate sector hasn’t faded, and large investors have the capital and expertise to wade through new policies that small buyers do not. But the ones hit hardest may be the small foreign buyers and investors who have lived in Beijing for years and now find themselves lost in a sea of double-talk, added paperwork, and high costs. Says Sinolink’s Glyuas of the rules: “It’s aimed at the wrong people.”

The experience of people like Andrew Archison, the buyer of the apartment near Chaoyang Park, proves just that. “I'm not in this for the speculation … but these types of rules leave a bad impression for someone who wants to invest in the people and the culture of China – the law has made it hard for me.”