Trodism (c.2010 Rach Antwis)

I had to consult the team but they came up with a snappy blending of traditional-modernism for me.
Before we had the good and now I have the bad...















Now that's just not pretty.

xx

Marketing

We went for a little travelling over the weekend and one of the cool places we went was just a big Chinese market.















First there was a lady who saw us coming, carefully laid a huge squirming catfish out on the floor and then mashed it's head in with a mallet.
















Then lots of meat.
















More dried shrimp then you could ever possibly need/want.




















Lots of cages which would have had chickens in if we were there a bit earlier. Safe to say the idea of free-range produce hasn't quite entered the Chinese consciousness yet.
















And my personal favorite, a man selling dog meat.

All in all fairly standard market fare.

xx

carry on golfing

So, I recently took up golfing.





















Sort of.

Me and Tedd went to the driving range just down the road and its the most bizarre place. It's found a home in Wutaishan Stadium. Built in 1952 this was one of the P.R.C's first major stadia, built to seat 18,600 people. Which is impressive. More impressive are the trees growing through the stands and the fact it's been left to go to ruin for what I can only guess has been a rather long time.















It's just rather Chinese, the whole massive stadium has been turned over to a driving range which is great fun but probably not the most efficient use of central Nanjing real estate.

Even more confusingly/Chinese-ly the steps leading up to the stadium are decorated with the Olympic rings, suggesting the Chinese had hope of getting the Olympics way back in 1952 -for those not in the know the communists 'liberated' China in 1949, so this was probably a little optimistic. So optimistic I prefer my own theory of Chinese architecture, which means they saw lots of piccies from the Olympics and presumed the 5 rings were representative of 'sports' so copied them. Just an idea.






















xx

Love on the banks of the Yangtze

Continuing our Saturday outings yesterday we went to see a big bridge which spans the Yangtze.















It was big, fairly impressive and very hard to get off of once you were on. It took us over an hour to cross the bloody thing.
Peeking over the edge near one of the banks of the river we saw this couple who I think prove you find love in the oddest most unexpected places.
































Isn't that nice?

xx

Go on stand next to it...

Another series for you here folks. I nearly blogged about more architecture so count yourselves lucky.

Today is me and teddy across China and Korea playing the 'go on stand next to it, it'll be great game'. Most of the time you look like a div and a massive tourist.
So in no particular order...















































































































































































































(he wasn't even a statue, he was real)



















Teddy getting into the game before it was even a game. Clever boy.
















That's all for now

xx

traditional moderism, trado-modernism, modern traditionalism, modo-trando....

There doesn't really seem to be a snappy way to put out the idea of this traditional modern idea I wanted to briefly blog about today. I suppose I shall never be a snazzy publicist if I can't even blend words properly. But it is election results day in the UK, I can't sleep and I always like the feeling of being the only one awake at half eight on a Friday (by choice at least, I could be in uni. at the mo, but 'I'm on holiday' to quote the boy).

Anyways, the 'My Favorite Building in Nanjing' prize easily goes to this...
































I will be honest, I'm not even sure what this building is for, it's not finished yet and annoyingly the photos of the other not finished side are trapped on my camera - but will be added at a later date.

The second photo is of the opening you can see in the first photo, on the left behind the two propped up trees.

It's just something about the impossibly traditional design of the entrance, and the curved tile roof popping out of this modern block of a building, it's beautiful in real life. The old school chinese bit carries on behind the building trailing down in a series of roofs and archways managing to look like something out of a Chinese scroll painting, despite being in the middle of NJ.
I think the whole thing sort of reminded me of the Reichstag, probably my favorite bit of design ever, it's the idea of taking something traditional and rather then trying to find ways to redesign it and make it more appropriate and practical simply keeping it as it is and propping it up with a whole load of useful.

xx

Organised Spirituality

So last weekend we went for a lovely day out to a monastery. To be honest I didn't have high hopes. I've visited many a religious site in China and generally the standard has been low. I know this isn't really a quantifiable issue but I think you could easily make it one. General religiosity, atmosphere, architecture, composure of visitors they could all be marked out of ten, easy. In which case most Chinese temples would lose points for the fact they're often brand new, garishly painted, full of noisy noisy tourists, with gift shops at every turn.




















A big fake-man statue from a Confucian complex we visited on the Yangtze.

But the monastery was actually very nice. It was calm, quiet, secluded and you could almost forget you were in the middle of a city still with the heady incense and prayer music (taped but I'll let that one go..)






















Even more impressive was that we actually saw people praying, this side of religion is sometimes rather ignored in the hurry to get to the snack stand beside the alter.

















Essentially the monastery almost deserves the high praise of the fact it reminded me of the Shinto shrines in Japan.

Now Japan knows how to do religion. We visited a few shrines and in general they were amazing places to be. I'm not spiritual at all but I do have fairly set ideas about how this sort of thing should be carried out and Buddhism definitely requires incense and calm. Even more admirably in Japan there was a feeling of steady devotion, nearly all the visitors we saw were stopping to briefly pay their respects. Partly as they weren't just tourists, they were just people for whom it seemed a quick dose of the spiritual was just another part of their busy schedules.




















Plus like so much of Japan they were designed beautifully, the colours were so natural that the shrines often just felt like an extension of the scenery around. They seemed right, fitting.

Much like many of the Indian temples we saw. With the hotchpotch of different religions in Northern India we saw quite a variety. My favorite being a 'fun house' style temple where we got to twist up and down stairs, crawl through tunnels, splash through a bit of water and bump into ourselves in a million different mirror mosaics. The defining feature of many of them though was marble, India has a lot of white marble and it's a good look.




















Worship there was so active it was fairly awe inspiring. As in Japan it felt like a fervent part of peoples lives.
So there.

xx