MCLC: rooftop art

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: rooftop art
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (8/13/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/world/asia/mountainous-rooftop-addition-d
raws-notice-in-beijing.html

Beijing Orders Demolition of Rooftop Art
By ANDREW JACOBS 

BEIJING — In a city brimming with look-at-me architecture, the sprawling
addition that Zhang Biqing, a health care magnate, built atop his
26th-floor apartment is a showstopper.

Constructed with ersatz boulders, crisscrossed by trellises and walkways
and dotted with the occasional shrub, the two-story aerie resembles the
idealized mountains depicted in classical Chinese paintings — except the
requisite lonely monk of yore has been replaced by a flashy karaoke parlor.

The entire 8,000-square-foot addition, as it turns out, is illegal. On
Monday, The Beijing Morning Post featured a front-page photograph
<http://www.bjd.com.cn/10jbtp/201308/13/t20130813_4361397.html> of Mr.
Zhang’s garish rooftop expansion, along with disturbing accounts of how
the well-connected entrepreneur blithely ignored his neighbors’ complaints
during the six years he spent creating his craggy villa atop a luxury
gated complex in western Beijing.

Residents were so tortured by the din of nonstop construction — and the
resulting leaks and cracked walls — that several of them sold their
apartments and moved out. One next-door neighbor was reportedly beaten up
after he confronted Mr. Zhang about the project, which is said to have
cost more than $4 million.

The story, zealously covered by much of the Chinese news media on Tuesday,
seemed to embody the popular perception that the rich and powerful can
simply do as they please. According to news reports, Mr. Zhang amassed a
fortune through a chain of traditional Chinese medicine clinics he owned,
or through private acupuncture sessions he provided. Disciples claimed
that Mr. Zhang could cure chronic neck pain or even cancer.

Until recently, he was a local delegate to the Chinese People’s Political
Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the ruling Communist Party.

And as Mr. Zhang thumbed his nose at his complaining neighbors, he
suggested that he had friends in high places, according to The Beijing
Morning Post. He also brushed off gripes about the late-night warbling
that emanated from his karaoke studio by boasting about the stature of the
singers. “I’m not afraid of the complaints,” he reportedly told a property
management employee. “And you can’t stop famous people from singing when
they come here.”

Code enforcement officials said they had been stymied by Mr. Zhang’s
refusal to let them through the door of his apartment. The deputy head of
the Purple Bamboo Park urban management district said that he had even
sent inspectors to the building’s underground parking garage but that Mr.
Zhang had managed to evade them.

“If we can’t calculate the scope of this illegal construction, we can’t
issue a notice requiring him to dismantle it,” the official told the
newspaper.

By Tuesday, however, officials had slapped a notice on Mr. Zhang’s front
door, giving him 15 days to remove the addition or present evidence that
it had been legally constructed. Later, in a brief phone interview with
the state broadcaster CCTV, Mr. Zhang asserted that the structure was
safe, but conceded that it might have been a folly after all.

“Now I realize it was a huge mistake,” he said, adding that he would
dismantle the addition within a week.

Not everyone is thrilled to see it go. An elderly man who lives on the
21st floor and whose son owns two apartments on the 25th floor, said he
was not bothered by Mr. Zhang’s illegal penthouse. In fact, he said he
thought the structure was a eye-pleasing capstone to an otherwise drab
high-rise.

Standing in front of the building Wednesday morning, the man, who declined
to give his name, said he thought Mr. Zhang’s biggest mistake was failing
to keep fellow tenants happy. “Who doesn’t disturb the neighbors when
you’re doing construction?” he asked. “You just have to buy them fruit and
gifts and things.”

Mia Li contributed research.