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Christmas morning demolition and CCTV Headquarters Bldg., Beijing, CN
--December 25, 2011 10:53 AM

This building at the southeast corner of Guanghua Lu and the Third Ring Road has been an advertising cash cow for the owners, Tsinghua (Qinghua) U. or some other educational agency where the accumulation of money is the only true measure of intelligence. Located across the street from the CCTV Headquarters Bldg. - the highest profile architectural project in Beijing - this ugly brick lump has been the site of gigantic advertisements, my favorite being "Air France Business Class, comfort" (with rising full moon) from December 20, 2010. As I write on this Christmas afternoon, the once 16 (or so) story building is a crumbled nub. Here are a few of the final bricks in that once-expensive wall as gravity calls them home.

Empty billboard beside the Third Ring Rd at the Guomao flyover and the CCTV HQ Bldg., Beijing, CN
--December 25, 2011 10:46 AM

One of my favorite barometers to measure backstage Beijing is the large billboard wall on the northeast side of the Goumao flyover between Guanghua Lu and and the center of the Guomao interchange (south of the CCTV HQ Bldg.). This particularly conspicuous message board has been one of the many sites that has prominently displayed Chaoyang District's tiresomely adolescent PR broadside of Civilized Chaoyang. I first wrote about it 20 months ago here. The campaign has been underway since at least April 2010. That this billboard is now blank heralds an imminent change. Will it be as goofy as the last one, or will it end up being even goofier? Either way, we can pretty much count on it being witlessly puerile propaganda, which is about as close as China can get to implementing soft power. I'll keep you posted on how this space changes, though I'm betting it will still refer to the 2008 Olympic foreign architecture. Some things, like Beijing's nasal fishing fetish, just can't be shaken.

Woman with child, collapsed wall and the CCTV HQ Bldg., Beijing, CN
--December 25, 2011 10:48 AM

Late Friday morning, December 23, 2011, during demolition of the white-tiled buidling beside the road, a section of the wall collapsed into traffic, damaging four cars, but miraculously not killing anyone. Wang Yu, a Chaoyang District police officer said, "We received a phone call saying a building had collapsed in the Chaoyang district. We immediately dispatched more than 20 policemen to keep order there." This was in the China Daily. That 'order' was the first concern might seem odd, but this is China, where the saving of lives is secondary to the maintenance of order. Luckily, no one was trapped beneath the rubble, especially along this busy stretch of road beside the East Third Ring Rd. in the CBD. Pedestrian traffic, though not ever a real crush here as it is a block south at Guomao, is usually constant. This photo was taken on a Sunday morning, Christmas Day, when pedestrian traffic was light. The China Daily story is here.

CCTV Headquarters Bldg, Tower 2 (SE), Beijing, CN
--November 2, 2011 7:48 AM

CCTV Headquarters Bldg. from the northeast corner of Guanghua Lu and the Third Ring Rd., Beijing, CN
--November 2, 2011 7:51 AM