"Its cultural value has been seriously sabotaged. This is not a restoration, it has been seriously ruined."
Have you seen the photographs of how China is preserving the Great Wall by pouring concrete all over the top of it, obliterating its distinctive features?
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It would actually be better to just let it collapse to rubble than do that.
The Chinese people are a peasant society. Nothing they do makes sense to a non-peasant.
Oh wait! The Chinese government doing something awful, on the cheap, & destructive to the cultural patrimony of the Chinese people?
Say it isn't true! Actually, I think the above criteria applied as national policy was called the Mao years. What the Maoists did to the Buddhist & Confucian physical culture of China (including the invasion of Tibet) was equivalent in its destructiveness to what the French Revolution did to the Catholic infrastructure of France & the Bolsheviks to the Orthodox infrastructure of Russia. Which makes sense since the Maoists were deliberately copying both.
"China can't afford to...." is going to get more common. The PLA seems to be the only one with money these days.
How much do you want to bet that some project manager was getting kickbacks from a concrete supplier who was getting paid by the cubic yard?
If all they did was cover the walkway surface with a layer of lean concrete, nothing has been ruined. The concrete is easily removed and in the meantime will protect the old crumbling bricks underneath it.
Thanks to the ongoing work of the International Boundary Commission, a visible line runs through 1349 miles of forested land along the 5525-mile border between the two amicable countries. It’s a narrow, clear-cut vista informally known as the “Slash.” In Vermont and New York, this northern border is based on another invisible line: the 45th Parallel.
Some lectures-on-CD thing claimed that it was a typically Chinese thing not to maintain any structure.
Even Buddhist temples are left to rot until they are useless. They might be rebuilt, maybe.
Having been to my share of well-established Chinese restaurants, I find that claim pretty easy to believe.
Why not just let it crumble in places?
Hadrian's is crumbling and fallen and still recognizable and a lovely part of the English countryside.
The concrete will preserve the Great Wall. In a manner similar to Alexander the Great's incendiary mischief-making preserved Persepolis and the burning of Ugarit by Sea Peoples invaders (combined with a near-simultaneously occurring earthquake) preserved the archives of that city. So that, sometime in the future, after the wretched Communist regime that presently rules China has passed on to join its ancestors, wiser and more liberal leaders will strip off the concrete layerings to reveal (and resurrect!) the glories that lay hidden and protected beneath it.
It's their wall after all. Wouldn't it be some form of cultural appropriation or white privilege for us in the West to tell them how to care for it?
"Why not just let it crumble in places?"
Maybe human beings were taking the stones.
"Hadrian's is crumbling and fallen and still recognizable and a lovely part of the English countryside."
And the Colosseum in Rome is missing a lot of stones because they were taken and used in other buildings.
And the Colosseum in Rome is missing a lot of stones because they were taken and used in other buildings.
In their defense, pre-Renaissance Italy wasn't exactly a thriving society.
What's China's excuse?
they did it to make it easier walking for American tourists
Bricks and stones are not the same thing, and I believe the pavements on the Great Wall are mostly, if not all, masonry brick. Some of the wall facing is, or was, adobe in places.
125 years ago, my grandfather rented two Mongolian ponies and a guide, loaded the saddlebags with provisions, and rode for 3 days from Peking to the nearest part of the Great Wall, stopping for most of a day in the Valley of the Ming Emperors.
Today the Wall is being mobbed by a gadzillion tourists, some of which have driven their cars and motorcycles over unguarded sections.
Who did they consult... that nun who restored the portrait of Jesus?
So, let China be China.
Apparently they are no longer worried about invading forces traversing the wall on horseback. That was the original reason for the uneven steps.
How much of thousands of miles of the wall is being "preserved" this way?
The wall can be restored . . . but the trick is getting Mexico to pay for it.
The Great Wall is a tourist attraction. Charge the tourists, and use the money to rebuild the wall. Rebuild it using traditional materials and techniques, and charge the tourist even more to watch the rebuilding.
Another botched restoration was "Ecce Homo" done by Kate McKinnon.
Xenophobic, or something. Perhaps pro-native.
The Chinese are assholes.
Dumb, ruthless assholes, with no taste.
Imagine the words "gourmet" and "Chinese food" in the same sentence.
Right.
There are ways to go about doing this right.
Rhythm and Balls said...
The Chinese are assholes.
Dumb, ruthless assholes, with no taste.
Imagine the words "gourmet" and "Chinese food" in the same sentence.
Right.
There are ways to go about doing this right.
9/26/16, 5:05 PM
R&B, your first and second sentences are alright, but gourmet Chinese food you can't believe? What? I have too much respect for you too just believe that you said that. Do you have someone else typing in the house?
American Chinese maybe but:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_cuisine
I mean, two words:
Dim sum
I really, really don't think I could bear to live somewhere there was no dim sum or other authentic Chinese cuisine. You hurt me. I mean, did that mean something else in a different language?
Communism at work. Everyone gets paid irrespective of the results.
Go to any Chinese restaurant at a Shangri-La that has one and be awed by the cuisine, which would be Chinese. The best of these is probably the Summer Palace at the Island Shangri-La Hong Kong. http://www.shangri-la.com/hongkong/islandshangrila/dining/restaurants/summer-palace/. The Shang Palace in Makati gives it a decent run.
Regarding this wall, consider that, to them, it is an old wall. That stated, the state apparatus there is awful. However, at this point, each state apparatus in North America and Western Europe is worse, and broke. The people inhabiting and operating the latter are actively destroying the very essence of their countries and peoples, and continue to do so with respect to their rights. To what end?
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