What makes a building Chinese?

A new story from the Washington Post on the buildings being constructed in China.

Foreign architects put stamp on Chinese skyline

Drawn by a building boom unmatched in the world in recent decades, U.S. and European architects are flocking to China, turning Chinese leaders' bold visions into concrete and steel realities and giving Chinese cityscapes a distinctly foreign signature.

At a time when many Western economies are stagnant and many construction projects have been delayed or scaled back for lack of financing, China is on a major push to urbanize - building new office towers, apartment blocks, exhibition halls, stadiums, high-speed train stations and nearly 100 new airports. The boom is offering U.S. and European architects new opportunities and an economic lifeline, as much of their industry is struggling....

And, while many U.S. developers have been wary of skyscrapers since the Sept. 11 attacks, China is a place where American architects say they can build big and tall.Paul Katz of the New York firm Kohn Pedersen Fox, or KPF, said, "When people in the U.S. were not building tall buildings, we were here building tall buildings." Standing on the firm's Shanghai office balcony, with sweeping views of the city, Katz said, "There's hardly a building you see today that stood 15 years ago."

On one hand, some people think this open field is a good thing:

In China, "people have no preconceived notion of what building development should be," said Silas Chiow, China director for the U.S. firm Skidmore Owings Merrill, or SOM. "That gives young architects an opportunity to try new ideas... China is almost like an experimental laboratory for different architects."

On the other hand:

That has drawn some criticism. A few high-profile Chinese architects and critics say some foreign designers are ignoring Chinese culture and traditions and turning China into a showcase of weirdly shaped structures better left on the drafting table. "They're using China as their new weapons testing zone," said Peng Peigen, a well-known architect and professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "These kind of stupid things they build could never be built in their own countries, in this life, the last life or the next life."

Peng praised "95 percent" of the many foreign architects in China. But he said the other 5 percent are ignoring the basic design rule that "form follows function." He criticized the Swiss-designed "Bird's Nest" stadium, used for the 2008 Olympics, as an "atrocious design" with a top-heavy roof, and called the French-designed National Grand Theater, known as "The Egg," a dysfunctional and "almost dangerous" eyesore....

some foreign architects are designing buildings that Chinese simply find odd or aesthetically inaccessible. "When they're finished, people don't always have a relationship with them," said [an MIT-trained architect] Shen.

To be honest, I don't see why we have to let whoever come in and build whatever they want just because we think it's "modern." Why are we chasing the West's vision of modernity? They don't even build some of this crap at home, because it would be criticized and blocked by civic groups.

Why is China the place where they can come and do whatever they want, with no repercussions? It's because Chinese people seem to think that because it is "foreign" and ostensibly "modern", it is good.

The pace of development is problematic, and "foreign" does not always mean quality, either:

The speed of development brings its own challenges, several architects said. Among them, the foreign architects' desire to build environmentally sustainable buildings and cities often run smack into the local imperative to build it quickly - and often build it cheaply. For example, an American architect said that in the United States, buildings are typically designed to last 75 to 100 years, with many of the best-known and best-loved buildings, such as New York's Empire State Building, gracefully entering late middle age. But in China, he said, the private developers often want "a building to last 30 years" maximum. "Their idea of a building is like a commodity. It's disposable."

Part of the problem is this:

Many of the largest, most visible projects designed by foreign architects are government-funded, and Peng and others said Chinese officials - and some private developers - often prefer to see an international name on a structure that they hope will become a landmark. China has its own architects, but, as Peng noted, the communists who came to power in 1949 did not respect architecture as a profession. Since then, it has been officially recognized only since the 1980s, leaving too few experienced local architects.

Well, China has a proud tradition of architecture and timeless ideas for how you can construct buildings. But if you rejected all of that during the Cultural Revolution as "feudal" and tried to smash and burn what was ancient, what can you do?

And now everyone is in a headlong rush to "modernity" -- to make Chinese cities look like downtown Manhattan or Chicago. Why can't they find their own identity that draws from their own culture? I would love to see more buildings that are inspired by China's own traditions, rather than buildings that take on an "international" style that simply follows in the footsteps of the West. (Discards from the West in some cases, or way-out-there disasters that people wouldn't actually want to use or live in).

Most of all, I wish that China's cities could preserve what is unique, to treasure the past and keep it intact, instead of bulldozing and demolishing and evicting the populace. For example, Paris is a modern city in every sense of the word -- yet they preserved the facades of the old city structures, so while the interiors are refined and conducive to human use, the feeling of Old Paris is alive and well today. And Parisians are proud of it!

Think what might have happened in China: if Liang Sicheng's plan for Old Beijing had been adopted, it might truly be a garden City with walls, gates, temples and neighborhoods intact. No other Capital would have looked like it; it was unique.

Instead, we pulled down the gates, destroyed the city wall, demolished temples and homes, to build shopping malls and skyscrapers. It looks like a faceless urban mass of concrete and steel. People are dislocated and it feels hugely impersonal. Is that appealing to live in?

In the end, we will know China has matured and culture has come into its own (some may say returned to its former glory) when we start to see Chinese influences on what constitutes an "international" style. That will indicate that China is seeking its own definition of modernity, and sharing its ideas with the world.

Cultural Reconstruction

A moving and reflective article by Leon Wieseltier on "Cultural Reconstruction" for the Jewish people, after their population, communities and heritage were devastated by the Holocaust. In it, he discusses a dialogue between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt, noted historians and philosophers of Jewish ancestry about a major enterprise to recover artifacts, and above all, books that had been left behind and scattered throughout Europe.


Here is an excerpt of a key passage:


In 1944, Arendt prepared a "Tentative List of Jewish Cultural Treasures in Axis-Occupied Countries" for the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, and in 1948 she became executive director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, for whom she went on an extended fact-finding mission in Europe in 1949 - 1950, searching for Jewish ceremonial objects and, mainly, for Jewish books. [She catalogs these remaining cultural inheritances and documents the efforts to return them to the libraries they came from before the war.]


...


Arendt writes to Scholem about her investigations. He writes back to her with his characteristic ferocity of purpose. It makes no sense to restore the books to localities that have no more Jews. He wants them to be allocated to the place where Jews will use them--to Jerusalem. "I herewith file the claim of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with regard to the material in France." "I feel that the Bavarian archives should be allocated to the Hebrew University." He cannot understand why Hermann Cohen's library would be shipped anywhere else. He asks Arendt to send him the full list of the rare books at the huge depot in Wiesbaden. He insists upon the "priority rights" of the Hebrew University to "things which exist only in one copy," and to archives that "are of general Jewish historical significance." His goal is a living and self-respecting culture, which must be built on a foundation of books, and even manuscripts.


Jewish Cultural Reconstruction recovered 1.5 million Jewish books. What are 1.5 million recovered books, next to 6 million unrecovered people? It is a fair question, except that there was nothing petty or indecent about this bibliophilia. This was a campaign for the re-capture of a people's dignity. Its objective was to affirm the sovereignty of the Jews over their own resources. The book-hunt in the ruins was based on a proper understanding of the historical role, and the spiritual power, of the books that were hunted. They are the edifices of the Jews. I hold my palaces in my hands. My cathedrals are on my shelves. One loves books because one loves life. Is it possible any longer to grasp that books once meant so much? Does anybody still weep for lost books? It is an illusion that digitalization has made culture less vulnerable: it has invented a new method of erasure. I can morbidly imagine a day when they come for the Kindles, and the only way to save a piece of a culture will be to print out a book and take the paper into hiding, until hell passes. The common enemy of Scholem and Arendt was oblivion.


Oblivion comes in many forms. There is natural oblivion, the Ozymandian kind, the ordinary forgetfulness that secures the future against the disabling suspicion that everything has already been done; and there is unnatural oblivion, coerced oblivion, the apparently ineradicable desire to wipe some group or some culture from the face of the earth. A people that has suffered unnatural oblivion will find it hard to acquiesce in the natural sort, because it looks like disappearance by another name. It is said that the "memory" of the computer marks the end of oblivion. I think not: cyberspace, too, is a sinkhole. The only defense against oblivion is the human defense--the will to remember, to defy time, which must be nurtured with reasons. War is not the only circumstance that enjoins cultural reconstruction.

孟子與兩岸關系

新加坡聯合早報 2010年10月31日
http://realtime.zaobao.com.sg/2010/10/101031_23.shtml

　　（綜合訊）中廣新聞報道，臺灣馬英九今天在參加一貫道活動時，引用孟子梁惠王篇「唯仁者為能以大事小，唯智者為能以小事大」*，比喻兩岸關系，馬英九說，大陸應該以仁道對待臺灣，而臺灣要善用智慧與對方打交道。

　　一貫道玉山寶光聖堂今天舉行一貫學制測驗，馬英九受邀致詞，特別引用孟子梁惠王篇中，齊宣王問孟子「交鄰國有道乎？」的章句形容兩岸關系。他說，兩岸隔海分治，大陸是大國、臺灣是“小國”；大陸要用仁與臺灣打交道，而臺灣要用善於運用智慧。孟子2500年前所講的道理，到現在還適用。

　　馬英九表示，中華文化並非無為而治，而是進取而不掠奪、進步而不害人，了解四書五經中的道理，要找出裏面有哪些道理是已經過時的，又有哪些是仍然適用的，可培養更好的世界觀。

*白話文翻譯：只有仁人能以大國的地位侍奉小國，只有聰明的人能以 小國的地位侍奉大國。

Protest over Mandarin

As much as we love Chinese culture, China still needs to learn the virtues of tolerance and respect for other cultures. There is beauty in diversity ... a society that is diverse can eventually be harmonious too, if there is responsible and moral governance. Social harmony is not created simply because we all speak one single common language (Mandarin) at the expense of other local languages.

Another Province, another protest over Mandarin
http://shanghaiist.com/2010/10/21/another_province_another_protest_ov.php

On Tuesday, a group of Tibetan students in Rebkong took to protesting over educational reforms that require all subjects be taught in Chinese except for Tibetan and English language classes. The students were reportedly chanting, "We want equality of culture" and number estimates go from as low as 800 up to 6,000 demonstrators. Police did not interfere with the protest, but its leaders were warned they would be expelled if the demonstration continued.

If you look past the inflammatory statements and propaganda certain groups are throwing around (because the demonstrations are Tibetan), you'll see that the objections the students raise aren't unique to that region, or even to China. However it does voice some important concerns of the trade-off between efficiency of communication and linguistic diversity. Especially with a country as massive as this one, it's proving to be a complicated balancing act.

While many European languages usually have some overlap, even dialects in China are mostly mutually unintelligible. Shanghainese and Mandarin are perfect, easy examples of that. Mandarin has been the lingua franca of China since the Qing dynasty and has became even stronger since 1949 when the Communist party encouraged its use. But many groups have been complaining about how dialects or languages other than Mandarin are being pushed aside to the point of elimination in favor of this standard.

Similar protests of this nature have occurred elsewhere, at home and overseas. Pro-Cantonese demonstrations were sparked in Guangzhou and in Hong Kong this summer when bureaucrats proposed to air prime-time shows in Mandarin instead of Cantonese to accommodate for the upcoming Asian Games. Even Singapore saw a similar backlash against its Speak Mandarin campaign.

As a Hong Kong Cantonese, I empathize fully with the Tibetan students' concerns over the thought of linguistic elimination. I know I'll lament any toll Mandarin might take on Cantonese as the SAR reintegrates further into the mainland. Nonetheless, I don't think that's any reason not to learn the standard language of the nation. Shanghai is a perfect example of a region that has a good handle of Putonghua while still retaining the strong use of Shanghainese--proof that Mandarin can be implemented with minimal damage to local dialects.

Whether or not Mandarin should be promoted in schools across the whole nation isn't really up for debate. It needs to be, no matter how you look at it--especially in regions like Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang where Mandarin fluency is poor. What we should be discussing are the ways to ensure that the beauty and richness of local languages do not fall by the wayside while we learn a common language.

Hold on to the things that you are

John Stanmeyer, an award-winning photographer, published a new book of photos about Balinese culture, called "Island of the Spirits." He was interviewed by The New York Times about the endeavour. Photos and the full interview are available here. In the Q&A, he expresses some very heartfelt and meaningful thoughts about cultural preservation and why it matters.

"This is a book, in many ways, for the Balinese. The Balinese culture is under severe stress from development and modernity. How much longer will the Balinese even be speaking their own language? How much longer will people be able to read the ancient Sanskrit texts?

I’m intense and passionate about it because I do feel in some regards, around the world, we’re having cultural genocide. Cultures are vanishing. We’re homogenizing ourselves across the planet. We have language loss on an epic level and we have cultural loss on an equally epic level. And that I find to be tragic, especially when you have rich, ancient cultures that haven’t changed for so long but now are on the verge of a breaking point.

It’s not a Western innovation anymore. Look at development in Asia. The biggest number of tourists coming to Bali right now are Chinese and Japanese. We should have the freedom to intermingle and experience the brilliance of life, wherever it may be. But what’s happening is that a lot of traditions that have taken millenniums to build and evolve are now becoming tragically dismantled.

Boy, when you look at this book and Balinese society, you don’t want this to be lost. It’s very much a reminder to the Balinese to hold on to what they have. And it’s a reminder to all cultures on earth to hold on to what you have. Don’t fall victim to the Nike shirt, to blue jeans. Hold on to the things that are you, because sooner or later the next generation isn’t going to know it and we’ll forget it and it will be lost.

Woot! Culture +1

胡同 community gets a reprieve for now.
Come on, go go go! 加油！

China: Redevelopment Plan Scrapped for Historic Beijing Neighborhood
By MICHAEL WINES
September 7, 2010

Beijing officials have shelved a much-attacked plan to redevelop the Gulou Drum Tower neighborhood, a warren of alleys and small homes dating from the Qing and Ming dynasties, into a tourist spot with high-end stores, The Beijing Times reported.

The alleys, called hutongs, are among the few historic residential areas that have not been demolished in the city’s rush to accommodate a fast-growing population and capitalize on ballooning land prices. The redevelopment plan called for the hutongs and the old Drum Tower, a Beijing landmark, to accommodate a new museum of timekeeping, a high-end underground shopping center and parking.

Most residents had been awaiting an order to move out. The newspaper quoted an unidentified city official as saying the so-called Time Cultural City is “a thing of the past,” but said the neighborhood’s future remained unclear.

Character amnesia (提筆忘字) - 你忘了嗎？

漢字包含了中國的傳統美學、文化淵源等，是中國文化的載體和根。中國人連漢字都寫不好，如何談文化傳承？

The Straits Times: Prime News Aug 27, 2010
http://www.straitstimes.com/PrimeNews/Story/STIStory_571488.html

HONG KONG: Like every Chinese child, Li Hanwei spent her schooldays memorising thousands of the intricate characters that make up the Chinese writing system.

Now 21 and a university student in Hong Kong, she admits she is finding it difficult to write some characters.

'I can remember the shape, but I can't remember the strokes that you need to write it,' she said.

Surveys show that the phenomenon, dubbed 'character amnesia', is widespread across China, causing Chinese to fear for the future of their ancient writing system.

A poll commissioned by the China Youth Daily in April found that 83 per cent of the 2,072 respondents admitted having problems writing characters.

Young Japanese people also report the problem, which is caused by the constant use of computers and mobile phones with alphabet-based input systems. There is even a Chinese phrase for it: tibi-wangzi, which means literally 'pick up pen, forget character'.

As a result, Ms Li said, she has become almost dependent on her phone. 'When I can't remember, I will take out my cellphone, find (the character) and then copy it down,' she said.

Agreeing, Mr Zeng Ming, 22, from the southern Guangdong province, added: 'I think it's a young people's problem, or at least a computer users' problem.'

The problem is common among young Japanese as well.

'We rely too much on the conversion function on our phones and PCs,' said Ms Ayumi Kawamoto, 23. 'I've mostly forgotten characters I learnt in middle and high school and I tend to forget the characters I use only occasionally.'

Tokyo student Maya Kato, 22, said: 'I hardly write any more, which is the main reason why I have forgotten so many characters. It is frustrating because I always almost remember the character, and lose it at the last minute.'

Chinese characters are so complex that communist leader Mao Zedong told United States journalist Edgar Snow in 1936: 'Sooner or later, we believe, we will have to abandon characters altogether if we are to create a new social culture in which the masses fully participate.'
Mao eventually chose to simplify many characters into forms that are now the standard in mainland China.

Some argue that the perceived decline in character knowledge is, in fact, nothing to worry about.

A survey by the southern Chinese news portal Dayang Net, found that 80 per cent of respondents had forgotten how to write some characters - but 43 per cent said they needed to write only for signatures and form-filling.

'The idea that China is a country full of people who write beautiful, fluid literature in characters without a second thought is a romantic fantasy,' wrote blogger and translator C. Custer on his Chinageeks blog.

The explosion of Internet and phone technology has itself led to the creation of new words and forms of writing. In 2008, Chinese people were sending 175 billion text messages each quarter, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Still, Ms Li and Mr Zeng were concerned enough about their character amnesia that they started to keep a handwritten diary.
Asked when else they would pick up a pen, Ms Li said after a pause: 'When I have to sign the back of my new credit card.'

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Pinyin and the spread of character amnesia:

Character amnesia happens because most Chinese people nowadays use electronic input systems based on pinyin, which renders Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet. After a user enters a word in pinyin, the device throws up a menu of characters matching the word. The user needs only to recognise the character he is looking for and click it. In Japan, where three writing systems are combined into one, mobile phones and computers use only the simpler hiragana and katakana scripts for inputting and leave out kanji, which uses Chinese characters. Character amnesia matters because memorisation is so crucial to character-based written languages, according to assistant professor of linguistics Siok Wai Ting at Hong Kong University. Forgetting how to write could eventually affect reading ability. ''There is no way we can learn the writing systematically because the writing itself is not systematic - we have to memorise, we have to learn by rote,'' she said. ''Through writing, we memorise the characters. Reading and writing are more closely connected in Chinese,'' she added. Chinese language and literature professor Victor Mair at the University of Pennsylvania says character amnesia is a part of a 'natural process of evolution''. ''The reasons why characters are innately difficult to enter into computers and mobile phones are innate to the character-based writing systems themselves,'' he said. ''There are no magic bullets that will make it easy to input characters,'' he added.

如果技術發展所帶來的只是進一步吞噬我們的傳統文化，那我們應該反思 - 課堂教學對於技術的依賴性，以及老師和家長對孩子認讀和書寫漢字的督促有待加強。再也沒有更便利的捷徑，還是老老實實地多讀多寫吧!