LEAP has a great article by artist Bai Xiaoci (who is responsible for the photos above) on the architecture of government edifices in China. An excerpt:

As material manifestations of Chinese political principles, China’s city- and county-level government buildings have also developed their own architectural aesthetics. State-owned design institutes are primarily responsible for the design of these structures. The skill level of these designers and the aesthetic preferences of local government policymakers have rendered these buildings of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century to appear as pastiches of bygone fashions and contemporary trends. The various government edifices I have photographed all employ some neoclassical elements: horizontal symmetry, decorative pillars, and lots of marble and granite. In the coastal provinces with relatively developed economies, some buildings feature glass curtain walls, but many others employ ethnic-style glazed tile roofs, emphasizing the political correctness of the nation-state.

With designs that emphasize order, these government edifices are always symmetrical in arrangement and cavernous in volume, providing a solemn sense of protocol to denizens and visitors. An individual wishing to enter a government edifice must first traverse a massive plaza, then ascend a massive set of stairs. From a bird’s eye view, the individual resembles an ant crawling in solitude across a taupe granite dish.

Read the full article.

Ending today. Hong Kong’s annual art fair featuring works from galleries from all over (with Asian galleries dominating). Well attended by locals passing by, visitors flying in and from early reports, also by prominent buyers and sellers.

Above: A local favorite that blends traditional Chinese landscape painting with modern Hong Kong skyscrapers. I wonder if people unfamiliar with Hong Kong “get it”?

But: I’m bummed I missed this coral reef installation. Will remind myself to do a bit of research instead of just wandering about next time.

More information about the fair from ARTHK11.

Ai’s blog has transcripts after transcripts of calls to nursery schools, elementary schools, middle schools, education and civil affairs and government offices at the municipal, county, and provincial levels, where the caller tries to get specific numbers of the dead, and their names.  There is a rhythm to the conversations and you can, if you want, learn something about how to talk to someone in an official position in a way that more or less works.  Not works, as in, the caller gets what he or she wants, but works in that you can have an actual conversation.  Which isn’t always easy.

A few of the schools give actual names and numbers–2 students at an elementary scbool, names, ages–but most go something like this one from a call made on March 13, 2009 at 4:13 pm to the Chengdu Ministry of Education.  Phone number 028-61881710, length of call 36 min 2 second. The caller is not Ai Weiwei but a woman whose name isn’t given on the transcript.  Her words in bold, the person at the Ministry in regular font.

Hello, is this the Chengdu Ministry of Education?  Are you Section Chief Liu?

Yes, hello.

We are Beijing, individuals, we want to get the list of student names and numbers for those in the 5.12 tragedy.  Can you provide it for us?

That, I can’t provide it for you.

Why?

Because you are an individual, and what does an individual want that for?

We, along with some netizens, are very concerned about the specifics of the situation. For instance, broad numbers are no longer meaningful.  We want more detailed materials.

We’ve already distributed relevant materials.

But we still don’t have accurate materials!  This is not fair for people who want to donate or who have already donated; they at least have the right to know.

Donated!  You can go find the Civil Administration Department!

But as for the issue of the student deaths, the Civil Administration Department can only provide limited information.  The Education Departments should provide accurate data.

There are a lot of related materials, and we’ve already taken care of the list of specific student names.

Can you release that list to the public?

We can’t release it, there is a problem of privacy.

There couldn’t be a privacy problem because those materials are exactly the kind of thing that the Department of Education should publicize, and every citizen has the right to know.

You have to see if the families are willing to tell, some of them aren’t willing to tell, they don’t even want to talk about it.  The data you want are all at the Civil Administration Department, we’ve given it to them.

Even if the Civil Administration Department has the data, you too should be able to provide it.

This is about localized management, maybe you should ask the Publicity Department.  Call 114, the Ministry of Statistics or the Ministry of Civil Affairs can give it to you.  Online too.