The Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall.

This place may not be at the forefront of places to visit for visitors touring Beijing, but for those with a bent on architecture, The Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall is NOT to be missed.

As found in the coupon book of savings on admission, friends and I had spent the day learning about Beijing's urban planning past, its present, and its future, through the use of aerial photographs, countless model buildings, and short movies in the 3D theatre.

It was a feast for my eyes from the moment I walked in, and as I usually do in museums and art galleries, I read almost everything there was to be read on plaques denoting things of significance. In one section of the hall, there laid a huge scale model of the Forbidden City and its surroundings within the 2nd Ring Road, constructed entirely out of woodcut. Just imagine the number of man hours it must have taken building such a thing, putting things in by hand piece by piece. By comparison, a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle titled "Wheat-fields" would have been a heckofa lot easier to complete!

In another part of the exhibition hall, the entire flooring of the atrium was constructed mostly out of illuminated glass panels displaying a ginormous black and white aerial photograph of Beijing. In the centre of the atrium were model buildings of entire city blocks which encompassed railway stations, subway stations, municipal and government buildings, neighbourhoods, parks, lakes, and of course, the Forbidden City, Tian'anmen Square, the Olympic Park, and other tourist attractions, all neatly placed in accordance with where they should be placed with the aerial photo. I had never seen anything like this, on this magnitude. It was charming to see my apartment building, and the school in which I work in.

As for the future outlook of Beijing's skyline, it certainly looks promising, prosperous, and dare I say it, prodigal. New developments such as the Olympic Park with it's "Birds Nest" stadium and the "Water Cube" aquatic centre designed by foreign architects are very noteworthy, as well at the new CCTV building in the financial district of Central Beijing District (CBD). It's an architectural engineering feat: cube-like in design with a void space in the middle of the structure, but not in the same way as "The Grande Arche" in Paris, France. The CCTV building is more of a balancing act, with the seemingly top-heavy structure securely grounded.

The "Boot Building" TVCC tower beside the CCTV building is yet another testament to the playful creativity and imagination architects are running with. Scheduled for completion in time for the 2008 Olympics alongside with its larger sibling, the CCTV building, it will house a 300-room luxury hotel, a 1,500-seat theatre, recording studios, restaurants, and spas. A Mother-Goose nursery rhyme about an old woman who lived in a shoe, brought to life.

Tucked away in a corner was a futuristic showroom of white polycarbonate walls, floorings, ceilings, and furniture in curvy and angular designs. Nouns such as "comfort" and "warmth" didn't resonate with me when I browsed around this "Future Home" concept designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, rather, I thought it was "sterile" and "outlandish". I wasn't very impressed with this "playroom" for adults, to say the least, but the Jetsons family may like this sort of thing.

We concluded our visit to the exhibition at the 3D theatre which highlighted everything we had seen within the exhibition hall on film. The visuals were enhanced with the 3D goggles, especially with the fly-by scenes making it like we were Peter Pan and Co. overlooking the city from above.

Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall 1


Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall 2

Southern China Experience.

My trip was fantabulous! In just 6 days, I covered a lot of ground with Kim and Kyle sharing a great experience together. Shanghai was our first destination and walking along the Bund with the colonial styled buildings was amazing. Looking across the river was just as spectacular, with the AURORA building displaying an assortment of ads like a JumboTron on the entire facade of the structure, the Shangri-La Hotel, and of course, that giant erection they call the Pearl Oriental TV Tower. You don't need a sick mind to see something out of it, made complete with two spherical structures at the base of it to complete the image.

The Hotel in which we stayed at was the worst accommodation ever. Called the Shanghai Xinlong Hotel, their brochure boasts of its "80 tastefully decorated guest-rooms" and it being "classy, comfortable, and convenient... an obvious choice for the business executive...", but it was anything but. The tastefully decorated guest-room we were put up in had all the qualities of a fuck-and-chuck motel: sparsely decorated, odd stains on the sheets, squeaky mattresses, and an unusual NUDE photograph of a man with breasts hanging on the wall. It was disturbing to say the least, but we had only ourselves to blame. After-all, it was our prerogative to find the absolute cheapest hotel in Shanghai, and the Xinlong Hotel was at the top of the search results on elong.net. So the old adage holds true: "You get what you pay for."

As we were taking a night-walk around the base of the PenisTower, Kyle and I got suckered into buying a flashy-blinky souvenir of the phallic object by several hawking vendors. After some hard bargaining with these free-market merchants, we thought we had scored a good deal at 18 kuai each, until shortly after making the purchase, another tourist got it for 15. Ashamed at ourselves for getting gypped by 3 kuai (41 cents Canadian), we tried to get rid of this novelty gift by approaching random people on the street just around the corner to the hawking vendors, starting at 50 kuai. Kim stood standing with his camera filming our efforts in unloading this cheap junk while laughing at our use of limited Chinese.

Next stop was Guangzhou which had its own charm. It had the same efficient, swift, and quiet subway system as in Shanghai built by German-manufacturer, Siemens AdTranz. For a rather poor area, this modern metro system looked out of place, but it was great to be on it! Shamian Island was a unique enclave no bigger than Granville Island in Vancouver, with the West side of it colonised by the British, and the East by the French. A strange part of history for sure, but it was nice to visualise what life must have been like back in the days on the island where the Chinese were prohibited to set foot on. Many great architecture of the French and British were still standing, some used as commercial properties like the Starbucks Coffee I saw there, others still being used as residential units, and a few extremely old buildings in such a state no longer suitable for any human to dwell in.

Hong Kong was our next stop over, and the most impressive of all! I fell in love with this Special Administrative Region (SAR) because I found people here to be quite friendly and helpful. In addition to, Hong Kong had the kind of cultural diversity I haven't seen anywhere else in China as of yet. Amidst the bustling streets of Kowloon, one could hear Cantonese and English used in concert, which was a warm welcome to me after months of hearing the Beijing dialect of the harsh "ER" sounds akin to the sounds you would hear when trying to start a dead engine.

We had found a guest house conveniently beside the Jordan Metro Station, but the room was no bigger than a standard prison cell. It was shockingly small for the three of us, but we came to realise that this was a standard size after looking into a few other guest houses in the area. Real estate space is at a premium, and we really felt it here.

After watching a documentary on the famed architect named I. M. Pei and looking at countless photographs of the triangular jigsaw puzzle of the Bank of China building, the experience to finally go up to the observation deck in person was something I revelled in when the chance presented itself. The skyline on HK Island would have shimmered over Victoria Harbour if it wasn't for the thick fog the evening we went up to the Peak Tram for a birds eye view of HK and Kowloon. Though things were severely more expensive than in Beijing, I think the plethora of entertainment, arts, and culture, not to mention its close proximity to Macau, make it a worthwhile destination to visit once again... or as a retreat for those looking to escape the doldrums of Beijing. The metro system was the same as the one in Shanghai and Guangzhou! Siemens AdTranz has a great foothold in Southern China...

Because we woke up late and didn't depart for Macau until 1600, we missed a lot of day-time activities like seeing the inside of the Fortaleze do Monte and the Guia Fort & Lighthouse. We had to be contempt with simply walking around the historical structures. Being lit against the midnight sky, it looked rather spooky, especially with the bats flying about! The magnificient facade of the Ruinas de Sao Paulo cathedral is perhaps Macau's most iconic structure, and the walk along the cobble stone streets ("rua" in Spanish) leading up to it was breathtakingly beautiful. There's a lot to be said about Portuguese architecture. Small pastry shops and eatries lined along the Rua da Felicidade ("Street of Happiness"), a street once notorious for brothels hence the ironically bestowed name. We stopped into a shop to purchase some biscuits and jerky here. Walked into a casino just for the experience of being inside one before taking the final 0030 FirstFerry departure back to HK.

Our final destination took us to Shenzhen, which was the least amusing place of all. In fact, I would say that Beijing had a lot more of offer. It's just a dry, mountainous region with nothing other than an ugly airport and a bus terminal. And it was very humid. In contrast, our flight back to Beijing was delayed for over 4 hours because of a freak snow-storm which saw the thermometer drop to -4ºC. Unbelievable how one part of China could be so different from another, but then again, it's not that unusual in Canada either.