Look at all the worried faces. If this boy was found to have a body temperature exceeding 36 degrees then he will be taken to 7 days quarantine in a hotel on the outskirts of the city, and the people seated in the three rows in front and behind him will have the same terrible fate. Well this boy was in fact sitting right behind Alvin and I, which meant that potentially we would be stranded in that room… suffocating in our own air, and not allowed to have contact with the outside world for fear of contracting swine flu to them. We were all fully prepared, having fully loaded our hard drives with heaps and heaps of movies, and brought study materials to help kill time. We believed that if one of us were to go down, then some of us would have to keep that person company. Alvin and I were about to cost the Beijing group their freedom to travel and eat Beijing duck we had been so dearly wanting to eat.

So scary. The news broadcasted everywhere was scaring Victorians to reconsider flying to China, to be well prepared with face masks and to remain in a hotel in quarantine whether or not the person is healthy, because a person carrying swine flu may not show symptoms till after 7 days. Tissana showed us the best way to prevent swine flu. Do not expose yourself to germs!

So scary, right? Well, not really. At all! When the swine flu officers approached us on the plane everyone took out their cameras and decided that this newsworthy debacle would be quite funny and exciting. Having a man dressed like an astronaut point a four pointed red laser at your forehead is strangely amusing, it’s like living in a movie, but it’s real. And when the boy sitting behind us was found to have a high temperature, he just explained that he had sniffles in the morning but was feeling fine, then a doctor came along and took a look at his throat, then moved on. The swine flu astronauts made their way around the aircraft for an hour, and we started to panic that we’d miss our connecting flight in Shanghai. The aeroplane hostesses assured us that the connecting flight would await us, but when we got off there was no one waiting for us, except an airport full of stranded people. We were well looked after though, taken to Jining Hotel, had a satisfying dinner and went to sleep in Shanghai. Despite the minor setback, and not arriving in Beijing as early as we’d hoped, a diversion of our original plan was somewhat exciting and prepared out China trip to be a very fun one indeed!

Elodie was also very lucky. When the passports were being handed to the hotel, Elodie suddenly realised that she’d left her laptop bag on the bus. Amazingly she was appearing more amused than frantic, laughing amiably as she asked the hotel receptionist to ask the bus driver to retrieve her bag. I mean, a laptop isn’t worth THAT much, it only contains all the work we had prepared for, all the music and movies for those so-called quarantine days, all the computer programs like Autocad and Photoshop to make those architectural projects happen. Ah, no big deal right? Seriously I was panicking but Elodie was keeping her cool. Cool girl much?

Elodie and Tissana sure make a cool pair. Their neck pillows made some very cool crowns. The clever pair creatively entertained us at the Melbourne Airport.

Such a wonderful beginning. Such wonderful weather. See the firey red sunrise from Melbourne Airport. Leaving our home behind, we knew were in for the ride of a lifetime. HELLO CHINA!

The old part has some ancient courtyard houses and temples (I’m personally quite sick of visiting temples). The new development has some nice modern architecture and shows a developing China.

As per discussion we were going to publish our areas of interest in the blog so everybody can have a look at what other people are thinking.  As I have written down mine I will be the first to share it.  Please edit this post so you can add your name and then your idea or ideas.

The general theme under which we can gather all our interests and final projects could be something like: 

Conservation, heritage & culture in the Western District. Envisioning alternative futures to LGX

What I am trying to say is that we can try, if we believe that the present development of LGX is not completely appropriate, to create a different vision of what the future can be for the Western District that is both respectful with what is currently there and also accommodates change without an excessive gentrification.

Jaime

What is the future value of the informal spaces in hutongs?

These spaces or public areas are a result of the building setbacks that some sihe yuans have from their boundaries. I will study the conditions of these informal public spaces and see if there are lessons to be learnt about their physical conditions and also about the way in which these spaces are used by the locals.

One of the main issues, as I see it, with the rapid introduction of capitalism and a market economy is that, more and more, social life is reduced to economic life. This means that all sorts of amenities have to be paid for, this discriminates the economically disadvantaged in any given society. Chinese society has seen, in recent times, a great increase in wealth disparity between the wealth and the poor.

If the Western District is to follow any development pattern similar to that seen in Luo Gu Xiang since 1999 it will, eventually, became a gentrified area. Conservation of the built heritage is not enough in itself to preserve social customs, cultural heritage. So even if some areas, if some sihe yuans are preserved and the original occupants stay if they come from poorer backgrounds they will be disadvantaged by the rise in social life based mostly on consumerism.

As a possible counterpoint to this new consumer model of public life I will try to determine if maintaining and enhancing these informal, remnant urban spaces will achieve a more diverse and fare public realm (obviously this will have to be coupled with the existence of a local community).

Video on 2005/06 changes to LGX: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNOnzsJp4e0

Video about threatened demolishing of historic buildings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqRt6oK2k2s

Video of Drum Tower precinct (with catchy background music): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHtZZJprGBY

This is very funny, and talks about some landmarks in Beijing leading up the Olympics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn3NDqw0nys

For those of you who are interested in the MIT/TSING HUA UNI summer urban design studios could access through the following link

2006 MIT/Tsing Hua UNI summer Urban design studio

2008 MIT/Tsing Hua UNI summer urban design studio

Click on the Project link on the left navigation to access the pdfs, I suppose this would give us some indication on the format of the project.

Cheers,

Matthew

An Architectural Legend: Yangshi Lei

If you have not heard of Yangshi Lei (the honoured name of the Lei family responsible for imperial building for over 200 years during the Qing Dynasty(1644-1911)), then you have missed an important detail about the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace, Yuan ming yuan Garden, Cheng de Summer Resort, and the Imperial Qing Mausoleums in Hebei Province, the sacred burial grounds of Qing emperors, empresses and imperial concubines.

All these great cultural relics and popular tourist attractions have been included on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, and surprisingly enough, they are all designed by the Lei family. Representing the great achievements of science and technology in ancient China, their architectural practice covered a wide range of city planning, imperial palaces, gardens, temples, tombs, princes’ residences, workshops, and schools.

Yangshi means architect or architecture in Chinese. Yangshifang, the then government authority similar to the National Architecture Design Institute today, was in charge of site selection, design and construction of imperial architectures. From 1662 to1911, eight generations of the Lei family were appointed director of Yangshifang consecutively.

With so many architectural works on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List, the Lei Family is a unique phenomenon in the architectural history throughout the world

The Lei Family

One of the ancestors of Yangshi Lei, born in Jianchang (now Yongxiu County) in Jiangxi Province, served as an artisan in the Ming Dynasty(1368-1644AD). Towards the end of the Ming Dynasty, he moved to Nanjing, the then capital of the Ming Dynasty (capital city of Jiangsu Province today), to escape the war. In the early days of the Qing Dynasty, he was enlisted to Beijing due to his excellent craftsmanship and he was thus seen as the primogenitor of the later “Yangshi Lei”.

(image Right Lei si qi)

The first generation of Yangshi Lei consisted of Lei Fada and his cousin, Lei Faxuan, who were entrusted to rebuild the Taihe Palace of Forbidden City during the Kangxi Reign (1662-1723 AD) of the Qing Dynasty.

Lei Fada’s eldest son, Lei Jinyu, succeeded his father to become head of Yangshifang and showed his excellence in the construction of “Changchunyuan”, the first royal garden of the Qing Dynasty. Among Lei Jinyu’s five sons, only the youngest one, named Lei Shengcheng, carried on with his father’s career. His three sons all took part in the construction of royal projects consecutively. The eldest son, Lei Jiawei, was sent to examine the Xanadus, bridges and riverbank projects which were out of Beijing, and to work on the construction of the scenic spots along the route along which emperor Qian long would pass when he went on an inspection to the south of the Yangtze River. The second son, named Lei Jiaxi, undertook the Shou-shan Mountain project, the Yuquan Mountain project, the Fragrant Mountain Park, Chengde Imperial Summer Villa and the Chang Mausoleum in 1792. The third son, Lei Jiarui, went along with his brothers to deal with imperial projects inside the palace.

The family had risen to great fame and influence by that time, and the three collected details of the southern architecture style and incorporated them into their later works, which included the renovation of the Summer Palace and the Yuangmingyuan Garden.

Lei Jingxiu, the third son of Lei Jiaxi, learnt architecture diligently from his father in Yangshifang located in the Old Summer Palace when he was sixteen. He collected the architectural blueprints and wax models used by his ancestors, and stored them in a three-room house downtown, most of which have been kept to form what is known today as the Yangshi Lei archives.

Lei Siqi, the third son of Lei Jingxiu, participated in the construction of the Ding Mausoleum in 1865. Along with his brother, Lei Tingchang, who designed the mausoleum of Empress Dowager Cian and Empress Dowager Cixi, Lei Siqi submitted the deisgn drafts for the renovation of the Old Summer Palace and was called upon five times by the emperor in 1874. After that he participated in the expansion project of three seas (North Sea, Middle Sea and South Sea) as well as the rebuilding of Old Summer Palace. After that “Yangshi Lei” became even more famous, enjoying a good reputation in and out of the royal court.

However, the Lei family lost favour with the fall of the Qing Dynasty early last century. Without financial income, the family disintegrated and became oblivious to the outside world.

The offspring sold the design drafts and wax models for foot and none of them have been involved in architecture since that time.

The Design Drafts of Yangshi Lei

Apart from the grand architectures, the Lei family has also left another treasure - design drafts, which are seen as precious historical archives of Yangshi Lei. In the National Library of China alone, there are up to 20 thousand architectural design drafts, each of which plays an important role in the research of the history of the Qing Dynasty and how architecture developed at the time. There are a variety of plans, such as projective drawings, front elevations, and side elevations. There are also a few revolving drawings, especially of the top of the mausoleum, which has an anomalistic dimensional form and structure and a contour map, which was very popular at the time.

The whole process of the project is reflected from these design drafts, including: choosing materials, digging, construction foundation, constructing the underground palace and surrounding grounds, installing pillars and making tiles, all of which reflect the original features of the Yangshi Lei, as well as the architectural procedure and the technology available.

Wax models -part of the design drafts- are model drawings made by paper, straw and wood. The wax model which was named after the last procedure, which used the special small brand iron to fortify the model, provides important help for historians to discover the science, technology, culture and art of that period.

Apart from the process, we can also learn some of Yangshi Lei’s important architectural concepts from the blueprints. For example, Chinese architectures have always been low. The height of Taihe Dian, imperial palace of the Palace Museum(the Hall of Supreme Harmony) is under 35 meters, and the width is 75 meters, this being the proper distance between emperor and ministers in order to keep pleasant relations between them, while maintaining the optimal distance for watching and hearing in the theater.

There are over 20 thousand design drafts of Yangshi Lei in existence, most of which are collected in National Library of China, the Palace Museum, the First Historical Archives of China and the Graduate School of Chinese Culture Relics. With various contents, such as the details of how sites were chosen, as well as programming, design and construction of Qing Dynasty imperial buildings including cities, palaces, gardens, altars, temples, mausoleums, mansions and others. The records are the most elaborate historical materials which also correspond with the remaining architecture.

According to Wang Qiheng, an expert on Yangshi Lei, the design drafts adopted principles of projection and layering, which not only overthrows the old theory that the ancient Chinese structures has not undergone necessarily design, but also proves that the design of Chinese architecture employed advanced drawing technology as early as at least 200 years ago.

In 2003, the design drafts of the Yangshi Lei were listed as a Chinese literature heritage. Now they are being prepared to apply for the world remembrance heritage in 2005, which is set up by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization for precious literatures records, and selects new artifacts through public appraisal every two years.

Yangshi Lei and the Summer Palace”

The Summer Palace, originally named “Qingyiyuan Garden”, and situated by the Wanshou Mountain and Kunming Lake, is the representative work of Yangshi Lei. In A.D.1750, emperor Qianlong built the Qinyiyuan Garden in honor of his mother and later constructed the Wisdom Sea long corridor and the Huishanyuan Garden, imitating the Jichangyuan Garden in Wuxi in Jiangsu Province. In addition, three mountains were built by the Kunming Lake according to the legends of Fangzhang, Penglai and Yingzhou. In A.D.1775 the stone boat was constructed. During the construction process, the Yangshi Lei worked out lots of designs and purchased the architectural materials themselves.

In the process of constructing the Qingyiyuan Garden, the emperor ordered an 8-storied tower pulled down because a geomancer said that it was not fit to build a tower in the northwest of Beijing. Then the emperor ordered Yangshi Lei to rebuild a different structure, posing a challenge for the family. At last, they designed pavilion pointing in all directions copying the Huanghelou design (one of the three famous tower in the south of the Yangtze River), now named the Fuxiang Pavilion now. The design of the Fuxiang Pavilion has been well preserved in the National Library of China.

The construction of three seas by Yangshi Lei

All the projects constructed by Yangshi Lei are complex, a fact that can be confirmed by the construction of the North Sea, Middle Sea and South Sea during the Tongzhi Reign of the Qing Dynasty. Lei Siqi recorded all the details of the projects including even the various sources of all kinds of costly wood, and sought all the materials himself. He purchased them in the market, took down the old materials from the royal palaces and gardens or carried them from Tianjin, a strenuous walk. In the end he died from fatigue at an early age.

During the Guangxu Reign, the project of the three seas went, among which the construction of the Yiluandian Palace for Cixi queen mother was the biggest. Lei Tingchang, the son of Lei Siqi, undertook this project. After three years of fastidious construction, Yiluandian Palace was finished, eventually becoming the real political center of the Qing Dynasty. After the Revolution of 1911, it was renamed Huairentang.

Reference

Original post http://www1.chinaculture.org/library/2008-01/16/content_62308.htm