The Biggest Middle Kingdom

With the world’s biggest sporting event only 11 months away in the world’s most populous nation, it’s hard to resist the urge to spout superlatives. Sure, we all know that China is home to the largest restroom (Chongqing), largest audience at a flute performance (Hong Kong), largest horse race (Inner Mongolia), largest condom (Guilin), as well as longest rubber dam (Xiaobudong in Shandong), longest family genealogy (Confucius), and most golfers on a single golf course in 24 hours (Shenzhen). But let us not forget Beijing’s own claims to bigness.

Statue carved out of white sandalwood
In Yonghegong’s Wanfu Pavilion lies the Maitreya Buddha. The 18-meter-high statue is carved out of a single sandalwood tree trunk.

Ruby
Weighing 8,184g, the world’s largest ruby is owned by Beijing Fugui Tianshi Jewelry Co. Ltd. That’s what we call a very crazy stone.

Human-chair stack
Sit down for this: the world’s tallest stack of human chairs was 21 feet high, assembled, of course, by the Peking Acrobats.

Plastics recycling plant
Last month, Beijing opened the world’s largest plant for processing recycled plastic, capable of taking in 60,000 tons of waste annually, or one third of the city’s total waste in plastics – equal to saving 300,000 tons of petroleum per year

Domino run
In 1999, a record 2,751,518 dominoes were toppled in 32 minutes and 22 seconds at the gymnasium of Peking University. The dominoes had been set up over 40 days by a team of 53 Chinese and Japanese students.

Dancing dragon
In February 2000, the advent of the year of the dragon, a 3,333-yard-long dancing dragon came to life on the Great Wall, near Beijing. No, it wasn’t real, but the 3,200 people inside it were.

Largest theatrical performance building
The 12.9-acre Great Hall of the People, which can seat an audience of up to 10,000 people, is the world’s largest space for theatrical performances. It also happens to sit near the largest palace in the world (with 8,886 rooms), on the world’s largest square (97.9 acres). Just to set the record straight, that’s the size of 74 American football fields.

Wheel
Next year, the world’s biggest Ferris wheel – or what its builders call “Iconic Viewing Platform” – will rise 280 meters above Chaoyang Park, each air conditioned capsule taking up to 40 passengers on a 30 minute rotation. But given Beijing’s pallid skies, what exactly will they be able to see? “The visitors will have a fantastic view over the park and its surroundings,” says Stephan Matter, CEO of Beijing Great Wheel Co.

Largest jumper
The largest hand-knitted sweater, manufactured by Beijing’s Heng Yuan Xiang Co. this past April, had a chest measurement of 8m (26ft, 3in), a body length of 4.3m (14ft, 1in) and sleeve length of 3.1m (10ft, 2in) – room enough to fit a Beijing bus full of people. Alex Pasternack

An Olympic Makeover

How the capital is reinventing itself for 2008 and beyond

by Alex Pasternack

"Not bad.” A fresh-faced young man from Hebei province was talking about his job – cleanup around the Olympic Park during an eight-hour workday – as the hulking steel girders of the remarkable National Stadium rose in the distance behind him. He wore a slight grin that seemed completely unrehearsed, far from the city’s ongoing “smile” campaign intended to spread Olympic spirit to the world.

With a year to go until the Games, the biggest coming-out party the world will have ever seen, it’s hard not to find traces of that spirit everywhere in Beijing – on lips, on billboards, on the city’s massive construction sites. Clearly though, it’s a buzz that has little to do with athletics.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for China,” says Sun Weide, deputy director of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games (BOCOG). Despite perpetual concerns about a post-Olympics bubble-burst, the Games, he says, will be nothing short of a great leap forward. “When Sydney held the Games, it had already finished its development,” he explains. “One major difference is that Beijing is in the process of fast modernization and urbanization. We’re not worried about any kind of slowdown.”

Sun’s ability to rattle off statistics is almost as impressive as the numbers themselves: 12 percent annual GDP growth, a USD 8 billion Olympics budget, and half a million visitors – but also 241 “blue sky days” last year, 198km of new subway track, 1 million cars off the roads, and 11 new world-class venues.

But what will those statistics mean on the big day? And with all the attention focused on the largest orgy of international love and nationalism ever to hit China, who has the time or energy to consider what they will mean the morning after?

I asked some in the know to give a glimpse of what the city will be like when the torch arrives, and when it leaves.

Congestion question
This month, Beijing will stage what will likely be the world’s biggest car prohibition in history – one year before the big event. The city will “persuade” one million cars off the roads, including government vehicles and other “non essential” vehicles, in a dry run for next year’s even more serious traffic control measures. Beijing has said that come August ‘08 only “Olympic related” traffic will be allowed to park near the venues; for the rest of us, the best options will be an upgraded public transit system, which will be free to all ticket-holders and Olympics staff.

The officials are optimistic: “Traffic,” says Liu Xiaoming, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Communications Commission, “will not be a headache at all, but rather will become an enjoyable experience by 2008.”

Others are not so sure, but the results, whatever they may be, will not be for lack of trying. Along with road additions and improvements, the city will expand its use of electronic traffic notice boards and intelligent traffic signals, which change depending on traffic conditions. The government is also said to be exploring car restrictions like those of Shanghai (with its prohibitively priced licenses) or London (with its city-center congestion charge). The city is also attempting to ease traffic in downtown areas by building new municipal centers in places like Yizhuang, Shunyi and Changping. After the Olympics, it is rumored that the city government’s offices will move to the eastern district of Tongzhou, while the former headquarters of the relocated Shougang Steel Group in western Shijingshan will provide the new seat of China’s national government.

But RMB 250 billion in public transit upgrades – said to be the Olympics’ greatest physical legacy to the sprawling metropolis – will likely mark the greatest change to the lives of Beijing’s commuters. By the closing ceremony, a mix of faster bus routes and three much-touted spiffy new subway lines – including the Haidian-CBD line 10 – will make IC (yi ka tong) fare cards a necessity (paper tickets, in fact, will be completely phased out). Also helping push public transit will be an upgraded bus fleet, an increasing portion of which will run on cleaner natural gas or electric hybrid technology. A high-speed airport rail will also whisk travelers to the city’s airport (and its stunning new Norman Foster-designed Terminal 3) in under 20 minutes from stations at Sanyuan Qiao and a massive new transportation terminal at Dongzhimen.

As for Beijing’s reputation as the capital of the “kingdom of bicycles,” it can’t last forever. “With more and more cars in Beijing, they need that road space,” says Duan of Tsinghua. That – and the small possibility for future restrictions on cars – is why even he’s willing to put up with waiting in traffic: he says he’s trading in his bike for a sedan.

Breathing easier
As the city ramps up its USD 13 billion efforts to prepare for the “Green” Olympics, the “haze” (up until this year, the official term was “fog”) is also getting harder to scrub. Though 2006 saw 241 “blue sky days,” exceeding the government’s target by three days, the target of 245 blue skies for this year is one that officials admit will be “very difficult” to achieve.

No wonder: the car, one of the biggest culprits, is growing in number on Beijing’s roads at a rate of 1,100 a day. Starting last month, the city was the first in China to impose Euro-III auto emissions standards, a move that should cut automobile pollutants by 30 percent; by 2008, it has promised to take 300,000 high-emission vehicles off the roads.

Attempts to clean up coal plants and factories in nearby provinces, efforts to tackle heavily polluting companies, and a temporary cessation and slow down of construction projects before, during and after the Games may also improve air quality for the time being.

At the very least, officials say that residents can expect better publicized alerts that will warn of pollution by city district – and an increase in the “experimenting” with rainmaking technology, which will come in handy not only for clearing the summer skies during the opening ceremony, but for washing away the city’s dirt and, er, haze.

Home sweet home?
Breaths are bated, some anxiously, some hopefully, for a burst of Beijing’s property bubble. When the spotlight fades and everyone goes home, the logic goes, the city will no longer be a seller’s market. Problem is, the spotlight isn’t set to fade, Beijing’s population is set to keep growing, incomes will rise, and the addition of new, world-class infrastructure like metros and malls will help keep up overseas and domestic interest.

“Post-Olympics, we don’t really forecast a decline in prices,” says Anna Kalifa, head of research at property firm Jones Lang LaSalle. Though Beijing’s first housing price downturn might be on the cards, due to added supply in the city center and an exodus of foreigners and migrant workers just after the Games, prices won’t dip significantly, especially for areas downtown and near the Olympic venues. And, though schools and other amenities will keep most foreigners on the east side, Kalifa predicts that improved public transit, new shopping centers and the vibrancy of the college areas will draw more attention and development to Beijing’s western side.

One thing sure to make the city more appealing will be a slow down in construction. The city has ordered cranes to stop city-wide this October, and even after they start up again, post-Olympics, the rate of construction is expected to be nothing like as furious as it is at present. That should mean less noise and less dust streaming through the windows of our (rented) apartments.

And while all the development has meant that the city’s famous hutongs may be going the way of the bicycle, some point out happily that the city’s fixation on oppressively large streetscapes is waning, while a sense of civic duty is growing. It’s a shift due to private rather than public interests, says Anna Kalifa. As public gathering areas are becoming more common at shopping centers and office developments, she notes that residential community groups are growing in number as well. Bolstered in no small part by private property laws set to go into effect this autumn, such groups have a strong incentive to maintain the public spaces around their buildings. “It’s the difference between people hanging laundry outside their windows or throwing trash everywhere and not being able to do that,” she says.

Reaching out
When the lights go up on the opening ceremony on August 8, 2008, the occasion will be significant not just for what’s seen, but how. Beijing’s will not only be the first Olympics to be broadcast in high definition TV, but also across digital channels and the Internet, allowing a Beijinger, for instance, to choose to watch the ceremony on a so-called “3G” mobile phone, a growing number of screens in the back of Beijing’s cabs, or the city’s new TV-equipped subway lines.

“The Olympics gives us time to catch up in technology, but it also changes the entire communication infrastructure in China,” says Hu Bo, who produced the promotional films for Beijing’s two Olympic bids. A host of new “hardware” isn’t the only thing Beijing gains from the Games, he says, but a chance to push forward the “software” – the technical skills and creative content – crucial to shaping the country’s cultural realm and, come the lighting of the flame in Beijing, its international image.

“Beijing will have one hour to contain 5,000 years of history,” says Greg Groggel, a writer studying the Olympics Games’ effects on their host countries, of the opening ceremony. The stakes in Beijing are arguably higher than they were in the host cities typically compared with Beijing: Seoul in 1988 and Tokyo in 1964. “This is a chance for China to share something beyond economic power,” he says.

That something, says media analyst Shaun Chang, is now growing in the capital, thanks both to cultural institutions like museums and foundations but also to the widening creative realm opened by the Internet and digital technologies. “There’s this space in which we are allowed to grow and develop,” she says. Despite some hurdles faced by China’s web-based culture, “the government is creating a more relaxed environment to allow investment into this area.”

Public works and a charm offensive
Creating a good impression for the hundreds of thousands set to land in Beijing in 2008, and the surge of visitors expected afterwards, is an Olympian challenge that Beijing is not leaving up to chance. On an aesthetic level, the city government’s plans include traditional renovations of popular streets, such as Yonghegong Dajie, and the expansion of green spaces. In addition to the sprawling Olympic Forest Park in the north, Beijing is doing what it can to spruce up the city’s canals and has promised 30 more parks will be added to the outskirts of the city by 2008.

Handicapped access is also a concern for Olympics and city officials. David Tool, a volunteer advisor to the city, says that while the city’s cultural sites are beginning to improve access, hotels are lagging. For instance, Tool says, the hotel hosting the Paralympics Organizing Committee only has ten wheelchair-accessible rooms.

And among those initiatives set to leave a mark on the city, perhaps none is as obvious as the spread of English across the city’s street signs and menus. “The English signage and recorded messages will be okay for the Olympics for the most part,” explains Tool, who has also led a campaign to clean up Beijing’s written English. Spoken English is just as much a concern for him as for the government, which is behind a seemingly unending stream of English campaigns. Enabling more interaction between foreigners and Chinese volunteers, especially retirees and students, could be one of the Games’ greatest legacies, not only enriching the experiences of visitors and locals, but further blurring the sometimes uncomfortable divide that separates Beijing’s laowai from its laobaixing.

On a more basic level, improvements have also been promised for public bathrooms and food safety, while the government has helped organize training sessions for service staff in everything from professional skills to “Olympic knowledge” (which may or may not mean that hotel staff will be able to settle bets about medalists in the 400 meters at Helsinki ‘52).

Experts are also hoping for a smoothing of the visa procedures at Beijing’s Public Security Bureau, which has yet to announce how it will cope with an unprecedented number of potential lost passports and visa extensions – and an international crowd like none it has ever seen. At least fixing the queuing at places like the PSB is a no-brainer: “Judging from the pre- and post-Olympics situation in Japan and Korea,” says Tool, “Beijingers and eventually all China will adopt the line as the civil way to behave while waiting for anything.”

Also helping to comfort visitors and foreign residents will be a continued influx of international-level services, like hotels (currently about 40 are five-star-rated), movie theaters and malls. “Beijing is easier now than it was just three years ago,” says Jones Lang LaSalle’s Anna Kalifa. In the past six months especially, she detects a shift from a city “where [as a foreigner] you had to know where to go” to a place more like Shanghai or Hong Kong, “where you can see what’s going on.” She claims foreign property investment, which helps draw international brands, helps in noticeable ways. Recently, for instance, the luxury Parisian grocery Fauchon chose to open its first Chinese mainland store at the shopping center Shin Kong Palace.

“People are getting more confident,” says Hu Bo. “When there’s a great expectation on you, you have to deliver more good work.” David Wolf, of corporate advisory firm Wolf Group Asia, says that added confidence will mean improved services and language skills. “When the Olympics are all over, the most important change will be in the minds of the people of Beijing. They will see themselves as living in an international city, and that simple change in perception will have long term consequences.”

Greg Groggel: Olympic Watcher

Greg Groggel is on an Olympian mission. The 23-year-old Thomas J. Watson fellow from Omaha, Nebraska has spent two months in each of the former host cities – including Mexico City, Munich, Sarajevo, Sydney, and Seoul – to study the social, economic and political impact of hosting the world’s largest event. Before he left Beijing in July – to return next year, of course – that’s Beijing caught up with the intrepid Olympic observer.

that’s Beijing: What makes Beijing’s Olympics so different from any other?
Greg Groggel: To understand this we need consider the similar Olympics: Tokyo [‘64] and Seoul [‘88]. First came economic dominance (but not global respect), then knowledge of these countries’ culture, politics and art. Beijing is hoping to use the Olympics to share something beyond economic power. That’s exactly what the other countries did too. That’s why there’s such a nationalistic element to these games. Think of Atlanta [in ‘96] – no one would call those America’s games, but these are China’s games, not Beijing’s games.

that’s: What do you make of the way that Beijing is changing in advance of the big event?
GG: All the projects happening now are happening because of the Olympics. That includes widening roads, adding subway lines – they’re giving a facelift to their entire city. And they’re being bold with their graphic and architectural design. The only comparison I can think of is Munich, with their Olympic stadium [the Olympia-stadion]. They opted for a very unconventional, very modern, iconic design. It was really controversial at the time … but it symbolized the country’s new direction. It is as architecturally relevant today as when it was built in the late ‘60s.

that’s: So much seems to be under control. What unexpected
issues do you foresee?
GG: People are starting to make the connection between the stadiums and the issue of migrant laborers. That’s going to be a pretty prominent issue that will come to the surface in the next year. There were street sweeps [in Atlanta], with homeless people kicked out of the city for two weeks. Cities get so overzealous that everything goes perfectly, they forget about the issue of how you treat their citizens.

that’s: What have your travels told you about the post-game scenarios?
GG: The best example is Sydney, which underwent a post-Olympic depression. You also had all these planners saying that there should have been a plan … how they were going to use the venues afterwards. The media started to give the venues the dreaded white elephant label. From what I’ve read and tried to ask, there’s not really an emphasis on post-Olympic planning [in Beijing]. Most of the energy is going into those two-and-a-half weeks.

that’s: Let’s be frank. How ready is Beijing?
GG: The city is behind linguistically. A lot of that is going to depend on the work of the volunteers who are coming in and the international visitors. And right now, Beijing isn’t really the global capital that they [the organizers] think it is … they’re not close to being done, though they talk a lot about how far ahead they are. Alex Pasternack

Dog Days

Beware of dog

"We’ve entered the danger period,” Mary Peng of the International Center for Veterinary Services, a private animal hospital in Chaoyang, recently told us. The “danger period” she was referring to covers this time of year, when many foreign dog owners relocate to Beijing – unaware of the 35cm size restrictions on dogs in the downtown area.

“Every year, especially around this time, we have people who bring in big-ass dogs and sign leases for properties within the Third Ring Road.” It’s a situation that leads to “an awful lot of heartache.”

“It used to be that foreigners could get away with a lot of things, but you can’t just plead ignorance anymore,” she added. In one case, Peng recalled, an owner of two golden retrievers was ratted out by neighbors to the Public Security Bureau (PSB), which is responsible for dog registrations. A warning was issued, tears were shed, and the owner had no choice but to forfeit her lease and move outside of the Fourth Ring Road.

Rules are rules, but they also have some logic to them. Keeping big dogs out of downtown, as per a 2003 law, helps allay public fears about potential injuries and illness. “The laws are very practical,” Peng says. “They address public health and responsible pet ownership.”

But Deborah Lukic, whose family includes a “huge” Tibetan mastiff, says big dogs might be the subject of undue concern. At home in suburban Shunyi, she says neighbors sometimes appear to faint at the sight of one-and-a-half-year-old Leo (who, admittedly, is the type of dog known for fending off bears and tigers on the Himalayan plain). “There’s a general fear to the point of exaggeration about anything that’s not a Pekinese or a French poodle,” she says.

Yet for all the concerns about big dogs in Beijing, fears among dog owners may be even greater. Stories of dog seizures by the police have spread on Internet message boards. “They can take your dog,” Peng says. Though the PSB brings dogs to shelters for certain periods of stay, euthanasia is not uncommon when dogs go un-adopted. And, Peng says, “big dogs have a harder shot at finding a home.”

But Peng says concerns about police brutality are exaggerated, and worries that foreigners are avoiding dog registration out of fear. “There’s this notion that the police are horrible, and that China hates dogs,” she says. “But the only thing that will protect any dog is [being] a legal dog.” Alex Pasternack

Owners can register their dogs at the local Public Security Bureau (PSB) for a fee of RMB 1,000 (USD 130), with additional discounts for dogs that are spayed or neutered. An annual permit (shenfenzheng) includes a check-up and rabies shot, and can be renewed for RMB 500, typically only in June. Size limitations vary by district, and big dog owners are advised to check with their local PSB.

Drinking Up

The city comes clean on its tap water

A small article in China Daily last month began simply enough: “On 1 June, the Beijing Waterworks Group announced that the city’s water supply is safe to drink without boiling.” The news could not have come at a better time. For a month, pollution-abetted algae had been taking over China’s lakes – Taihu, Chaohu, Dianchi – turning water the sickly color of Swamp Thing. In February, Evian, that impeccable French mineral eau, was stopped at China’s border, 118,000 liters of it charged with containing an “unacceptable level of bacteria.” To make matters worse, tensions were still publicly boiling over between Danone, the maker of Evian, and its former Chinese partner Wahaha, over an alleged violation of their joint venture. The same week, an op-ed in the China Daily reminded us how “the manufacture and shipping of bottled water adversely impact the environment and the ecology.”

But something still tasted funny. Further on, the article revealed a more poignant detail: the most recent tests had only been run at the plants, failing to account for the city’s 7,000km of pipes, some quite old, that the water traverses to reach residents’ taps. So the tests likely missed all kinds of stuff of which mama wouldn’t approve. “We have a dilemma,” said the director of the Beijing Waterworks’ water quality center. “The water piped out is clean and safe but gets contaminated before it reaches users.”

Eva Sternfeld, who runs the China Environment and Sustainable Development Reference and Research Centre (CESDRRC), painted a more muddled picture. “As far as I know, Beijing tap water is one of the best in China. I heard a German business woman took a bottle back to Germany and had it tested there [to find that] the quality is okay,” she wrote by e-mail. “But it depends where you live in the city.” Water works Nos. 9 and 8, which pump water to most parts of the city, including the Olympic area, are known for satisfactory water quality – pipe contamination aside. But some older plants, such as water works No. 1 near Dongzhimen and water works No. 7 in the south of the city “have some problems with nitrates.” An (accidental) experiment two months ago in sipping tap water in one of the city’s cleaner water precincts found the liquid to be non-fatal, wet, and perhaps palatable.

Still, any future reservations or criticism about Beijing’s water quality should bounce off the city like water off a (Peking) duck’s back. “The [pipe] problem more or less exists in many cities of the world, wherever you have old buildings and an old water supply infrastructure,” says Sternfeld. Besides, athletes, officials and other visitors staying at the Olympic village next year will have access to tap water that the city guarantees will be drinkable … at least at the plants.

Alex Pasternack

bib bim bjork

Björk

Volta

After the experimentation of her last record, Medulla, it’s hard not to take Björk’s promise of a collaborative “dance” record with a grain of Icelandic sea salt. Yes, she did call in hip-hop guru Timbaland and her old producer Mark Bell (he of the techno blips of Debut and Homogenic). But the un-pretty results here – Earth Intruders, Declare Independence – shake the booty less than the senses, and end up paling in comparison to the sleepy contributions of Antony Hegarty of Antony & the Johnsons, Malian kora player Toumani Diabate, a 10-piece orchestra, and pipa player Min Xiao-Fen. Forget moving bodies: it’s alongside the pipa on I See Who You Are that Björk’s ever-volatile voice moves most. Alex Pasternack

China, Blade Runner Style

This is an excerpt from a spread that ran in March in tbjhome.

THE BEIJING OLYMPICS by Alex Pasternack
leaving more than a sporting legacy
Somewhere behind the Olympics hype, behind the mascot dolls and the banners, China has embarked on its most ambitious construction project since the Great Wall. While sports buildings, and Olympic construction in general, may tend toward the triumphal, smart design has never been particularly associated with sporting events. But with green thinking and radical engineering and materials, this trio of Beijing Olympic buildings is blazing a new path.

Digital Beijing
The communications center for the Games styles itself after a computer motherboard – a design that looks better than it sounds. Water streams down a set of irregular, vertical LED panels, which are carved into the side of the building's shoebox-like envelope, a mix of concrete, aluminum and glass. On the ground floor, architect Zhu Pei (along with the Shenzhen firm Urbanus) borrows the translucent Plexiglas material that covers his Blur Hotel (see Travels in Style, p44) to construct a "digital carpet" – a translucent floor capable of displaying projected images. The building's end facades also rely on a new material: unlike costly stone, which was originally planned, the architects chose a lightweight aluminum that resembles stone at a fraction of the cost of the real thing.
Architect: Studio Pei Zhu/Urbanus
Cost: not available
Completion date: late 2007

Water Cube
Like the nearby National Stadium, the National Aquatics Center draws inspiration from nature, but on a microscopic scale. The "Water Cube," as it's become known, is clad with 3,000 air pockets made of a recyclable Teflon-like plastic in a pattern evocative of one of nature's most common shapes: the arrangement of organic cells, or the natural formation of soap bubbles.
Such a design not only mimics nature's most efficient way of filling three-dimensional space, it also makes for efficient construction: "We realized that a structure based on this unique geometry would be highly repetitive and buildable whilst appearing very organic and random," says engineer Tristram Carfrae, whose firm Arup assisted Australian architects PTW and the CSCEC in their design. Ingeniously, the matrix of thin steel pipes that crisscross between the bubbles will also keep it standing through an earthquake, without the help of concrete or structural beams. And the translucent envelope lets in more light and heat than glass, helping to warm the building's five pools and slashing energy costs by 30 percent. It's not just the greenest of the Olympic designs, but it's also the most widely acclaimed. In one survey, Chinese citizens found it to be the country's most popular new design.
Architect: PTW/China State Construction Engineering
Corporation (CSCEC)
Cost: not available
Completion date: late 2007

National Stadium
Though its exterior steel lattice structure is meant to resemble the twigs of a bird's nest, the 42,000 tons of steel that bend around and even support the futuristic National Stadium, designed by Swiss architects (and recent recipients of the UK's Royal Gold Medal) Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, evoke more a Martian mothership than a sports arena. While government officials were initially keen on a groundbreaking design being broadcast around the world, concerns about safety and cost (the original price tag was RMB 3.8 billion) seemed to endanger the project early on. But with the clock ticking, the government gave the green light – on the condition that a costly retractable roof be removed.
While the building's open shell fosters natural air circulation, it also covers gaps in the lattice with a translucent membrane like that used on the Aquatics Center (above); even if it rains on the opening ceremony, the shell will protect the stadium's 91,000 spectators, and in futuristic style. What happens to the stadium after the Olympics flies the coop, a concern for any Games host, will be up to Beijing's imagination.
Architect: Herzog and de Meuron
Cost: RMB3.1 billion
Completion date: late 2007

CCTV Headquarters
Much ink has been spilled over the China Central Television headquarters, but words still seem as weak as knees before this acrobatic wonder. The building's two 40-story, 60-degree-leaning towers connect by a cantilevered bridge that has inspired as much dismissive disbelief as speechless awe from designers worldwide. According to the project's German co-architect, Ole Scheeren, "It's one of the most complex buildings ever built." Along with Rem Koolhaas, the Dutch architect and founder of OMA, Scheeren created and has been managing the project in Beijing with a team of OMA designers dozens strong. While engineering firm Arup provided the unique engineering feats to make it work in an earthquake zone ("It's the most analyzed building we've done. Actually, it's probably the most analyzed building, period," says Arup's Rory McGowan), it is the army of ten thousand construction workers who really testify to the scale and complexity of this remarkable building, which may be the Chinese government's best answer to the pyramids of Egypt.
Architect: Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)
Cost: RMB5.8 billion
Completion date: 2009

AROUND CHINA by Alex Pasternack
China’s future?
With all eyes on China, the projects underway across the country are all trying to out-do each other – whether they be the tallest, the greenest, the slickest, and now even the deepest – both Beijing and Shanghai are fighting it out for the most jaw-dropping designs.

Songjiang Quarry Hotel, Shanghai

How to position a modern structure within an idyllic natural setting is a special challenge in China, where tradition often demands that architecture accommodate nature. Though that tradition is often broken, the Songjiang Quarry Hotel near Shanghai goes for the opposite extreme: it hugs the side of a 100-meter deep quarry, standing two levels above the rock face and plunging two levels below the lake's bottom. Down there, guests can enjoy an underwater dinner or check into rooms that face a ten-meter-deep aquarium. The bottom levels also provide access to water-based and extreme sports like rock climbing and even (thanks to a planned cantilever above the quarry) bungee jumping.
The building itself looks like it's taking a plunge off the cliff side. "We drew our inspiration from the quarry setting itself, adopting the image of a green hill cascading down the natural rock face as a series of terraced, landscaped hanging gardens," says Martin Jochman, who led the design team from UK firm Atkins. A transparent glass "waterfall," in imitation of the existing one, is planned for the center of the building – a central vertical atrium connecting the base of the quarry with the roof of the hotel. To top it all off, the designers incorporated green roofing and geothermal energy extraction, meaning the hotel should not only slide into its setting, but have a minimal impact on it as well.
Architect: PTW/China State Construction Engineering
Corporation (CSCEC)
Cost: not available
Completion date: late 2007

National Grand Theater, Beijing

Hot potato – or rather, egg; it is not so much the ambition of its complex design, but the surrounding controversy that's delayed the completion of this building for three years. French architect Paul Andreu's much-ballyhooed egg-shaped opera house is more fitting for a science-fiction movie than its Tiananmen digs, say local critics. As such, the building has become a lightning rod for scorn towards foreign architecture across China. Aside from concerns about how the glass dome and the large moat that surrounds it will stand up to the grit of Beijing's environment, the building has been questioned not just for its friendliness to the environment, but for its questionable feng shui: the building's entrance, through a glass tunnel beneath the moat, is more evocative of a traditional tomb than an opera house. The 2004 collapse of an Andreu-designed extension to Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, which killed two Chinese citizens, didn't help the building's cause.
Still, its eye-catching design, approved shortly after China won its bid for the Olympics, represents a radical turn by Chinese leadership away from the stale, utilitarian architecture of the nearby Great Hall of the People. And the theater itself, which at night will be visible from the outside of the translucent dome, signals a fresh and international approach to performance space in a city that desperately needs it. Acoustic tests are scheduled for this summer, but officials still aren't naming a date for the opening performance.
Architect: Paul Andreu
Cost: RMB2.69 billion
Completion date: 2008

Shanghai World Financial Center
If the planners of the Shanghai World Financial Center (WFC) have their way, the title of world's tallest skyscraper will soon belong to China, at least for a moment. Even if the WFC, designed by KPF's Bill Pedersen, is soon eclipsed by other towers (such as Sir Norman Foster's planned Russia Tower in Moscow), when completed in 2008 the 101-story tower will still stand out amidst the forest of skyscrapers rising in Shanghai's Lujiazui financial district in Pudong, which is arguably the planet's tallest neighborhood.
A pair of "cosmic arcs" rises up the building's narrow, prismatic face, accentuating its height. At its apex, a distinctive and elegant six-story trapezoidal "sky portal" (which has earned the building the nickname "the giant bottle opener" from locals) is not just a nod to feng shui but a clever way to relieve the pressure from high winds. Visitors can gaze out through the haze from the observation deck located at the summit, or from an observation platform at the bottom of the sky portal, said to be the world's highest open-air gathering space. In addition to its business appointments, the tower will also include high-end shops and restaurants and a Park Hyatt, which will be (last superlative, promise) the world's highest luxury hotel.
Architect: KPF
Cost: RMB850 million
Completion date: Early 2008

PEARL RIVER NEW TOWER, GUANGZHOU by Alex Pasternack
Guangzhou goes green
You might not expect the headquarters of one of China's biggest cigarette manufacturers to be especially environmentally friendly. But Guangdong Tobacco Company's new digs, the Pearl River Tower designed by New York's SOM, takes sustainability to new heights. It aims to be the world's first zero-energy super-tall building. Getting there requires not just green add-ons like solar power but a thorough going-green design from top to bottom.
Taking advantage of its prime location along the Pearl River (not far from Zaha Hadid's opera house), the tower relies on three energy sources there for the taking – sun, water and even wind. The smooth, double-walled facade incorporates photovoltaics to gather solar energy, and is covered by fully glazed low-E (emittance) glass and integrated shades, insulating the interior from unwanted heat and glare.
The building's curtain wall also collects condensate for water use and air to assist a sophisticated heating and cooling system that uses 40 percent of the energy of traditional approaches. Outside, the building's curves push wind to openings positioned at the tower's mechanical levels, both relieving strenuous wind pressure and, brilliantly, funneling wind to turbines that will generate much of the tower's power. Also included is a water recycling system and a fuel cell system underneath, which forgoes grid electricity for more efficiently produced natural gas.
Altogether, the architects say, the 71-story Pearl River Tower has the potential to generate as much energy as it uses. And it's likely to generate new ideas for sustainable tall building designs too. It's at the forefront of the development of the Pearl River New Town, challenging the Twin Towers and the GZTV Tower not just for recognition, but to be the symbol of new Guangzhou. It may not have the sheer height of its challengers, but in an age of climate responsibility, it may gain more international respect.
Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)
Cost: not available
Completion date: 2009

GUANGZHOU OPERA HOUSE by Alex Pasternack
space opera
If Paul Andreu's bulbous Beijing opera house evokes the UFOs of a fifties' fantasy, Zaha Hadid's Guangzhou concert hall comes from a galaxy much farther away. The halls' stealth-like shapes, meant to replicate river pebbles, blur the line between the freaky, surreal computer-generated world where many of Hadid's adventurous designs tend to remain and the very real banks of the Pearl River.
It's one of China's most daring new designs, and a coup for Guangzhou. Aside from its 1,800-seat theater and 400-seat multi-purpose hall, the opera house engages with visitors from the nearby Haixinsha Tourist Park and Zhujiang New Town via its large promenade, cafes and shops. While the Pritzker-winning, Iraq-born architect's design may be at odds with traditional Chinese opera, or any opera for that matter, it's poised to hit the right notes.
Architect: Zaha Hadid
Cost: RMB1 billion
Completion date:
late 2007

VANKE CENTER, SHENZHEN by Alex Pasternack
crouching building, flying dragon
Steven Holl and Li Hu's adventurous commercial-residential complex is a perfect compliment to their Beijing Linked Hybrid. Where that development envisions a system of bridged residential towers connected like a dance circle, their Shenzhen project, commissioned by and for real estate developer Vanke, floats above the ground like a flying dragon.
By turning tall into long and lifting the snaking, aluminum-encased building on pillars, the design accommodates height regulations while providing for better interior views of a nearby lake – and shading an expanse of public and green space below. "We like to fuse the social with our approach to buildings," says Beijing-based Li Hu. He believes that keeping many functions within a single complex (in this case, commercial shops, a hotel and Soho) not only enriches buildings' social commitment, but can help to tighten the fabric of sprawling Chinese cities, which are clogged on the ground and in the air by construction and traffic. The building also wears green on its sleeve, with a green roof, sun-protected facade, water recycling, and a set of geothermal wells to provide heating and cooling.
Architect: Steven Holl
Cost: not available
Completion date:
late 2008

Riding the Rails

A sneak peek at the new Line 5 subway

Somehow, it wasn’t ironic that the Olympic Committee had to drive us to Beijing’s newest subway line in a tour bus. Correction: we weren’t driving at all. We were sitting idle in traffic. Therein was the reason we were visiting the subway in the first place. As the city slowly edges toward Bangkok-style traffic, officials have planned for three new lines in time for the 2008 games, and are promising the world’s largest subway system by 2020. Though it’s not set to open until September, the city is already testing, tuning and touting the north-south line 5, the first addition to its soon-to-be rapidly expanding subway network.

For now though, one of the only clues to that future lies beneath Chang’an Dajie, at an unassuming underpass across the street from Oriental Plaza. A couple of young security guards jumped up from their naps when we arrived, promptly opening a shiny metal gate to let us descend into the newest Beijing underground. The floors and walls were still clean, the escalator unfinished; at the bottom of a long set of stairs we found ourselves in what looked like an unfinished set from Star Wars. Gleaming signs, LED lights, a glass-encased control room, and cables rising from the floor waiting to connect to card-scanning turnstiles that will replace the subway’s ubiquitous ticket ladies. Before a tear could rise up, we regained our senses and scanned the room for other signs of Beijing’s “high-tech” Olympics: lasers, 3-D maps, new bathrooms.

And then we saw the future, hanging along the platform: large flat-screen TVs showing traffic information, news tickers and, for no reason at all, the latest Harry Potter movie. TVs also hung on the walls of the train itself, showing slow-motion images of athletes hurling themselves through the air interspersed with dramatic ribbon dancing and every now and then, the Beijing 2008 logo. Come the Olympics, commuters will be able to watch the sporting events live. As we stood in front of a screen and beneath a stream of cool air – having been whisked to the new Yonghegong subway station, which looks slightly like a modern version of the temple above – it dawned on us: might the lazier among us pass on the actual games (or on a visit to Yonghegong for that matter) for the air-conditioned idyll of the subway?

That good idea almost flew out of our heads as we wandered out of the car; more precisely, it was knocked out by a collision with the overhead handrail. That, along with the subway door itself, was noticeably shorter than on the city’s current subway. “You’re too tall,” a subway official told us with a smile. “But what about Yao Ming?” we asked. No answer.

Height prejudices aside, the subway is a definite improvement: the stations are spiffier (if a bit sterile), the train’s wider on the inside and, like Hong Kong’s MTR, has no doors in-between cars, a cool trick that turns the subway cars into one long moving hallway. And somehow, the air underground felt clean. Plus: three kuai is a lot cheaper than a ticket to the Olympics.

Permalink 09:17:53, From that's Beijing's City Scene

Harp on it

Andrew Bird

Armchair Apocrypha

In other hands or mouths, Andrew Bird’s crossword-puzzle vocabulary and lyrical obsession with science, psychology and obscure history might come across as pretentious; or, worse, pedestrian. But accompanied by his trademark layered violins, glockenspiels and guitars – and his elegant voice, as capable of deadpan as jazzy soul – the Chicagoan’s profundities are like juicy tidbits of a refreshing and witty late Sunday afternoon conversation (or therapy session). Set around modern fears and revelations, the conversation began with 2003’s Weather Systems, Bird’s first solo album, and continued on 2005’s brilliant The Mysterious Production of Eggs. On Armchair Apocrypha, Bird’s ruminations have grown even deeper, with rich musical flourishes to match. On tracks like Heretics, Dark Matter, and Cataracts, Bird isn’t just feeding us food for thought; these are some of the sweetest pop candies of the year. Alex Pasternack

tha ring master

Dan Deacon

Spiderman of the Rings

Bespectacled surrealist musician plus trash-salvaged electronics plus a love for German synths, video games and children’s shows: to get some idea of what this means, just search Youtube for his name. There, in the space of three minutes (and on some local TV morning show no less), the Baltimore native unspools his magical assault on dance music …

Wait, no – the robotic blips, voice and organ, are far too friendly to be part of any assault, and too far afield to be responding to anything, period. So goes his grandest LP to date. Replete with sublime feedback, grinning choral sections and helium-tinged hip-hop hooks, it’s like a glass of spiked Tang at a circus after-party: not exactly the kind of thing you savor, just the sort that puts a big toothy grin on your face. Alex Pasternack

Beijing's Migrant Smog Problem

Where Does the Capital's Air Come From?

Among environmental scientists and cab drivers alike, the cause of Beijing’s pollution—and thus how to stop it—is an old topic of debate. Now, thanks to a municipal research program to clear the air for the “Green Olympics,” it’s a $3.2 million question. If the task were as easy as shutting down local factories, phasing out coal-fired heating, cleaning up power plants, and restricting traffic during the Games – plans already being carried out by officials – Beijing would be on course. But as researchers have realized in recent years, much of Beijing’s dirty air is drifting in from outside. But figuring out from where, and what to do about it, is looking much more complicated than anyone expected.

“The general implication is that it’s not going to be so easy to clean up Beijing for the Olympics,” says Kenneth Rahn, an environmental engineer and visiting scholar at Tsinghua who works with the university’s Air Pollution and Control Institute. While his students study everything from ozone to nasty sulfur dioxide, Rahn’s passion is aerosols, or the microscopic particles that create haze and may contribute to health problems when lodged in the lungs. These days, Rahn is seeing a lot of the stuff coming from outside Beijing. “If you focus on Beijing alone, you’re only controlling half the problem.”

The usual suspects – that is, metal smelters in Inner Mongolia, Mongolia, and Western Siberia – appear to be the source of much of Beijing’s external pollution. But as Rahn and his team are learning from their measurements, much of Beijing’s imported pollution is also coming from coal-fired factories and cars to the south of Beijing, from areas as far away as Shandong province, Henan province and Shanghai. The implication is that these areas too may need to clean up ahead of the Olympics. “This is something really new,” Rahn says.

During a typical pollution cycle, Beijing first feels its smog-carrying breeze from the northwest. Then, winds from the south begin to pick up, traveling easily across the flat coastal region that Rahn affectionately refers to as The Bathtub, for the way dirty air here easily “sloshes” around. When it arrives in Beijing, the migrant smog mingles with local particulate matter—until a cold front or rain washes it away in the direction of Korea, Japan or even the U.S., leaving behind a few days of blue Beijing skies.

But how many days of blue skies will Beijing get during the Games—and will the city meet Olympic air standards as promised? According to Rahn, while Beijing’s pollution cycles become weaker and less frequent in summer, they begin to reappear with moderate strength in August, just when the athletes roll into town. “That means that the degree of air pollution during the Summer Olympics is purely a matter of chance,” he says. Blue skies could happen, he says, but “if you forced me to take a guess, I would say [Beijing] won’t meet the standard.”

For the future, Rahn says China needs stricter emissions controls on cars and policies like the U.S.’s landmark 1970 Clean Air Act, which enforced pollution standards for all new factories and power plants. “It’s not about the Olympics but the next fifty years.” For the time being though, his advice to Beijing’s Olympic planners is simpler: “Best to pray to the Mongolian Weather Gods.”

In China, Protest by TXT

One million text messages. That's how residents of China's port city of Xiamen spread word to protest -- and eventually halt -- construction of a chemical plant on Thursday, according to local news reports. The $1.4 billion facility was meant to produce the petrochemical paraxylene, exposure to which can cause eye, nose or throat irritation, affect the central nervous system and may cause death. Though international standards dictate that such a plant should be 100 km from the nearest city, the short text messages that mobilized Xiamen's smart mob warned the factory would have been only 16 km away.

While the central government is clearly showing more interest in protecting the environment, local governments, eager to cut corners in the name of economics, are helping block the path to sustainable development. But the Xiamen protests, thousands of people strong, are the latest sign of people power in China, where tens of thousands of protests over tainted land and water are recorded every year, threatening the government's dream of a "harmonious society" while pointing the way forward for environmental action in a place that seriously needs some.


That local officials in Xiamen reportedly began blocking text messages too in an attempt to stem the protests, and that the protests continued apace, is an indication that, try as it might, China's authoritarian controls simply can't keep up with the power of cell phones blogs, bulletin boards, and the smartmobs they might create. (Local governments are getting into the SMS act themselves, using text messages to warn citizens of floods and even stop protests.)

Clearly, stopping protests just isn't possible the way it used to be. Between increasing countryside unrest (there may be nothing scarier to the government) and deadly pollution (China's rural cancer rate rose by 23 percent in the past two years, and more than 70 percent of the country's waterways and 90 percent of its underground water are contaminated by pollution) something's gotta give.

Since the plant's not been completely scrapped, residents are still protesting, according to Reuters. And the more word spreads, the more likely it is that protests will continue elsewhere too. An large expansion of a chemical plant in the southeastern city of Quanzhou that produces paraxylene and other chemicals was announced in March, funded by China's No. 2 oil company, Sinopec, Saudi Aramco, the Saudi government oil company, and ExxonMobil Corp. Paraxylene is a key material in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) saturated polyester polymers--the stuff of which the world's plastic bottles are made.

Double Edge

Tag Team Records and Modern Sky team up for the second CH+INDIE fest

Just for the record, the second annual CH+INDIE rock fest, subtitled “The Wrath of Khan,” is not a reaction to other yaogun festivals in Beijing. (That its name was inspired by a murderous tyrant in the second Star Trek film is little more than nerdy homage.)

“We just wanted to represent as much independent Chinese music as we could in one day, but in a more relaxed kind of way, with beers and ice cream,” says Matt Kagler, head of Tag Team Records. His label and Modern Sky, Beijing’s other big US-China record company, have organized the outdoor festival not to compete with the city’s other fests, or even simply to showcase the labels’ bands: “This is just about music we’re into,” says Kagler.

But that straight-up approach means that it is a far cry from the rambling multi-genre orgies of festivals like the MIDI Modern Music Festival or Beijing Pop. “Basically, sometimes at festivals you get curious bookings, hodgepodge-y type stuff,” explains Kagler. Instead, CH+INDIE (pronounced “Chindie”) features a tight, wholesome line up that’s the rock equivalent of a street-side jianbing, and easier to digest. Day one features six bands, including lo-fi indies Arrows Made of Desire, post-punk outfit Scoff and local legends Brain Failure; lunatic SUBS kick things off a delicious day two, featuring spacey Lonely China Day and local darlings Joyside.

If such healthy servings of sweet Beijing rock are not enough to justify the 45RMB per day entrance fee, the organizers ensure that five kuai of each ticket will go to Altruistic Alcoholics, who are using the cash to build schools in Hubei. In true festival style, the charity will set up a booth on the lawn alongside Red T, Sugar Jar and The Veggie Union.

And just as Kagler promises there’s no beef between CH+INDIE and other local fests, his festival also promises no beef, or other meats for that matter. Though he’s not a vegetarian, Kagler called local food collective Veggie Era, in the name of alternatives. “I’ve never seen anything like that in Beijing. I figured we’d try something different.”

The record labels will of course have booths too—and maybe even right next to each other. In an environment that doesn’t exactly encourage profits (“You’re happy just to break even”), there’s no sense of competition; promoting Beijing’s music with a unified front is a matter of survival. Sure, love for the music is top priority at a showcase like CH+INDIE, “but, hell, we may even make a little bit of money, which would be nice for a change,” says Kagler.

As they have relied on joint shows to spread the word in Beijing, both labels are also striving to position their bands in the widening overseas spotlight. Last April’s edition of the U.S.’s indie music mecca, the South by Southwest Festival, saw visits by Lonely China Day and post-punkers Rebuilding the Rights of Statues (Re-TROS), while Joyside recently played sold-out shows in Europe. Meanwhile, Tag Team and Modern Sky are starting to sign U.S.-based artists.

At home and abroad labels’ collaboration is rooted in cross-promotion, but it helps that Kagler and Modern Sky manager Meng Jinhui are chummy. “Jin and I like to drink beers and listen to Joy Division on vinyl 'til someone gets sick.”

Both labels wear that post-punk love on their record sleeves: Re-TROS, which is represented by Modern Sky in China and distributed in the U.S. by Tag Team, are clear Ian Curtis acolytes. While it’s hard to complain about that influence, Kagler is happy that as China’s rock scene gets more exposure, it’s also growing more original too. “A couple of years ago everything sounded like Green Day and Limp Bizkit,” he says. “Now there’s some really good stuff going on. I wouldn’t have said that three years ago.”

Leading the way are some new venues like upstart D-22, which has been cheered in all corners since it opened last year. But its Wudoakou locale, far from the club-land on the east side of the city, has created what Kagler dubs “the East-West thing.” “These bands that play at D-22 hardly ever play in Chaoyang,” he explains. “There’s no animosity, but somehow it just goes down that way.” He’s hoping CH+INDIE, which features D-22 staples like Scoff and Joyside, will do something to bridge the gap.

For all the free love, rock-and-roll attitude, Kagler has a decidedly un-rock-and-roll piece of advice to fans: arrive early. Rules are rules, especially when it comes to outdoor noise restrictions, and the festival, which opens at 4 pm, needs to wrap up by 11.30. “But it’s cool. There’ll be plenty of stuff to eat, drink, and hear,” he says. “It is after all a festival.”

School Shooting, 24 Hours a Day

I wrote this after the shootings at Virginia Tech.

It's sad that it takes a tragedy to awaken our senses, to compel us to start important discussions. But it's even sadder when such a tragedy fails to awaken us at all. Of course, the shootings at Virginia Tech certainly highlighted significant problems with America's confused system of gun control—or lack thereof—and reignited debate about one of America's oldest rights. It also showed flaws in the mental health system at some of the country's universities, and with the way that hospitals and police communicate about potentially dangerous individuals. And it pointed to, as if on cue, the powerful influence of Hollywood and video games, the dangerous blurring of violent art and reality in the hands of a student whose own gruesome fiction writing foretold his plans.

At least that's what the news told us. In fact, what the media told us and didn't tell us about this massacre might be the deeper problem. The press's early misfiring (pardon the expression) about the shooter's identity—the Chicago Sun-Times and other outlets labeled him Chinese to the ire of many here—was only the auspicious beginning of the media frenzy that was to follow. Dutifully, America's 24-hour television news channels (CNN, Fox, MSNBC) stepped in fast, and for the next week paid attention to almost nothing else. And yet, something about that attention seemed inadequate, counterproductive even, to explain anything about what happened that day in Virginia.

The facts, few but grim (33 victims, the deadliest mass shooting in American history), and the imagery and language (police cars, helicopter shots, distraught students and talk of "a loner," "coping," etc) were part of what seems to be a now-familiar TV journalism template. In the contemporary American consciousness, "SCHOOL SHOOTING" has become practically an American fixture, a phrase we have grown accustomed to seeing about once a year on the bottom of the CNN screen, in serious red or black lettering with an animated target hovering in the background, as if we need a reminder of the severity of the situation, or of some immanent danger that remains. Four days after the incident, CNN's ticker still told me that the shooting was "Breaking News."

The accompanying commentary—in this case, the chatter of a news anchor filling airtime over idle video footage, or a repetitious talking-head debate on gun control and school safety—with the addition of new journalistic props, like students' amateur video, photos, blogs, and social networking comments, all seems intended, I feel, to satisfy the audience's questions: How? Why? More often though, all this news spectacle appeals to is a simpler need: the public's "need to know," and the morbid curiosity, voyeurism and hunger for sensation that comes with it.

Nothing wrong with that—as the popularity of youtube.com can attest, we all like to watch reality this way sometimes. Yet, one suspects, the more we watch, the less we can see. That is, the more we sink ourselves into some oblivion of information and images, the harder it becomes to confront and understand the reality underneath. As critic Susan Sontag reminded us in one of her last essays, this idea is not an offspring of our recent 24-hour news cycles: in 1800, in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, poet William Wordsworth denounced the dulling of sensibility produced by "the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies." This overstimulation acts "to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind" and "reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor." I am reminded of how, following the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999, a friend of mine recoiled at my description of that killing. I had called the events "cliché"—horrible word choice to be sure, but after the "spate" of school shootings that preceded Columbine in the media—that's how a school shooting felt: something to be expected.

And yet, there is nothing to be expected at all about a person opening blind fire upon classrooms of students and teachers. But expectation, familiarity, and a kind of fatigue, is one of the few outcomes of the media frenzies that follow (the "circus" of reporters grew so big that a week later Virginia Tech students issued a statement begging the media to go home). The valiant attempt to explain what happened and even to comfort audiences—two journalistic responsibilities that were not completely forgotten by the news coverage—ultimately ended in little more than sensationalism. And worse: while the video, photos and hate letters sent to NBC News by the evidently TV-savvy killer shed some light on his mental state, broadcasting large parts of his "media kit" only hurt the victims and fueled concerns that his menacing image would inspire copycat acts.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that such an event, and even the killer's messages, should not have been reported extensively. Rather, I'm pointing to the effect of which Wordsworth wrote, the way that a saturation of shocking data can dull our senses. Consider America's fatigue with the violence in war-torn places like Sudan, Afghanistan or Iraq. On the day thirty-three students were killed at Virginia Tech, sectarian violence killed two hundred people in Iraq, including the dean of the college of Political Science at Mosul University and a professor from the school's Faculty of Arts. In January and February, 110 students, faculty and staff were killed by suicide bombings at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University.

This I did not learn from CNN. The networks' incessant coverage of the shooting excluded practically all other news of the day. And even if there had been no massacre in Virginia, Iraqi violence would likely have been given little attention anyway, given the public's fatigue of that kind of coverage. On one hand, American networks like CNN ought to be paying more attention to Iraq; on another, TV news' steady stream of sensation, meant to keep us from switching the channel, might help dull our ability to think, or even to care.

I don't mean to suggest that the media should hold back on its imagery in an attempt to return us to some imaginary state of heightened sensitivity: ultimately, real-life violence isn't going anywhere. But just as there is a difference between watching and seeing, between consuming data and understanding it, there is a difference between journalism's "facts" and "the truth." The former can be shaped into an intense news segment, with a tone evocative of the Hollywood movies that some have blamed for violence. But the latter, the truth, is much harder to convey. One truth for instance, neglected in the media's fear-laden coverage of the Virginia shooting, is that violence among youth in America is much more common out of schools than in them.

Of course, it is the sanctity of a school that makes such a shooting so shocking, so apparently worthy of heavy media coverage. But the "shock" of the incident overshadows another crucial truth, one that Americans and people around the world often forget: no amount of amateur video, no amount of interviews with stunned students, or even stern messages about gun control by political talking heads, is going to help us understand what happened or prevent this from happening in the future. That's the job of citizens, politicians and even, one hopes, journalists, who can discuss, ask questions, and engage others in conversation—about topics like social isolation, violence, guns, and the media itself. Because thinking and talking about reality is much better than watching it on TV.

City Scene: How High for Houhai?

Is RMB 110 million too much for a courtyard? In Beijing – where a full-fledged traditional courtyard home (siheyuan) has become as uncommon as, say, an affordable apartment – maybe not. If the place is one of the city’s choicest courtyards, located in a serene hutong with a view of Houhai, probably not. And, if you’re a Russian billionaire on the prowl for new lao Beijing digs, well, it sounds like a downright bargain.

In March, those facts coincided to result in Beijing’s largest courtyard purchase to date: RMB 36,324 per square meter for a courtyard in Houhai (see tbjhome, May 2007), Beijing’s most sought-after old-school address. Bordered by alleyways to the north and the lake to the south and extending 3,000 square meters – it takes ten minutes to walk around the thing – it’s one of 40 remaining large courtyards in the old city. Of course, no billionaire’s courtyard would be complete without a lavish renovation featuring wood from a Thailand rainforest, which in this case will cost another 300 million kuai.

“I’m not surprised at the price,” says Hu Xinyu, of hutong preservation group Friends of Old Beijing, who remembers a 1,000 square meter courtyard selling for about RMB 10,000 per square meter a few years ago. Sources tell that’s Beijing that an even larger Houhai courtyard space is up for sale with an asking price of over RMB 200 million – a trend that is sure to continue in the run-up to the Olympics. “What I’m concerned about,” says Xu, “is the idea behind the investment.”

In the heyday of the courtyard, during imperial times, the most highly decorated courtyards – those with lavish doorways and screen walls – were entrusted to only the most prominent imperial officials. That thinking might have been behind the Beijing government’s decision in 2004 to open sales of courtyards to private buyers. As development was rapidly overtaking Beijing’s old quarters, the idea was to turn protection of the city’s legendary courtyard homes over to the market. Among those answering Beijing’s courtyard call have been billionaires like Asia’s richest man Li Ka-Shing, and Rupert Murdoch and wife Wendi Deng – and though foreigners only account for five percent of courtyard sales, many think that number is growing.

On the one hand, large purchases like the recent one in Houhai could help the cause of the hutong and courtyard homes, spruce up neighborhoods and perhaps draw in more money. “In general, gentrification can do something good, as long as the process is managed in a careful, slow pace,” Xu says. “But I’m afraid about the wealthy taking over the courtyards and, without knowledge or feeling, renovating them in an improper way.”

Rules exist, of course, to ensure that any fancying-up of a traditional courtyard honors its dynastic roots: a law passed last year stipulates a fine of up to RMB 200,000 for illegal modifications.

Given all the attention it’s received, adding a few minarets and gold leaf to the Houhai courtyard will be impossible to hide, and sources close to developer Wantong say that the home’s renovation will be faithful to its heritage. There will, however, be a swimming pool in the basement.

Alex Pasternack and Jessie Wang