Yen Countdown

The PRC, being run in a top down sort of affair has allocated a district in Beijing solely for the artist community. It's called 798. I don't normally approve of art-under-duress but on New Years Eve I made an exception.

Beijing Strategy

The fifth to seventh floors at the Xie Dan shopping complex called Beijing Stategy are as good a place as any to check out where the hip kids are at, in the same way as say Harajuku would be the place to trend-watch emerging fashion changes in Tokyo. Its interesting to see what these young folk are wearing, what they are into and how they behave with each other. Although its mainly a 'teen +' fashion hangout, if you dig a little deeper into the boutique end on other floors you'll get to see a slightly older female customer looking for more sophisticated outfits. They're of the type that like to dress impressively but don't have the budget of hitting say The Place or The Peninsula Arcade at The Peninsula for top end luxury brands. Some of them are just smarter too! Beijing is a great place for buying clothes that look terrific but aren't necessarily designed to last forever. I guess this is somewhat indicative of the disposable society the West created I'd point out. More on that later because I've got some thoughts emerging on that one. I can't wait for oil to hit 200 bucks a barrel.

Anyway, while walking around Xie Dan which is one of at least three locations in Beijing that has a whole shop dedicated to Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas, I then stumbled across a shop called Boing Boing. I wondered at the time if they knew about one of the worlds top blogs and took a quick snap. So I was a bit bloody surprised to discover shortly afterwards I had been linked to by Boing Boing and saw my traffic stats go through the roof. Wanna take a peek?

Anyway, those peeps rushing over here to check out the crumpled porcelain beer cans will be unlikely to pay more visits and if truth be known I'm not looking for traffic, I'm looking for comrades as I mentioned to Johnnie, Damiano, Jamie and John last year at the Endurance in Soho. But it was quite a learning experience to check out the oodles of data that Google Analytics provides such as who came, where they came from, their ISP, what they clicked on, how long they stayed, where they went to next and all that stuff which very few bloggers ever talk about but is for me one of the reasons why I can 'head held up high' say I like a bit of quant now and again, as I said in one of my tweets that I've just discovered has been fed into a site I've never come across before. Once again I'm compelled to reminds folks that McLuhan said the third world war would be an information war with no division between civilian and military which sounds like fun doesn't it? (Churchill also said something similar and prescient).

China Central Television Building (CCTV)

I took a taxi ride out to the new CCTV building over the Christmas break. They have recently connected the two main pillars in a feat of engineering that can only be truly appreciated by standing under it, walking around it and hopefully the next time I go by sneaking into it.

Architecture for me is a love affair and I've been folllowing the Dutch mastermind for the CCTV building in Beijing for a while now. His name is Rem Koolhaas and this latest project is truly the only building since the the Guggenheim in Bilbao, which I've felt has challenged and then extended my appreciation and meaning of the building form. I was close to trembling while standing under that huge overhang - but maybe that was the hangover too. Its all steel and feels like a Airbus A340 is suspended over your head. Here are the pictures from my N95 mobile phone camera that really don't do it justice.

It appears to defy general gravitational and architectural balance guidelines. I'd really like to hear what Owen Hatherley of Nasty Brutalist and Short thinks of this design. I feel that this qualifies in some respects as as good example of brutalist with other design nods and dimensions that I'd love to hear Owen's erudite (and quality socialist I might add) views.

The shot below is really pushing the zoom feature on the N95 to the max. The slightest movement shows up on the final shot but I think it starts to give a feel for all the safety netting suspended underneath the overhang as it was conjoined recently.

I couldn't help but look at all the lovely media space waiting to be made beautiful. Or at least let Beijing use it as a graffiti space. Its huge and rusting at the moment.

It needs to be walked around to appreciate all its angles.


If you look really hard. You can see the construction workers walking on a little horizontal section at the point where the sky meets the upper part of the joining section. Or put another way the other side of where the sun's glare is.


Just seeing this building means I have no choice now but to buy a decent camera. Any suggestions very much welcome. You might be able to see what I'm trying to capture. Expect more Beijing architecture. There are some amazing pieces around the city for the Olympics.