Beijing

A joint design project for the 2006 MIT-Tsinghua University Beijing Urban Design Studio by Non Arkaraprasertkul, Alex H.C. Lee, Liang Sisi, Jue Wang, and Ai Yamamoto. The Beijing Studio is a Joint Program of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, with participants from both architecture and planning, and the Tsinghua University School of Architecture. Funding is provided by the Paul Sun Fund with additional contributions from the Asian Cultural Council of New York/Geoffrey Yeh Foundation, the MIT China Program, the MIT departments of architecture and planning and Tsinghua University.

Currently the international military situation on the whole tend to ease, but the world is not peaceful, 21th century, international relations are complicated, various forces continue to divide the world in combination. Exchanges and cooperation, struggle and competition are intertwined, will be the basic form of the 21st century, the international security environment and military situation. With the extensive application of high technology in the military field, modern warfare has entered a high‐tech stage, due to extensive use of war weapons and senior technical leader role in the new doctrine, causing major changes in the form of war. Resulting in a change in the scale of war, styles and processes. War has been a simple contest of wisdom into a physical confrontation military geology research and explain, I published a number of one‐sided view, mainly from remote sensing technology, according to Dr. Zhang Qingxiang. Remote sensing technology is the sensor mounted on the platform, as an electromagnetic wave information media, objects in the earth's surface and a certain perception of spatial extent from distant places, the whole process ground to identify the object, he is airborne remote sensing, in the 20th century 60 years developed a new type of comprehensive immigration interdisciplinary, since the 1970s, with the launch of new aerospace remote sensing platforms, research, space remote sensing technology to develop new sensors. Applications developed from military applications to a global environment and resources for monitoring and research objectives of cutting‐edge technology.

This study investigated the pattern of urban heat island changes based on the relationship between land surface temperature and the water index in Banda Aceh City for 1998 and 2018. Landsat TM 1998 and Landsat OLI-TIRS 2018 were used in this study, which represents the conditions before and after the tsunami. Analysis of data used Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS). The Land Surface Temperature (LST) was negatively related to the normalized difference water index (NDWI).

Nous allons maintenant examiner l’aménagement de l’espace dans les trois capitales Qing afin de mieux comprendre comment les concepts géomantiques s’appliquent à l’aménagement du paysage naturel en un paysage culturel, pendant le processus de création d’un paysage impérial. Comme beaucoup de dynasties non-chinoises, la dynastie Qing élabore un système de plusieurs capitales puisque trois villes, Moukden, Pékin et Chengde, exercent leur juridiction sur les trois domaines de l’empire : la Mandchourie, la Chine, et l’Asie centrale. En 1625 la dynastie mandchoue transfère sa capitale de Yinden [Xingjing] à Moukden [Shengjing], qui sont toutes les deux situées en Mandchourie. En 1644 la dynastie déplace de nouveau sa capitale, de Moukden à Pékin, dans la province chinoise du Zhili. Moukden garde cependant le nom, les privilèges et les organes administratifs d’une capitale de rang comparable à Pékin. Après 1703 la cour des empereurs Kangxi, Qianlong et Jiaqing séjourne à Pékin ou à Chengde. Pendant leurs règnes ces trois empereurs se rendent aussi en Manchourie pour accomplir les rites dynastiques aux sépultures Qing de Moukden. A Moukden, Pékin et Chengde, les empereurs mandchous procèdent à une analyse des ressources du paysage et aménagent les sites de façon à donner aux capitales Qing les qualités géomantiques qui favoriseraient la prospérité de ces villes et la perpétuation de la dynastie.

Reviews "China Marine: An Infantryman's Life after World War II" by E. B. Sledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).  This sequel to Sledge's celebrated "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa" (1983) has three themes -- how one Marine experienced a short deployment to China in the aftermath of World War II, his return to civilian life, and his discovery of another cultural world -- China. The memoir offers a basic template for how an American can get to know another society.  The article also profiles Father Marcel Van Hemelrijck (1904-1981), a Belgian missionary who Sledge's intercultural learning.

The use of spectrophotometers for color measurements on printed substrates is widely spread among paper producers as well as within the printing industry. Spectrophotometer measurements are precise, but timeconsuming procedures and faster methods are desirable. Colorimetrically calibrated flatbed scanners have been proved to provide a fast and fairly accurate alternative to spectrophotometers. Moreover, the rapid development of digital cameras has made it possible to transfer successfully implemented methods for color calibration of flatbed scanners to a camera-based system.

Previous literature has demonstrated that hosting mega-events can provide both positive and negative effects on a host country or city's economy. This paper examines three different case studies of past Olympic Games to isolate the determinants of economic success for a host country. This paper has developed four distinct categorical measures for evaluating the success

Misunderstanding and misreading characterized China-US relations in an early and mid-twentieth-century narrative economy framed by distance, conflict, cultural distrust, xenophobia, and periods of closure. To exemplify these misapprehensions, the essay begins with a racist African American stereotype appearing in Mao Dun's novel Hong (1929) as a key to open discussion of political stereotyping. It then turns to consider W.E.B. Du Bois' 1959 visit to China, for which Mao Dun served as his host. The essay surveys Chinese-language newspaper coverage of the Du Bois visit, including public comment by Mao Dun, Guo Mururo, and other leading Chinese officials. Du Bois and his hosts shared a language of imminent revolutionary teleology, one that proclaimed the arrival of a new order. This rising revolutionary international order was to be guaranteed by collaboration between Africa and Asia, so Afro-Asian solidarity had become a central ideological tenet in post-revolutionary China and writers were harnessed to that goal. For their part, his Chinese hosts misunderstood the role Du Bois played as an intellectual avant-gardist and treated his visit as the arrival of an influential ally in US politics. In a major speech at Beijing University, Du Bois displayed a reciprocal misunderstanding of China as approaching social perfection and proclaimed it to be the leading global civilization. Mutual public acclaim enabled both China's government and Du Bois to frame each other through heroic stereotypes. Such misreading functioned by elevating one figuration to represent a socio-political whole. Despite errors of perception evidenced in the rhetoric, mutual misreading contributed to advancing conversation between two societies.

Property-led urban redevelopment in contemporary Chinese cities often results in the demolition of many historical buildings and neighbourhoods, invoking criticisms from conservationists. In the case of Beijing, the municipal government produced a series of documents in the early 2000s to implement detailed plans to conserve 25 designated historic areas in the Old City of Beijing. This paper aims to examine the recent socio-economic and spatial changes that took place within government-designated conservation areas, and scrutinise the role of the local state and real estate capital that brought about these changes. Based on recent field visits and semi-structured interviews with local residents and business premises in a case study area, this paper puts forward two main arguments. First, Beijing’s urban conservation policies enabled the intervention of the local state to facilitate revalorisation of dilapidated historic quarters and to release dilapidated courtyard houses on the real estate market. The revalorisation was possible with the participation of a particular type of real estate capital that had interests in the aesthetic value that historic quarters and traditional courtyard houses provided. Second, the paper also argues that economic benefits generated by urban conservation, if any, were shared disproportionately among local residents, and that local residents’ lack of opportunities to ‘voice out’ further consolidated the property-led characteristic of urban conservation, which failed to pay attention to social lives.

　　從明太祖時期，北京城就是明代北方邊防體系中的軍事重鎮，後因明太宗遷都北京城、北邊防線內縮，北京城更是緊臨長城邊境的戰地前線。為鞏固明朝京師，明太宗宣示天子守邊，北京城因而提升為北邊國防的戰略核心。在明朝天子守邊的體制中，天子是最高的軍事指揮官，負責統籌戰略、調度兵馬糧餉。隨著土木堡之變與庚戌之變的發生，凸顯天子親臨戰場的高度風險，以及後代天子的將才武略不及明太祖、明太宗的問題。為不再重蹈覆轍，明世宗以恢復祖制為政治正統宣告，再從文臣督撫的經驗中，創置協理京營戎政一職，以兵部尚書或侍郎出任，做為代理天子統帥六師、肩負北京防禦的最高軍事指揮官。明廷令其督導京營整訓、規劃北京防禦戰略，在戰時能調度入衛兵馬，集中外軍政大權於一身。
　　從史料層面而言，正史、政書史料僅記載職官制度變化，並將協理京營戎政分類為兵部的增設官員，歷任者的個人奏議文集存佚豐寡不一，史料的載述分散導致不易看出其特殊性。因此，明清史家與近代學者多未特別注意協理京營戎政在明代政治、軍事史中的歷史價值。本文以《明實錄》為核心，輔以奏議、文集、總集、方志、檔案等史料建立「協理京營戎政年表」，據此為論述時間、人物主軸。對比協理京營戎政的創制淵源與其他軍事文臣的異同，逐步析論協理京營戎政如何執行代理天子守邊，以及置廢興替、權位起落的轉折。最後從明代國防的視野，說明北京防禦如何軍鎮化，而協理京營戎政就是政治上不能明言，實務上的「北京鎮總督」。

The Metropolis of Manila has poor wastewater management practices which costs the economy around AUD$ 2 Billion per year, results in around a third of all recorded illnesses and has left the rivers biologically dead. However, with a change in wastewater management governance structure in 1997, steady improvements have been realised. Lately, a sewerage system implementation model for river rehabilitation based on a “river basin approach” is being implemented for the first time on a large scale. The implementation is part of a strategy to increase access to sewerage infrastruction, for roughly half of the Manila Metropolis population, from 3% in 1997 to 100% in 2018. The implementation has faced challenges associated with flooding, land availability, above average population growth rates and managing stakeholders. However the bulk of these challenges can be and are being engineered out or managed and the implementation is proceeding.

In this paper, I investigate the motivations behind the construction of the first line of the Beijing Subway. I argue the subway was built mainly for military defense, specifically in case of air raids or a nuclear attack. I further argue the subway was heavily modeled after the Moscow Metro and relied crucially on Soviet technology and assistance, and that most, if not all, of its defensive features were based off Moscow’s. Tracing the evolution of subway plans, I demonstrate that several major events, including the Great Leap Forward, the Sino-Soviet Split, the Vietnam War, and the Cultural Revolution both hampered plans for the subway and provided the political impetus for its eventual construction. I further demonstrate that the Beijing Subway commenced construction as part of a host of Third Front initiatives. I conclude by analyzing exactly how a large, complex bureaucracy carried out the task of building the subway.

Tutto è iniziato nel 1985 "presi il mappamondo lo feci girare e puntai il dito, dove avrebbe indicato li sarei andata e fu Cina per diversi anni, viaggiando da sola con itinerari che spesso cambiavano a causa della burocrazia, dopo il 2003 non sono più tornata. Nel 2003, l'anno della SARS, ero a Shanghai per integrare l'autre guide La Chine des Chinois, edita da Levi, Seuil, ho vissuto e monitorato quel periodo per assolvere questo impegno. Non sono mai stata a Wuhan se non di passaggio per raggiungere Canton da Pechino; vi erano solo tre voli giornalieri in cui era difficile trovare posto, l'alternativa era il treno due partenze giornaliere, il più comodo partiva alle 22,55 ed arrivava a Wuhan-Wuchang uno degli agglomerati della città alle 15,17, la sosta era lunga poi si ripartiva per Canton". La fotografa Paola Ghirotti ha ripreso in mano l'archivio sulla Cina "mi sono resa conto che le foto documentavano un Paese interamente cambiato e che questo è il momento adatto per raccogliere il materiale in un libro che lo racconta con immagini e con note introduttive ai capitoli". Il fotolibro è completato da testi di Hori Yasue, Elvira Agnese, Roberto Gobesso

Da alcuni anni sempre piu studenti della Repubblica Popolare Cinese scelgono di studiare italiano come lingua straniera. Il presente articolo si propone di approfondire il fenomeno indagando gli aspetti di contesto della scuola Senmiao, una delle principali istituzioni private dedicate all’insegnamento dell’italiano in Cina. Strumento privilegiato dell’indagine e stato un questionario, somministrato nel mese di ottobre 2017 a un campione di studenti iscritti alla sede centrale della scuola, a Pechino: si e cercato di tracciare il profilo, le motivazioni e i progetti degli apprendenti sinofoni in relazione allo studio della lingua italiana, confrontando i risultati con le precedenti ricerche sulla diffusione della lingua italiana nel mondo. Studying italian in Beijing: a study of context Over the past few years, more and more Chinese students have chosen to study Italian as a foreign language in People’s Republic of China. This paper intends to further investigate the phenomenon by f...

In late 1900, while foreign troops occupied Beijing in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion, alarming news reached the German government from China: High-quality works of art were on sale in Beijing and would soon be displayed in museums in London and Paris without having a comparable display in Berlin. The Ethnological Museum in Berlin immediately sent the Orientalist Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Müller (1863–1930) as an envoy to Beijing to buy works of art. Müller was in Beijing between 6 April and 13 September 1901. This article contains a partially annotated translation of Müller’s report, including his packing lists of 117 crates he sent to Berlin in 1901. The original German text is included as an addendum.

China is urbanizing at an unprecedented speed. Filmmakers, artists, musicians, and writers all try to come to terms with the changes of their city. How is the Chinese city-as-spectacle, visualised and thus imagined and reimagined, if not contested, in art and popular culture? What are the possible escape routes from a completely commodified cityscape? How to realign artistic expressions of the spectacle with everyday practices? The imaginations of the Chinese city in art and popular culture that this book explores are not taken as merely mirroring or reflecting "reality," on the contrary, they are part and parcel of the construction, destruction and deconstruction of that reality. As such, these imaginations are enmeshed in the social, material and political realities that produce Chinese cityscapes. Spectacle and the City: Chinese Urbanities in Art and Popular Culture brings together essays by an interdisciplinary team of experts on Chinese cities, including world-renowned scholars like Ackbar Abbas and Chua Beng Huat, as well as leading cultural critics like Ou Ning. Aiming to steer away from an exclusive focus on Mainland China, the adjective Chinese has a cultural meaning and includes places like Singapore and Hong Kong.

Why do central and local government initiatives aiming to curb the proliferation of garbage in Beijing and its disposal continue to be unsuccessful? Is the Uberization of waste picking through online-to-offline (O2O) garbage retrieval companies able to decrease waste and improve the lives of waste pickers? Most citizens of Beijing are well aware of the fact that their city is besieged by waste. Yet instead of taking individual action, they sit and wait for the governments at various levels to tell them what to do. And even if/when they adopt a proactive position, this does not last. Official education drives targeting the consumers are organized regularly and with modest success, but real solutions are not forthcoming. Various environmental non-governmental organizations are at work to raise the level of consciousness of the population, to change individual attitudes towards wasteful behavior, but seemingly with little overall effects.

This set of city-case-studies across the globe-ranging from Tokyo to São Paolo, from Beijing to Istanbul-confronts different patterns and levels of inequality and segregation with different state and other contexts. Due to this focus it is a "must read" for all aiming at a fuller understanding of segregation. Through their colourful selections the authors convincingly show that context matters. They fill a gap in the literature. sako musterd, University of amsterdam, the netherlands Residential segregation is common to all cities but the nature, form and scale varies between cities and societies depending on economic and political structure, class and ethnic composition and level of development. With its wide range of case studies this valuable book breaks out of the assumptions of traditional Anglo-American contexts. It will be a "must read" for anyone interested in residential segregation and its variations worldwide. Chris Hamnett, King's College london, UK Maloutas book.indb 1 6/12/2012 3:02:08 PM
The aim of this book is to introduce the significantly different urban
experiences in social and spatial segregation patterns and rationales
which exist among the world’s regions and to demonstrate that
urban theory needs to draw systematically upon this wide range
of experiences. The cities selected (Athens, Beijing, Budapest,
Copenhagen, Hong Kong Madrid, Paris, São Paulo, Taipei, and Tokyo) were chosen in order to achieve geographical spread, to maximise the diversity of types of socioeconomic regulation and thus to avoid the interpretative limitations and misconstructions resulting from universalizing the Anglo-American experience.

Contents: Introduction: residential segregation in context,
Thomas Maloutas; Residential income inequality in Tokyo and why
it does not translate into class-based segregation, Kuniko Fujita and
Richard Child Hill; The impact of housing tenure on residential
segregation in Beijing, China, John R. Logan and Limei Li;Residential segregation in an unequal city: why are there no urban
ghettos in Hong Kong?, Ngai-ming Yip; A portrait of residential
differentiation in Taipei City (1980–2010), Chia-Huang Wang and
Chun-Hao Li; Residential segregation and social structure in São
Paulo: continuity and change since the 1990s, Eduardo Marques,
Renata Bichir and Celi Scalon; Segregation, social mix and public
policies in Paris, Edmond Préteceille; The solidity of urban sociospatial structures in Copenhagen, Hans Thor Andersen; Residential segregation in Budapest before and after transition, Zoltán Kovács; The limits of segregation as an expression of socioeconomic inequality: the Madrid case, Marta Dominguez, Jesus Leal and Elena Martinez Goytre; Changing dynamics of residential segregation in Istanbul, Tuna Tasan-Kok; Social polarization and de-segregation in Athens, Thomas Maloutas, Vassilis Arapoglou, George Kandylis and John Sayas; Conclusion: residential segregation and urban theory, Kuniko Fujita; Index.

Par la fiction, avec son aide, vivre et appréhender la « ville », ici mégalopolis et capitale sur-dimensionnée de plus de dix millions d’habitants, permet de donner une image réaliste, bien qu’imaginaire, de l’espace urbain. La fiction est présente sous forme de courts récits publiés au cours des trente dernières années. En Thaïlande, l’urbanisme et la littérature en prose ont progressé parallèlement ; ce qui donne son sens au livre.
Au-delà de l’histoire littéraire thaïlandaise et de l’histoire urbaine de Bangkok, traitées ensemble pour la première fois, ce livre offre une synthèse historique inédite de l’émergence de la contestation, c’est-à-dire de la démocratie, dans la société thaïlandaise, à travers les mouvements étudiants, ouvriers, artistiques ou politiques, partant de la fondation de Bangkok, en 1782. En effet, si ville et littérature forment le double propos principal de cet essai, il reste qu’histoire politique, société civile et construction sociale en sont également des thèmes forts.
Ce livre est composé de deux parties : la première, « le livre et la ville », traite des aspects théoriques et analyse les textes, alors que la seconde, « les auteurs et leurs nouvelles », donne la biographie des cinq écrivains retenus et, pour la première fois, la traduction en français par l’auteur des dix nouvelles choisies, en texte intégral. Le lecteur peut donc commencer par les traductions ou ne s’y plonger qu’après en avoir lu l’analyse proposée. Selon ses centres d’intérêt personnels, il pourra ainsi décider de son approche.

L'AUTEUR
Louise Pichard-Bertaux, diplômée de l’INALCO en thaï et en birman, docteur en langues et littératures orientales, a vécu quatre ans à Bangkok où elle a enseigné le français. Depuis plus de vingt-cinq ans, elle parcourt cette ville dans tous ses recoins secrets, s’y perdant avec délices. Intégrée en 1994 au Centre national de la recherche scientifique comme ingénieur de recherche, elle dirige aujourd’hui la bibliothèque « Asie du Sud-Est » de la Maison Asie-Pacifique (CNRS & Université de Provence), à Marseille. Chercheur associée à l’Institut de recherche sur le Sud-Est asiatique et à l’équipe LEO2T « Littératures d’Extrême-Orient : textes et traduction » (Université de Provence), elle intervient dans des séminaires ou colloques nationaux et internationaux, et publie régulièrement articles et traductions de fiction thaïe.

As this volume shows, Daoism changed in many different directions at the same time during the twentieth century. Many aspects of such change were directly ushered in by political processes of brutal secularization and modernization, which dramatically disrupted Daoists' connections with local temples, community life, and rituals. There is, however, one facet of Daoism that changed in less traumatic ways and actually thrived: its selfcultivation tradition, and the associational networks devoted to the practice of this tradition. By contrast to local temples that were being ruined and destroyed for most of the twentieth century, self-cultivation networks expanded and diversified. To analyze this process of expansion and diversification, I propose in this chapter to describe Daoist self-cultivation as a market, itself, as we will see, made up of different markets, all consisting of various competing suppliers aiming to meet demand in instructions in techniques allowing one to transcend one's physical limitations, based on Daoist visions of the body-this is, for the purpose of the present chapter, the narrow definition of self-cultivation.

In 1786, an ordinance of the Qianlong emperor prohibited the five wards, into which Beijing city was divided, from summoning the coroner of the metropolitan prefecture of Shuntian 順天 for a death investigation, and compelled them to recruit their own. The order appears redundant since regulations governing the career of the capital's coroners had already been set forth twenty years earlier. Still, far from being a simple administrative decision, as its laconic formulation in the institutional literature might suggest, the prohibition was excerpted from a long rescript, by which the emperor blamed the eminent scholar-official Ji Yun 紀昀(1724–1805), the then imperial censor, for having borrowed a coroner from the prefecture of Shuntian. The emperor suspected that Ji Yun did so deliberately in order to take revenge against that coroner who, for an earlier murder case, had performed a check autopsy (fujian 覆檢) which had overthrown an insincere autopsy report that Ji Yun had supported so as to cover up the real perpetrator, a central official and remote relative of Agui 阿桂, a grand councilor who had the emperor’s confidence at that time.
By exploring a series of governmental communications recounting the case, the first part of this article sheds light on how forensics was immersed in the interweaving of fractional conflicts and favoritism within the capital mandarinate, and on the interplay between forensic knowledge and political concerns at the very core of the political power. Thus, the article is aimed at delineating how epistemic value of forensic knowledge served individuals' political interests in late imperial China.

Set within the theoretical framework of cultural sustainability, this in-depth case study examines the Juer Hutong new courtyard housing prototype built in the inner city of Beijing, China, whose phase one was completed in 1990 and phase two in 1994. Juer Hutong (Chrysanthemum Lane) is located in the area of the celebrated Nanluogu Xiang (Gong and Drum Lane South), in proximity to the historic Drum and Bell Towers. It was a typically decayed traditional courtyard house neighborhood that urgently needed remodeling. After a decade of research and design led by Professor Wu Liangyong, and a group of students at the School of Architecture of Tsinghua/ Qinghua University, phase one of the project has won six awards, including the 1992 World Habitat Award. However, its proposed phases three and four were suspended from construction. This study elucidates the residents' views of the completed two phases and offers four lessons and two new courtyard garden house design models for discussion and future practice.

Eugenio MENEGON [Mei Oujin 梅欧金]. “Shei zai liyong shei? Qingdai Beijing de Ouzhouren, zhuiqiu yule he zhengzhixing kuizeng 谁在利用谁？ 清代北京的欧洲人、追求逸乐和政治性馈赠” (“Qui tirait profit de qui ? Les missionnaires européens à la Cour de Pékin au XVIIIe siècle et la pratique des échanges de cadeaux”), pp. 117-139 in Quanli yu zhanbu  权力与占卜 (Faguo hanxue 法国汉学, no. 17, eds. Lu Kang [Luca Gabbiani] & Zhang Wei eds. 陆康，张巍主编), Zhonghua shuju, Dec. 2016.

The paper addresses the problem of the cross-cultural study of sexuality in global times. I take issue with the inherent bias in analytical frameworks and theoretical assumptions that typically structure Western studies of non-normative sexuality in ‘other’ places, and provide a critical reconsideration of the challenges to queer studies of transnational sexuality.
Recent anthropology-based studies of transnational sexualities and sexual globalization argue that Anglo-US queer studies emphasize desirable queerness as modeled on modern, Western ideologies of sexual freedom, identity, openness, and individual rights. The effect is one of considerable political consequence, where Western queer life-worlds become the default analytical yardstick for cross-cultural comparison, and where Anglo-US-centric categorizations forever anchor desirable queer formations within a Western knowledge circuit.
My discussion draws upon my own research of Chinese women’s narratives about lala, or lesbian, community and activism in post-millennial Beijing. I consider what lesbian identity, activism and rights might mean in a Chinese political and cultural context, and ponder the possibilities and limits of current analytical frameworks in this respect. I conclude that ethnography as method, theory, and academic-activist ethics, provides an invaluable tool for the study of transnational sexualities. It helps us move beyond the binaries of absolute and categorical differences between a Western queer self and the non-Western lesser other.

The growing influence of globalisation and its accompanying mobilities, both corporeal and remote, are particularly clearly portrayed in the context of the cityscape where the built environment contains evidence of contemporaneous developments in culture. This is in no small part because the global population is now primarily housed in cities, a shift that has occurred concurrently with the growing economic significance of cities that now compete with one another in a manner that exceeds national boundaries. An associated set of highly complex cultural dynamics and an emergent aesthetic sensibility have been identified by a growing number of scholars; one that is marked by a set of concerns that appear contradictory, at times paradoxical and ever ambivalent. Stark illustration of this both kinetic and unstable sensibility is offered through the buildings constructed based on the designs of celebrity architects, or “starchitects.” The figure of the starchitect is paradigmatic of how agency has been effected by the changes outlined here, which seem to indicate the emergence of phenomena on a global scale that move beyond the conditions of postmodernity. These demonstrations of prestige participate in cultural narratives associated with the historical relationship between high and popular culture, and by default, the market system and its culture. It is argued below that Eric Gans’s explanations of the epochal conditions that exceed postmodernity—and their cultural implications—under the label of “post-millennialism” offer a very fruitful means by which to explain the activity of the starchitect. The discussion takes as an explanatory case study the example of the CCTV building in Beijing, the headquarters of the Chinese public broadcaster designed by Rem Koolhaas. The building portrays his consciousness of the paradoxical doubling of our survival and demise, the ecology of which is emergent from both our capacity for symbolic representation and the exploitation of the material conditions that constitute these non-exigent ecological circumstances in the first instance.

The manuscript travel journals of the jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (Della Entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina) were published in a latin translation (De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Iesu) in 1615. The translation has been, for centuries, the most detailed description of the Celestial Empire accessible to the European readers. It was, however, also  the product of a manipulation by their translator, the Flemish jesuit Nicolas Trigault. The aim of his manipulation - obtained for the most part by censoring some descriptions and by translating 'creatively' some terms - was ecclesiastic strategy: it was in fact necessary to 'justify' Ricci's 'soft' approach by even more exalting the wisdom of China's rulers. The translation had a role, for centuries - and perhaps even now - in determining the western idealized perception of Ming China.

To gain an understanding of the characteristics of nitrate, sulfate and ammonium in the urban atmosphere of Beijing, an experiment was conducted in October 2004, using a method involving the rapid collection of particles and analysis using an ion chromatography system. The study shows that the mean concentration of water soluble ions (WSI) increased during heavily polluted weather, and this change in the concentration of pollutants was related to the meteorological background. The concentration of nitrate, sulfate and ammonium increased 7.9, 4.1 and 5.4 times, respectively, during heavily polluted periods. The concentration of nitrate increased most among the WSI in PM 10 . The diurnal variations of nitrate, sulfate and ammonium in more polluted periods were different from those in less polluted periods. The highest concentration of nitrate (NO 3 − ), sulfate (SO 4 2− ), and ammonium (NH 4 + ) appeared at 19:00 during more polluted periods. In contrast, the highest concentrations of these compounds occurred at noon during less polluted periods. A correlation analysis showed that NO 3 − , SO 4 2− , NH 4 + , nitrogen oxides (NO x ) and sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) had significant positive correlations in more polluted periods. The transformation ratio from SO 2 and NO x to SO 4 2− and NO 3 − was higher in more polluted than that in less polluted periods.

The Boonself Youth Apartment is a temporary residence for young people in Beijing’s West Pingfangqiao neighbourhood in Chaoyang district, the richest and most densely populated in the city with its 3.6 million inhabitants.
The project began with the adaptive reuse of an abandoned building that was to have hosted recreational spaces for an office park. The lot is situated between Yaojiayuancun Park and the Chaoyang Sports Center.
The existing building, with its compact rectangular form, totals 120,000 sq. m. on three levels above ground, plus a basement. The spaces develop around a large 16-metre high atrium that brings natural light into the building.
Beneath the atrium, in the basement, is a large reservoir originally used as a thermal bath.

Inspired by informal observation of changes in social behaviour and personal propriety in Beijing in the 1980s and 2010s, this research assesses the view of young and educated Beijingers of the dynamics behind these changes, hypothesising government action and socio-economic development as key factors.
The data gathered shed light on the wider transformation that occurred in Beijing, deeming overly simplistic the assumed connection between economic development and civilisation and inviting a parallel between the magnitude of the transformation observed and its wide-ranging scope: as deep were changes in manners and propriety in Beijing as wide was the breadth of societal change. This reveals a refreshing version of modernity that helps relativising this concept, moving away from the isomorphism between modernity and westernisation.

Da alcuni anni sempre più studenti della Repubblica Popolare Cinese scelgono di studiare italiano come lingua straniera. Il presente articolo si propone di approfondire il fenomeno indagando gli aspetti di contesto della scuola Senmiao, una delle principali istituzioni private dedicate all’insegnamento dell’italiano in Cina. Strumento privilegiato dell’indagine è stato un questionario, somministrato nel mese di ottobre 2017 a un campione di studenti iscritti alla sede centrale della scuola, a Pechino: si è cercato di tracciare il profilo, le motivazioni e i progetti degli apprendenti sinofoni in relazione allo studio della lingua italiana, confrontando i risultati con le precedenti ricerche sulla diffusione della lingua italiana nel mondo.

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Studying italian in Beijing: a study of context

Over the past few years, more and more Chinese students have chosen to study Italian as a foreign language in People’s Republic of China. This paper intends to further investigate the phenomenon by focusing on the contextual aspects at the Senmiao School, one of the main private institutes devoted to teaching Italian in China. In October 2017, a questionnaire was submitted to the students enrolled in the main branch of the school located in Beijng, in order to outline their profile, reasons and future plans related to the study of the Italian language. The outcomes were compared with previous studies regarding the spread of the Italian language all over the world.