imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. after stalking.
rousing me from sleep this fair morning, npr's story of thames town in shanghai. the best thing about thames town? they've got their own winston churchill statue (the man in front of the tree in the midst of a faux English town square)! the worst thing? apparently most chinese cannot afford to actually live in thames town, thus putting a right good damper on the development's idea of helping to relieve overcrowding in shanghai proper. smart, developers, smart. there apparently is also an italian village in the works, complete with canals. think there's an american village, complete with overweight, video game playing slackers and internet access without restricted search engines and blocked sites?
posted by lynda at 7:43 AM
4 Comments:
China--especially Shanghai--weirds me out. I was in Shanghai. I didn't like it.
But then I like about old books I like by Japanese cats like Tanazaki, and all the ways Western ideas and images stand out and are used in strange ways in those books...because that's how it was way back when Japan met the West. It was a free-for-all. Eventually, it settled down and became something more Western than the West. It became Japan.
I don't believe, really, that China can develop that way. It doesn't seem to fit China's culture. But it's starting in the same way. It's as if these development ideas are pulled from scraps of paper dropped in a hat or bingo basket.
Next door to my hotel in Shanghai was an upscale development called something like Marseilles. An ornate gate kept people like me out. A security guard would come and stare me down as I walked past. It all looked beautiful. Yet, they were digging the nearby roadway ditches with shovels, not equipment. Shanghai: WTF?
-cK
China--especially Shanghai--weirds me out. I was in Shanghai. I didn't like it.
But then I like about old books I like by Japanese cats like Tanazaki, and all the ways Western ideas and images stand out and are used in strange ways in those books...because that's how it was way back when Japan met the West. It was a free-for-all. Eventually, it settled down and became something more Western than the West. It became Japan.
I don't believe, really, that China can develop that way. It doesn't seem to fit China's culture. But it's starting in the same way. It's as if these development ideas are pulled from scraps of paper dropped in a hat or bingo basket.
Next door to my hotel in Shanghai was an upscale development called something like Marseilles. An ornate gate kept people like me out. A security guard would come and stare me down as I walked past. It all looked beautiful. Yet, they were digging the nearby roadway ditches with shovels, not equipment. Shanghai: WTF?
-cK
Oh dear - looks like you've been spammed. I think the American Village is in the basement of Thames Town. Eventually it will rise up in rebellion. Tea will be spilled, etc.
omigod, i fucking love these spam things. so friendly, they are!
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