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Little Paris in China
5 September 2007 | Category: Architecture Rumbling
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This may sound like a Chinese bashing blog but I just could not help myself, first was the fake goods which is somewhat digestible but to copy something that big and prominent is simply absurd, it reminds me of the fake Disneyland.
Paris is the city of love and light, and no amount of money can change or duplicate the same feeling or atmosphere. What I don’t understand is why and how could the local government approve such projects? China may be the only surviving ancient civilization in the world with the only surviving ancient language still used in today’s modern world, but to me China is just 20 years old, thanks to Mao ZheDong with his great leap forward and the cultural revolution, it appears that the Chinese in China lack of an identity and are desperately in search for one. Here is an interesting article – Re-creating European cities, China’s latest housing trend by Ariana Eunjung Cha.
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These photos were taken in Tianducheng, a residential community built in on the outskirts of Hangzhou in eastern China. Apparently there’s only 2,000 people living there now, which seems rather sparsely populated for what they must be hoping will be a tourist attraction.
More Images at Reuters – Little Paris in China
Here is a must watch video – China Chateau… I mean Château de Versailles, France.
Tags: Architect, Architecture, Cheap, China, china eastern airlines paris, china eastern paris, china gold paris, china restaurant paris, Chinese, chinese massage paris, Duplicate, Fake, Love, Paris, Paris City, Paris Tower, Sight, the china club paris
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2 Comments
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David
on September 6th, 2007Wow – China needs some fistfuls of Christopher Alexander!
This copying trend is really awful. – To be hopeful, the US suffered this same post-colonial architechtural syndrome [although china was never /technically/ colonized] right before the beautiful outbreak of early modern architechture.
Yeah – throw some culturally-specific pattern-languages and structure-preserving transformations on that country please!
China has an AMAZING history and identity- That culture sinocized and pacified the mongolians for God’s sake! – imagine the wonderful surprising buildings and cities that would result from pursuing an honset living process over there instead of moribund imitation of forigners!
What if France copied China wholesale? – Well I guess they did that a little in the 1600s and it was pretty embarrasing- chinoisarie — now we see the reverse – francoisarie – equally cheap and silly.
I do not know why china is making itself into a cultural vassal state – do they see that this is what this is? Free market forces at the moment trend to China being a vassal state. This imitation architecture is another manifestation of the pursuit of money as an end in itself.
China needs to ask, “what will make life wonderful?” – be honest about it- and the buildings will feel very familiar yet surprise us all.
-David
Calvin
on September 7th, 2007I guess China is lost, it is about time the communist party allows the people to take part in how the country should be, could be.
They should encourage debates, allow the people to voice out their concern, 2 heads is better than 1.