Did you know there was no work for "craftsmanship" in the chinese language? You would figure it out pretty quickly if you ever come here. Obviously it existed at one point in time because there is a lot of cool things left from past civilizations, but I think it got lost along the way.
Today T and I headed to the Forbidden City. There were many more people out than the day before. Why did I chose to visit during a golden week again?
Upon entering the main gate we were greeted with a display for Shanghai. Not very fitting, but ok I guess. After navigating past that we finally got to something we assumed worth seeing. It looked just like a lot of other buildings though so nothing too big and it wasn't quite clear yet that we weren't in the Forbidden City. We were actually in a limbo area just meant to trap tourist into paying more I think.
Anyways it was at these temples that craftsmanship comes in as a topic. So it is clear that the building was originally done well, but China is really trying to clean up everything for show, but the problem is that it is being hastily done and it is pretty evident. For instance on these buildings you can see paint all over the ground from the touch-ups. Also the touch ups come across as obvious/cartoonish and don't seem to look authentic.
There are many other instances where this type of quick and superficial things seem to show up. The place we were supposed to meet up with Elaine for example looked nice from afar, but close up you could see it was missing shingles. The inside was nice, but handles on the cabinet's had fallen off.
In the same park you were supposed to be proud of the trees and how they are still living after being so old, but they are obviously on life support and are only living because some arborist got a Ph. D. in applying bondo to trees. You will understand more if you look at the pictures.
The country is being super aggressive in its attempt to look pretty for the Olympics. The fact is you that can throw a billion people at a problem and probably get it accomplished, but it doesn't mean it is right or done correctly. It is a similar problem I have with giving estimates for the work being outsourced. I can say 1 month each for 5 tasks and then business is like "Well they have 20 people so that can be done in a week". That is a very effective use of a calculator, but not of reason. It just doesn't really work like that. Skill-sets are required and not all tasks are divisible. Also in China's instance you can't Ikea-ize your infrastructure because it not maintainable on that kind of level. As interesting as it will be to see what the city looks like in a year from now, it will be much more interesting to see what it looks like in 10-20 years from now because it is hard to tell if all this work will continue after the olympics or just let things deteriorate.
Overall the Forbidden City was massive and ok, but not the greatest thing in the world. The Starbucks is no longer there and has been replaced by a chinese specific coffee place. I suspect that the government finally realized the mistake they made there. I was really looking forward to going there though. It is like visiting your embassy. The coolest thing was probably the clock museum which technically has nothing to do with the city, but is in there nonetheless.
On the way out I got "meat product in a tube" which I had been tempted to buy for quite some time. It is not really clear what this is. It is pretty much a hot dog, but it comes in an opaque colored plastic casing. I chose the red one. They are always individually wrapped although you can buy them in packs. They are not always refrigerated and you see kids eating them every once in a while. It tasted ok, but didn't have much texture. I am pretty sure it is 50% preservatives and 50% pig lips or something.
There is more to the day, but that is it for this blog.
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