08.07.2014
Again a
class of Chinese in the morning, and then a lecture on Lingnan (south of
mountains – Southern China) architecture. The guy giving the lecture was a bit
monotonic so it took some effort to follow him. However, once I’ve found the
right mood for listening to him I heard lots of interesting things.
- About villages in cities in modern China, which is caused by the fact that people cannot own land or buildings in cities (they can only have a rent agreement for 70 years) but they can (and do) in villages. Therefore, when a city expands and surrounds a village, it is not easy to include it into the city. However, the village people build high (5-6-7 storey) buildings extremely densely and let flats in those buildings. Such villages in cities are both unique cultural phenomena to be preserved and dirty parts of cities that are not integrated in the common structure at the same time. This poses a hard problem for city management in China.
- About ancient architecture of China and usage of building positioning to create a better microclimate compensating for extreme heat etc. For example, in ancient times, they used to make all the buildings in a village very long and facing south so that to benefit maximally from cool ocean breeze.
- About Guangzhou city planning in old and modern times.
- About different modern schools of architecture, and Guangzhou school of architecture in particular. The Guangzhou school of architecture makes particular emphasis on functional aspect of building, including creating microclimate.
Then
we had a traditional Cantonese afternoon tea “Yum
Cha”.
Then we
went to Chen Clan Academy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Clan_Academy). In ancient China family ties were
very strong. It was an academy for juniors from Chen family and Chen family
temple. Nowadays it houses Guandong folk art museum. Perhaps, the most
impressive part of the exhibition are happiness balls.
However,
other things presented in the museum are also quite interesting, including the
building itself.
Then we
said goodbye to Litchi who was our tour guide on most of our excursions in
Guangzhou...
…and went
for an hour-long boat cruise over Pearl river, to enjoy views of evening
Guangzhou and the Canton tower glaring with different colours, a tea ceremony
demonstration, and a traditional Chinese instrument playing.
Probably, I
must say special “thank you” to volunteers who organized this cruise for us:
Bruce, Linda, and Lewis.
 |
| Bruce, Linda, and Lewis |
Немає коментарів:
Дописати коментар