theworldofchinese:

A Wonderland That Never Was

Beijing’s Wonderland amusement park has finally been demolished after 14 years of laying in waste. Wonderland never opened for business, and has been well-known as Neverland, a real life Silent Hill, Castle Ruins, or Ghost City. The Wonderland that never was, and never will be, initially aimed to become Asia’s largest amusement park. Construction began in 1994, was halted in 1998, and deconstruction followed after over a decade. On top of the  ruins of Wonderland will rise an international luxury shopping center .

Beijing Morning Post reports that the Changping district government announced earlier this year plans of three major tourist and commercial projects for west Changping:

“‘Asia’s largest amusement park’ Wonderland, whose construction has stalled for 15 years, will be used to build the 85,000 square meters 长城国际名品购物中心 (Great Wall international luxury shopping center). Allegedly, the 85,000-square-meter 长城国际名品购物中心 will feature a shopping center housing international luxury brands, a plaza, an entertainment center, and an aviation tourism club. Some of the facilities are expected to start running at the end of this year.”

The article goes on about the 2 other projects, both within close proximity to Wonderland. To its southwest will rise Huabin’s Peace Palace project. After the Huabin Peace Palace completes, it will hold 50 international culture and art events, along with 30 concerts per year. To its east will lie a town with an outlet commercial city, high-tech indoor amusement center, and five-star hotels. (I found some renderings for the proposed Peace Palace, and ironically it looks like it belongs to one of these “copy towns”.)

Wonderland aimed high, but fell before it reached the sun…

Read More…

haha i actually just gasped out loud

bradkey:

kingcrackers:

ex0skeletal:

Caroline Lahaise

Fuck yeah, Qilin.

The humble hippocamp is an underrepresented critter.

theworldofchinese:

China’s Subway Construction Frenzy

Beijing sets on opening up a new line this month, Line 14, and complete the extension of the last 2.4 kilometers of Line 10. The city also plans to build a 40-km rail transit line to connect Beijing’s new airport in Daxing district to downtown Beijing. Shanghai is also preparing for its Line 11 and Line 16, in addition to its current efforts to split Line 3 and 4. Aside from the two metropolitan cities, one being Chinas political capital and one the financial capital, other cities in China either already have jumped, or are still jumping, on the underground bandwagon, building their own subway systems.

In the next two years, Chinese cities will have added an additional 800 miles to its subway system, says Frank Holmes on Forbes:

“The Asian giant has been in the midst of constructing the world’s largest transportation system, laying mile after mile of high-speed rail and subway track.  In 2015, when the infrastructure build-out is complete, China’s subway track alone will be a mind-boggling 1,900 miles, according to JPMorgan.

According to the World Metro Database, Beijing and Shanghai currently have the longest metro and subway systems, with about 275 miles each. The city of Guangzhou in China also falls in the top 10, with 144 miles of rail, beating Paris’ network length of 135 miles.”

Read more…

zuky:

tabulanonrasa:

littleredridingcat:

annamay-wrong:

spicyobsession:

annamay-wrong:

omfg i lost it

dead and dying

儿儿儿儿儿儿儿 that’s beijingese for hello nice to meet you

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OMG

no they did not. LOL.

and everyone still thinks it’s only “ching chong”

This kinda fucked up and I really like Beijing dialect, it’s like the capital of internet slang and speed slurring — but I laughed.

crying laughing

More than half of the rivers previously thought to exist in China appear to be missing, according to the 800,000 surveyors who compiled the first national water census, leaving Beijing fumbling to explain the cause. Only 22,909 rivers covering an area of 100sq km were located by surveyors, compared with the more than 50,000 in the 1990s, a three-year study by the Ministry of Water Resources and the National Bureau of Statistics found. Officials blame the apparent loss on climate change, arguing that it has caused waterways to vanish, and on mistakes by earlier cartographers. But environmental experts say the disappearance of the rivers is a real and direct manifestation of headlong, ill-conceived development, where projects are often imposed without public consultation.

mostly i am just rebaggeling this so i can remember to pull it into individual links later. 

asianhistory:

To the tune of Frère Jacques:

 

Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han,

Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han,

 

 Sui, Tang, Song,

Sui, Tang, Song,

 

Yuan, Ming, Qing, Republic~

Yuan, Ming, Qing, Republic~

 

Mao Zedong (Deng!)

Mao Zedong (Deng!)

wow, embarrassingly, this totally helps. except it skips some…

thefemaletyrant:

Okay just for you. Here are the posts I wrote on it on Beyond Victoriana,

Africans in Ancient China & Vice Versa, Part 1: Chinese Explorations

Africans in Ancient China & Vice Versa, Part 2: The Kunlun Servants & African Merchants

Africans in Ancient China & Vice Versa, Part 3: Zheng He’s Star Fleet

Africans in Ancient China & Vice Versa, Part 4: A Final Word about Zheng He

Here are the books, articles and things I read when I wrote the posts;

Snow Philip (1988), The Star Raft: China’s Encounter with Africa

Liu Gang (2007), The Chinese Inventor of Bi-Hemispherical World Map, e-Perimetron, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 185-193

Shen John (1995), ‘New Thoughts on the use of Chinese document in the Reconstruction of Early Swahili History’, History in Africa, Vol. 22, pp. 349-358

Smidt Wolbert, ‘A Chinese in the Nubian and Abyssinian Kingdoms (8th Century): The visit of Du Huan to Molin-guo and Laobosa’

Wilensky Julie (2002), ‘The Magical Kunlun and ‘Devil Slaves’ Chinese Perception of Dark People and Africa before 1500′, Sino-Platonic Papers, Number 122 

Here is the early Chinese map of Africa,

I got this from Cape Slavery Heritage, an amazing blog on South Africa’s diverse histories that seems to be down or deleted now. It is a “large silk copy of the old Chinese map which accurately depicts South Africa” and suggests that Chinese explorers not only round the cape but also travelled in the interior.

Here are links on the search for Zheng He’s shipwrecked ship;

Sea hunt for ancient Chinese ship off African coast

Chinese archaeologists’ African quest for sunken ship of Ming admiral

And finally, something about the Kenyans with Chinese ancestry and miscellaneous stuff;

Ancient Chinese explorers

Famao: African-Chinese clan (this is a forum but the discussion is good)

Is this  young Kenyan Chinese descendant?

Kenyan girl’s blood ties with China

Kenyan girl with Chinese blood steals limelight

Finally finally, I recommend reading ibn Battuta’s compilation of his travels! He doesn’t go to China but he mentions meeting a Somali man in, I think, Maldives who had been to China IIRC. So read ibn Battuta just for this.

Made rebloggable by request!

justanotherreblog:

Sun Li Graces

starrypickingnight:

itscolossal:

These picturesque Chinese landscapes by artist Yao Lu are actually disguised photos of landfills. (via beautiful decay)

reblogging for yiduqie

omg

gondoleia:

like just the whole attitude tumblr feminists have towards that scene makes me so angry because wow a++ job not taking ANY cultural context into that film

like haha look she has so much agency she has decided to cut off her hair and thus divorce herself of femininity EXCEPT THAT THAT’S NOT THE WAY GENDER OPERATES IN ANCIENT CHINA EXHIBIT A:

EXHIBIT B

EXHIBIT C

for han people prior to the qing dynasty (and i’m telling you right now mulan is set before the qing), cutting your hair is a sign of shame and disgrace and humiliation because you are cutting off that which your parents gave you and you are being incredibly disrespectful to your parents, which is the ENTIRE REASON why people were willing to LOSE THEIR HEADS instead of cut their hair when the manchus mandated that men were to shave their hair into queues after conquering china

i just

like unless you are a buddhist nun or a buddhist monk (even daoist monks and daoist nuns don’t shave their heads; see wudang, emei) who has cut their hair to signify that they are no longer concerned with the 凡 and thus familial/personal relationships are no longer of import, i can’t remember a situation in which it wasn’t a disgrace for han people to cut their hair prior to ~1644

i will always reblog this always relevant piece of commentary re: cultural appropriateness of feminist commentary, or lack there of. 

gcccolumbia:

Have you ever walked into (or past) a luxury store, and seen swarms of Chinese people in it? Chinese people bought 25% of the world’s luxury goods last year (that’s $49 billion US), but the Chinese government is not happy about this, criticizing luxury shoppers for not spending their money at home. Read about it here. 

Once again, when I met some new people last night and my time in China came up, it was all ‘oh did you teach English?’ Sometimes Australians have actual, using the skills they have cultivated over years jobs in China. Teaching English is a legit job but it’s not one I’m qualified for and not one I’d do. I write reports! In English and Chinese! And occasionally I teach people how to write them and how to research, but one form of teaching is not the same as every other form of teaching. 

I am currently reading an article on voluntourism and, as usual, having a lot of feelings. 

Special China edition, a look at Fantasy vs Science Fiction in China, and all the things inbetween. Lots of great articles and discussions. 

fuckyeahchinesefashion:

邓达智 09ss

amorphe:

Momo Wang, the third hand-upcycle collection 2012

so pretty that I’m posting it again

(more here)