RANDOM THOUGHTS ON BEIJING

I: Stereotyped Beijing

•The Very Center of Power

•Masculinity/patriarchy/authoritarian

•Massive, historical, grand, passionate, mysterious (forbidden city) VS open (the Square), Subversive VS Conservative ; humane/humorous…

•mixed aura of eight dynasties’ vicissitudes and pride

and

PRC’s ambition to show off her economic success

My thoughts on those projects and Beijing

1. While skyscrapers could be fetishized as the updated versions of Monuments of Modernity/Super-modernity, they are not immortal, they could be very brittle on the other hand—they could easily become the target to attack and destroy and thus unexpectedly the living ruins of modernity;

2. the monstrous or sci-fi landmarks in Beijing basically has undone or tried to transcend the “Babel Complex” in a rhapsodic way…they are fluid: they are the “flow of capitalism” in its wild, fantastic form; they are somehow androgynous: no male, neither female.

3. Chinese people just haven’t prepared well enough to react to these alien’s sudden appearance, haven’t prepared well to read their discourse of subversion—a subversion that is accomplished through undoing power rather than through thrust of revolution.

To think Not Only in terms of Binaries

• disappearance VS appearance; visible VS invisible; inside VS outside; familiar VS unfamiliar; construction VS demolition; the present VS the past, eternal VS ephemeral; legendary VS quotidian; home/homeland VS rootlessness; “lost and found”; remembering VS forgetting; nostalgia of the imperial pride VS the yearning for a glossy modernity…

"I said long ago, you should be able to look out over the walls of the Forbidden City and see nothing but blue sky. Of course, now it's gray sky," he added bitterly, "but you see sky.“

--I.M. Pei/貝聿銘