It was followed by Zhang’s Red Sorghum, which introduced Gong Li and Jiang Wen to the world. Gong became the poster girl of Chinese cinema in the 1990s and the first international movie star to emerge from the mainland. Jiang, the Marlon Brando of Chinese film, has proved both a durable leading man and an innovative, controversial director of award-winning films such as In the Heat of the Sun and Devils on the Doorstep.
Rich, seminal works such as Farewell My Concubine (1993; Chen Kaige) and Raise the Red Lantern (1991; Zhang Yimou) were garlanded with praise, receiving standing ovations and winning major film awards. Their directors were the darlings of Cannes; Western cinema-goers were entranced. Many Chinese cinema-goers also admired their artistry, but some saw Fifth Generation output as pandering to the Western market.
In 1993 Tian Zhuangzhuang made the brilliant The Blue Kite. A heartbreaking account of the life of one Běijīng family during the Cultural Revolution, it so enraged the censors that Tian was banned from making films for a decade.
Each generation charts its own course and the ensuing Sixth Generation – graduating from the Běijīng Film Academy post–Tiān’ānmén Square protests – was no different.
Sixth Generation film directors eschewed the luxurious beauty of their forebears, and sought to capture the angst and grit of modern urban Chinese life. Their independent, low-budget works put an entirely different and more cynical spin on mainland Chinese film-making, but their darker subject matter and harsh film style (frequently in black and white) left many Western viewers cold.
Independent film-making found an influential precedent with Zhang Yuan’s 1990 debut Mama. Zhang is also acclaimed for his candid and gritty documentary-style Beijing Bastards (1993).
Meanwhile, The Days, directed by Wang Xiaoshui, follows a couple drifting apart in the wake of the Tiān’ānmén Square protests. Wang also directed the excellent Beijing Bicycle (2001), inspired by De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves.
The 2010 remake of The Karate Kid, starring Jackie Chan, is set in Běijīng and authentically conveys the city despite having nothing to do with karate.
Architecture
Traditional Architecture
Four principal styles governed traditional Chinese architecture: imperial, religious, residential and recreational. The imperial style was naturally the most grandiose, overseeing the design of buildings employed by successive dynastic rulers; the religious style was employed for the construction of temples, monasteries and pagodas; while the residential and recreational styles took care of the design of houses and private gardens.
Whatever the style, Chinese buildings traditionally followed a similar basic ground plan, consisting of a symmetrical layout oriented around a central axis – ideally running north–south to conform with basic feng shui (风水; fēngshuǐ) dictates and to maximise sunshine – with an enclosed courtyard (院; yuàn) flanked by buildings on all sides.
In many aspects, imperial palaces are glorified courtyard homes (south-facing, a sequence of courtyards, side halls and perhaps a garden at the rear) completed on a different scale. Apart from the size, the main dissimilarity would be guard towers on the walls and possibly a moat, imperial yellow roof tiles, ornate dragon carvings (signifying the emperor), the repetitive use of the number nine and the presence of temples.
Incense sticks | MARK READ/LONELY PLANET ©
Religious Architecture
Chinese Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian temples tend to follow a strict, schematic pattern. All temples are laid out on a north–south axis in a series of halls, with the main door of each hall facing south.
With their sequence of halls and buildings interspersed with breezy open-air courtyards, Chinese temples are very different from Christian churches. The roofless courtyards allow the weather to permeate within the temple and permits qì (气; spirit) to circulate, dispersing stale air and allowing incense to be burned.
Buddhist Temples
Once you have cracked the logic of Buddhist temples, you will see how most temples conform to a basic pattern. The first hall and portal to the temple is generally the Hall of Heavenly Kings (天王殿; Tiānwáng Diàn), where a sedentary, central statue of the tubby Bodhisattva Maitreya is flanked by the stern and often ferocious Four Heavenly Kings. Behind is the first courtyard, where the Drum Tower (鼓楼; Gǔlóu) and Bell Tower (钟楼; Zhōnglóu) may rise to the east and west, and smoking braziers may be positioned.
The main hall is often the Great Treasure Hall (大雄宝殿; Dàxióngbǎo Diàn) sheltering glittering statues of the past, present and future Buddhas, seated in a row. This is the main focal point for worshippers at the temple. On the east and west interior wall of the hall are often 18 luóhàn (arhat – a Buddhist who has achieved enlightenment) in two lines, either as statues or paintings. In some temples, they gather in a throng of 500, housed in a separate hall, usually called the Luohan Hall (罗汉殿; Luóhàn Diàn). A statue of Guanyin (the Goddess of Mercy) frequently stands at the rear of the main hall, facing north, atop a fish’s head or a rocky outcrop. The goddess may also have her own hall and occasionally presents herself with a huge fan of arms, in her ‘Thousand Arm’ incarnation – the awesome effigy of Guanyin in the Mahayana Hall at Pǔníng Temple in Chéngdé is the supreme example.
The rear hall may be where the sutras (Buddhist scriptures) were once stored, in which case it will be called the Sutra Storing Building. A pagoda may rise above the main halls or may be the only surviving fragment of an otherwise destroyed temple. Conceived to house the remains of Buddha and later other Buddhist relics, sutras, religious artefacts and documents, a pagoda (塔; tǎ) may rise above the temple.
Many Buddhist temples also have a vegetarian restaurant in one of the halls that has been converted for use as a canteen, which may be open to the public, serving meat-free, affordable food.
BATTLE OF THE BUDDHAS
China’s largest ancient Buddha gazes out over the confluence of the waters of the Dàdù River and the Mín River at Lèshān in Sìchuān. When the even bigger Buddha at Bamyan in Afghanistan was demolished by the Taliban, the Lèshān Buddha enjoyed instantaneous promotion to the top spot as the world’s largest. The Buddha in the Great Buddha Temple at Zhāngyè in Gānsù province may not take it lying down, though: he is China’s largest ‘housed reclining Buddha’. Chinese children once climbed inside him to scamper about within his cavernous tummy.
Lounging around in second place is the reclining Buddha in the Mògāo Grottoes, China’s second largest. The vast (and modern) reclining Buddha at Lèshān is a whopping 170m long and the world’s largest ‘alfresco’ reclining Buddha. Bristling with limbs, the Thousand Arm Guanyin statue in the Pǔníng Temple’s Mahayana Hall in Chéngdé also stands up to be counted: she’s the largest wooden statue in China (and possibly the world). Not to be outdone, Hong Kong fights for its niche with the Tian Tan Buddha Statue, the world’s ‘largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha statue’.
Taoist Temples
Taoist shrines are not as plentiful and are generally more nether-worldly than Buddhist shrines, although the basic layout echoes Buddhist temples. They are decorated with a distinct set of motifs, including the bāguà (八卦; eight trigrams) formations, reflected in eight-sided pavilions and halls, and the Taiji yin/yang (yīn/yáng) diagram. Effigies of Laotzu, the Jade Emperor and other characters popularly associated with Taoist myth, such as the Eight Immortals, Guandi and the God of Wealth, are customary.
Taoist door gods, similar to those in Buddhist temples, often guard temple entrances; the main hall is usually called the Hall of the Three Clear Ones (三清殿; Sānqīng Diàn), devoted to a triumvirate of Taoist deities. Pagodas are generally absent.
Taoist monks (and nuns) are easily distinguished from their shaven-headed Buddhist confrères by their long hair, twisted into topknots, straight trousers and squarish jackets.
Confucian Temples
Unless they have vanished or been destroyed, Confucian temples can be found in the old town district o
f ancient settlements throughout China and are typically very quiet havens of peace and far less visited than Buddhist or Taoist temples. The largest Confucian temple in China is at Qūfù in Shāndōng, Confucius’ birthplace.
Confucian temples are called either Kǒng Miào (孔庙) or Wén Miào (文庙) in Chinese and bristle with stelae celebrating local scholars, some supported on the backs of bìxì (mythical tortoiselike dragons). A statue of Kongzi (Confucius) usually resides in the main hall (大成殿; Dàchéng Diàn), overseeing rows of dusty musical instruments and flanked by disciples and philosophers.
A mythical animal, the qílín, is commonly seen at Confucian temples. The qílín was a chimera that only appeared on earth in times of harmony.
Discovered by amateur astronomer William Kwong Yu Yeung in 2001, the main belt asteroid '83598 Aiweiwei' was named after Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in 2001.
Modern Architecture
Architecturally speaking, anything goes in today’s China. You only have to look at the Pǔdōng skyline to discover a melange of competing designs, some dramatic, inspiring and novel, others rash. The display represents a nation brimming over with confidence, zeal and money.
If modern architecture in China is regarded as anything post-1949, then China has ridden a roller-coaster ride of styles and fashions. In Běijīng, stand between the Great Hall of the People (1959) and the National Centre for the Performing Arts (2008) and weigh up how far China travelled in 50 years. Interestingly, neither building has clear Chinese motifs. The same applies to the form of Běijīng’s CCTV Building, where a continuous loop through horizontal and vertical planes required some audacious engineering.
The coastal areas are an architect’s dreamland – no design is too outrageous, zoning laws have been scrapped, and the labour force is large and inexpensive. Planning permission can be simple to arrange – often all it requires is sufficient guānxī (connections). Even the once cash-strapped interior provinces are getting in on the act. Opened in Chéngdū in 2013, the staggeringly large New Century Global Center is the world's largest free-standing building: big enough to swallow up 20 Sydney Opera Houses!
Many of the top names in international architecture – IM Pei, Rem Koolhaas, Norman Foster, Kengo Kuma, Jean-Marie Charpentier, Herzog & de Meuron – have all designed at least one building in China in the past decade. Other impressive examples of modern architecture include the National Stadium (aka the ‘Bird’s Nest’), the National Aquatics Center (aka the ‘Water Cube’) and Běijīng South train station, all in Běijīng; and the art deco–esque Jīnmào Tower, the towering Shànghǎi World Financial Center, Tomorrow Square and the Shànghǎi Tower in Shànghǎi. In Guǎngzhōu, the Zaha Hadid–designed Guǎngzhōu Opera House is an astonishing contemporary creation, both inside and out. In Hong Kong, the glittering 2 International Finance Center on Hong Kong Island and the International Commerce Center in Kowloon are each prodigious examples of modern skyscraper architecture.
For something rather different, Jīnhuá Architecture Park, a project of artist Ai Weiwei, is an abandoned, overgrown, mouldering yet thought-provoking collection of modern memorial pavilions (designed by such names as Herzog & de Meuron), slowly returning to nature. They can be found in Jīnhuá, Zhèjiāng province.
China's Landscapes
The world’s third-largest country – on a par size-wise with the USA – China swallows up an immense 9.5 million sq km, only surpassed in area by Russia and Canada. So whatever floats your boat – verdant bamboo forests, sapphire Himalayan lakes, towering sand dunes, sublime mountain gorges, huge glaciers or sandy beaches – China's landscapes offer a simply jaw-dropping diversity.
The Land
Straddling natural environments as diverse as subarctic tundra in the north and tropical rainforests in the south, this massive land embraces the world’s highest mountain range and one of its hottest deserts in the west, to the steamy, typhoon-lashed coastline of the South China Sea. Fragmenting this epic landscape is a colossal web of waterways, including one of the world’s mightiest rivers – the Yangzi (长江; Cháng Jiāng).
Mountains
China has a largely mountainous and hilly topography, commencing in precipitous fashion in the vast and sparsely populated Qīnghǎi–Tibetan plateau in the west and levelling out gradually towards the fertile, well-watered, populous and wealthy provinces of eastern China.
This mountainous disposition sculpts so many of China’s scenic highlights: from the glittering Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces of Guǎngxī to the incomparable stature of Mt Everest, the stunning beauty of Jiǔzhàigōu National Park in Sìchuān, the ethereal peaks of misty Huángshān in Ānhuī, the vertiginous inclines of Huá Shān in Shaanxi (Shǎnxī), the sublime karst geology of Yángshuò in Guǎngxī and the volcanic drama of Heaven Lake in Jílín.
Averaging 4500m above sea level, the Qīnghǎi–Tibetan region’s highest peaks thrust up into the Himalayan mountain range along its southern rim. The Himalayas, on average about 6000m above sea level, include 40 peaks rising dizzyingly to 7000m or more. Also known as the planet’s ‘third pole’, this is where the world’s highest peak, Mt Everest – called Zhūmùlǎngmǎfēng by the Chinese – thrusts up jaggedly from the Tibet–Nepal border.
This vast high-altitude region (Tibet alone constitutes one-eighth of China’s landmass) is home to an astonishing 37,000 glaciers, the third-largest mass of ice on the planet after the Arctic and Antarctic. This enormous body of frozen water ensures that the Qīnghǎi–Tibetan region is the source of many of China’s largest rivers, including the Yellow (Huáng Hé), Mekong (Láncāng Jiāng) and Salween (Nù Jiāng) Rivers and, of course, the mighty Yangzi, all of whose headwaters are fed by snowmelt from here. Global warming, however, is inevitably eating into this glacial volume, although experts argue over how quickly they are melting.
This mountain geology further corrugates the rest of China, continuously rippling the land into spectacular mountain ranges. There’s the breathtaking 2500km-long Kunlun range, the mighty Karakoram mountains on the border with Pakistan, the Tiān Shān range in Xīnjiāng, the Tanggula range on the Qīnghǎi–Tibetan plateau, the Qinling mountains and the Greater Khingan range (Daxingan Ling) in the northeast.
China has earmarked a staggering US$140 billion for an ambitious program of wind farms; ranging from Xīnjiāng province to Jiāngsū province in the east, the huge wind farms are due for completion in 2020.
Deserts
China contains head-spinningly huge – and growing – desert regions that occupy almost one-fifth of the country’s landmass, largely in its mighty northwest. These are inhospitably sandy and rocky expanses where summers are staggeringly hot and winters bone-numbingly cold, but as destinations, the visuals can be sublime. North towards Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan from the plateaus of Tibet and Qīnghǎi is Xīnjiāng’s Tarim Basin, the largest inland basin in the world. This is the location of the mercilessly thirsty Taklamakan Desert – China’s largest desert and the world’s second-largest mass of sand after the Sahara Desert. Many visitors to Xīnjiāng will experience this huge expanse during their travels or can arrange camel-trekking tours and expeditions through its vast sand dunes. China’s biggest shifting salt lake, Lop Nur (the site of China’s nuclear bomb tests) is also here.
The Silk Road into China steered its epic course through this entire region, ferrying caravans of camels laden with merchandise, languages, philosophies, customs and peoples from the far-flung lands of the Middle East. The harsh environment shares many topographical features in common with the neighbouring nations of Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and is almost the exact opposite of China’s lush and well-watered southern provinces. But despite the scorching aridity of China’s northwestern desert regions, their mountains (the mighty Tiān Shān, Altai, Pamir and Kunlun ranges) contain vast supplies of water, largely in the form of snow and ice.
Northeast of the Tarim Basin is Ürümqi, the world’s furthest city from the sea. The Tarim Basin is bordered to the nor
th by the lofty Tiān Shān range – home to the glittering mountain lake of Tiān Chí – and to the west by the mighty Pamirs, which border Pakistan. Also in Xīnjiāng is China’s hot spot, the Turpan Basin. Known as the ‘Oasis of Fire’ and 'China's Death Valley', it gets into the record books as China’s lowest-lying region and the world’s second-deepest depression after the Dead Sea in Israel.
China’s most famous desert is, of course, the Gobi, although most of it lies outside the country’s borders. In little-visited Western Inner Mongolia, the awesome Badain Jaran Desert offers travellers spectacular journeys among remote desert lakes and colossal, stationary sand dunes over 460m in height; further west lie the famous grasslands and steppes of Inner Mongolia.
China’s Bayan Obo Mining District in Inner Mongolia produces roughly half of the world’s rare earth metals, elements essential for the production of mobile phones, high-definition TVs, computers, wind turbines and other products.
Rivers & Plains
At about 5460km long and the second-longest river in China, the Yellow River (黄河;Huáng Hé) is touted as the birthplace of Chinese civilisation and has been fundamental in the development of Chinese society. The mythical architect of China’s rivers, the Great Yu, apocryphally noted ‘Whoever controls the Yellow River controls China’. From its source in Qīnghǎi, the river runs through North China, meandering past or near many famous towns, including Lánzhōu, Yínchuān, Bāotóu, Hánchéng, Jìnchéng, Lùoyáng, Zhèngzhōu, Kāifēng and Jǐ'nán in Shāndōng, before exiting China north of Dōngyíng (although the watercourse often runs dry nowadays before it reaches the sea).
Lonely Planet China Page 206
