Upon reading an Chinese contemporary art article, I got fascinated by one Chinese photographer.
Bai Xiaoci has chosen the imposing architecture of government buidling as his subject.
These buidling are vast, majestic and with enormous plazas in front of them.
Bai Xiaoci has made trips all over China to photograph these wonders of China's urbanization. With his project he wants to show the Chinese growth, that even penetrates in the remote countryside. His works has also a lot of symbolism, like the power of the impersonal Communist Pary versus the small common people.
Party members often want to show of their status and start to organise huge building projects in the hope to be commemorated after their reign. The big market of real estate also wants a cut in the deal. Wherever the Party is building, new housing projects with mushroom out of the ground and pricees will soar up.
So if you want to enjoy more pictures of Chinese urbanization, check out Bai Xiaoci's website.
People’s Government, Yingquan County, Fuyang, Anhui Province
City Government, Shenzhen
People’s Government, Changxing, Zhejiang Province
Chengdu city government building, Sichuan-province
Ordos city government building, Inner mongolia
Hohhot city government building, Inner mongolia
Ningxiang county government building, Zhejiang-province
Shanghai city government building. pudong district
2008 was the year China showed the world their impressive skills in organising the Olympic Games.
These year London has taken over the flame and is ready to welcome all nations in this sportive sportfest.
During the Olympic period the typical London taxis will have to transports lots of international guests.
Some of these taxis will be decorated and the Chinese city of Chengdu is one of the several investors. Advertising with Chengdu's most iconic creature: the Giant Panda.
Panda coulour taxis will be roaming London's streets during London Olympics.
Travelling a lot means seeing a lot of airports and spending too much valuable time at these transport hubs. Taking pictures is kind of killing the time. Here are some from Suvarnabhumi, Bangkok's international airport.
I was complete stunned today when I took my afternoon flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. The airplane was brand new with good seats, personal screens, even an USB port. As I was enjoying my luxurious new seat I was studying the Thai Airways magazine and the inflight entertainment magazine. Next I examined the safety pamphlet in the seat in front of me. As usual it states that phones and electronic devices have to be turned off. On the pamphlet 3 phones are shown: a Iphone, a Blackberry and a Motorola.
As many of my friends have these phones I looked at them a bit closer. I could see that the brand name has been changed, which is quite normal, but the names given are very unusual.
The Iphone doesn't have a clearly definable name. But the Motorola is called Wienorolaand the Blackberry is called Crackberry.
Now maybe this is my Freud mind playing tricks on me but "wiener" and "crack" would be informal names given to respectively the male and female intimate parts.
I am sure the designer had a lot of fun, but I can not understand nobody noticed this before printing these pamphlets for the new THAI airways aircrafts. But once again maybe I am just seeing this that are not there ...
Anyway I had a good chuckle in the plane seeing this. Did anybody else noticed this sign before?
In one of my very first post I gave my personal Thailand temple top 5. Maybe the ranking would have changed a bit after 5 years, but not enormously.
On the top spot I declared the special white temple in Chiang Rai, known as Wat Rong Khun.
Wat Rong Khun has been the lifework of Thai artist Chalermchai Kositpipat. At first his art has been labelled anti-conventional and his first creations were rejected by Thai Buddhist as it was too modern and not what people were used from a Thai Buddhist artist.
Gradually his work got more and more appreciated and even the Thai king, King Bhumibol, sponsored some of his work.
As he become more famous, more of his art works (mainly paintings) were sold for higher prices and with the fame came the wealth.
But as a good Buddhist Chalermchai wanted to do something for his faith and he decided to build up this white temple in his hometown of Chiang Rai. He doesn't accept donations, as he want to keep the temple clear of political and commercial powers, but by selling his art work, money is generated for this masterwork. He started the project of Wat Rong Khun around 1998 and he and his students are currently still working on the wat.
As I was in Chiang Rai last February I saw this amazing temple again. Through the years decorations have been finished and the paintings inside the main hall are almost done (but no pictures allowed inside).
Some additional structures, like the monks' residencies and ordination hall, are currently being built.
I took some pictures of Wat Rong Khun and want to share them with you.
In an earlier post I described my experience sleeping in a capsule hotel in Tokyo. Those tiny coffin-like rooms were very typical for Japanese big cities, but since last month the capsule hotels have made their way to Hong Kong!
Galaxy Stars Limited, a Hong Kong company, want to open several capsule hotels.
It would mainly target budget travellers as a basic hotel room in Hong Kong would cost you about 150 $/night. A night in a capsule would cost around 30 $/night. The pods or capsules would measures about 90 by 180 centimeters and will be equipped with all the necessities a modern traveller needs, like a flat-screen TV, a power socket, an air conditioner and even a small ledge for a laptop.
It is expected that especially mainland Chinese would go for this cheap option. Last year many tour groups from mainland China stayed at love hotels to cut down the heavy costs. Maybe the capsule hotels might offer a more elegant solution.
These capsules are also seen as a perfect way to build student dorms and student would be able to rent a pod, with communal bathroom, for about 400 $/month.
Galaxy Stars Limited hopes to open its first capsule hotels in the tourists areas of Tsim Sha Tsui, Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei. One problem however might be to get approval from the fire department.
Japanese author Masaru Emoto started his research about water crystals by freezing water to see if it would form crystals like snowflakes do. He froze water for 3 hours and photographed the results with his microscope. He also discovered that different sources of water gave different water crystals.
The amazing thing, according to his research, is that the water crystals changed into even more beautiful water crystals if music was played to the water before freezing it.
As water is a living thing it can store information and this encoded information transforms the structure of the crystals.
Mr Masaru takes it even further and has different experiments where water transforms into beautiful crystals when nice words, chanting or smooth music is played in front of it and transforms into ugly deformed crystals if negative words or music is recited to it.
Further developing his theory he also suggest that water, which is imprinted with positive energy, can be used as an effective medicine. He uses "Hado" water, hado is a Japanese word meaning very subtle vibration that can not be perceived, in alternative medicine and would have cured already some 10.000 patients with his innovative method.
As much as Mr Masaru has been praised by common people for his research on water crystals, as much has he been criticised for insufficient scientific proof. He is depicted as pseudo-scientific by many professors.
Several of his "Messages from water" books have turned into bestsellers and about 2 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide.
There are many interesting video's on the web about those water crystals and Mr Masaru, just check it out. I was very surprised by one video showing the effect water has on the growing process of rice, seen in the video down here.
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