China Pavilion: The metaphor

I mentioned previously that the China Pavilion is a surprisingly good metaphor for what China is going through now as a nation. After being in Shanghai (one of China's fastest growing and most international cities) for two months, China has revealed itself to be a proud nation who is extremely concerned with how it is perceived by the international community. However, due to rapid growth, the general Chinese population has not been able to catch up. What one ends up with is an exterior that looks half polished while the interior is glaringly flawed.

Before I continue my rant on everything that disappoints me about this aspect of China and become seen as a merciless traitor to my birthplace, here a few words that will hopefully save me from being deemed so. First and foremost, I love this country, it's food, it's people, and it's environments have given me fond memories to carry through my life. One of the saddest moments of my life was boarding that plane to New York when I was eight, knowing that being Chinese will mean something completely different from then on. Each time I come back, I've had mixed feelings about what I feel. On one hand, I still see the memories of everything I know and love and continue to find new surprises that secure China's prominence in my heart. However, time after time I find my self disgusted with certain ways this country has developed in the past twelve years. It seems that for each building that rises in China that I love, hundreds are built that I hate. This failure is an embarrassment to the reputation China is fighting so hard to build. The China pavilion arrives at a perfect time when I just can no longer look on and not be furious.

For the China Pavilion, the first flawed decision among many is the choice of architect. The Shanghai Expo comes at a very crucial time for China. As a rising economic power, the Expo is a time to showcase potential and confidence in China's bright future. The obvious choice (for me at least) would be one of China's emerging international Architectural firms, such as MADA s.p.a.m. or MAD architects. Instead, we get He JingTang, a 72 year old professor from South China University of Technology. What he as done with the largest and most prominent pavilion of the Expo makes me hope that this will be the last of his career. The China pavilion is an uninteresting building architecturally, it accomplishes nothing programmatically, and symbolically, it does nothing to fuel my confidence in China's taste in architecture for the years to come. With the whole world watching, and at such an important moment in China's development, how China thought this pavilion was a good idea leaves me in complete shock.

The interior is a whole series of even more failures and missed opportunities. The giant space floating above the ground has a huge potential as a great awe inspiring space. Yet, all this, squandered and split into claustrophobic floors. Great views of Shanghai and the entire expo are right outside the windows, which should have been the very first thing exploited by the architect. Instead, nothing. Why build something so tall when you're not going to take advantage of it? After reading this article about what He JingTang was thinking (if he was thinking at all) when he designed the pavilion, I finally understand why obvious opportunities inside, that practically hit you in the face with the force of a high speed maglev, are so sadly missed. The architect simply was not looking.

The disporportional importance placed on the exterior shows the current climate of construction in China today. What is built has to look good, be symbolic, and serve as an icon; from the outside. The inside however, can be left more unpolished and uninspiring as a makeshift fort built from wet cardboard boxes by a seven year old. So concerned about how their building will be perceived, Chinese architects such as He JingTang no longer (if he had at all before this project) consider architecture holistically.

All the ideas and symbols of the China pavilion seen from the exterior are in no way connected to the ideas and symbols in the interior. Why not, then, just build two separate objects, instead of uncomfortably pushing one into another? The exterior is unmistakably Chinese. The way its put together and the way it presents itself is reminiscent of classic Chinese landmarks. However, is being classic really the way China wants to represent itself now? What happened to being the economic future and the Expo catch phrase "better city, better life"? The exterior form is just a half-assed median between reproducing classical Chinese architecture and gluing a bunch of sticks together. (The latter of which I am very familiar with, and can often times produce interesting effects. In this case, "gluing a bunch of sticks together" should be taken with a very negative connotation.)

The interior is even more atrocious. Taking zero cues from from the "architecture" of the pavilion, the exhibits are a series of failures. Even the highlights, the movie and the wall of water at the end, which by themselves, would have been fantastic, are dragged down into the dark abyss of surreal terribleness. The exhibits are separated into three sections each occupying its own floor: Oriental Footprint, Experience Trip, and Focus on Low-Carbon Future, each representing the past, present, and future, respectively. On paper and in my imagination, this sounds fantastic. However, as we all know by now, the China pavilion hit a new low in failing to deliver. An empty pavilion on the inside would probably have been better than this claustrophobic mass of rage fueling farce.

This brings to my attention another problem with China, the disjunction between what is said and reality. The Chinese language can be very beautiful and efficient, creating beautiful imaginary images in four characters or less. The problem I have with the misrepresentation through words in China is just how laughably different the writing and reality is.

Are you tripping yet?

Highlight 2 of the pavilion, the Experience Trip, is describe on the Expo website as "Excursion trains will give visitors an appreciation of the great wisdom and achievements in China's urban development from ancient to modern times". Sounds fun and interesting right? In reality, (if you read my last post about the China Pavilion) this is probably the least fun part of the pavilion. The Experience "Trip" is really a seemingly drug induced trip of sorts, where psychedelic colors and built environments, that can't decide whether they want to be realistic or cartoony, result in a "bad trip" through a horror house residing in the mind of the most twisted of Disney cartoon writers. What it had to present in regards with present China, urban development, "better city, better life", or anything grounded in reality clearly missed its mark in the worst way possible.

I can go on and on, but if I were to write anymore I would probably be strongly inclined to throw myself out of the window. China's problems now is ironically embodied in the very pavilion it is trying to present to the world, and it isn't pretty.