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Fifty years after Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward unleashed a paroxysm of frenzied mass destruction and construction in the capital, producing ten monumental buildings to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, the great leap today sees Beijing racing to complete hundreds of building projects, both grand and bland, before hosting the Olympic Games in August 2008.
Last Friday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited journalists to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year holiday by sponsoring a tour of the new arts complex, followed by a reception and a performance of the National Symphony Orchestra's Children and Young Women's Chorus.
The Guojia Da Juyuan, as it is called in Mandarin, was designed by French architect Paul Andreu. It consists of an opera house accommodating 2,400 people, a 2,000-seat concert hall and two theaters; a small one seating 400 and a large one holding 1,000 theatergoers.
The complex is covered by a dome, with an interior of wood from the forests of Brazil and an outer shell consisting of more than 20,000 titanium panels. The building is set in the middle of a 35,000 square meter reflection pond, and is located west of the Great Hall of the People at the symbolic heart of the city.
During the tour, Deng Yijiang, vice president of the National Center for the Performing Arts, and Wan Siquan, chairman of the Proprietor Committee for the National Grand Theater, spoke briefly with reporters.
Deng said the facility was the "realization of a generational dream." The country's top center for music, dance and drama was one of the projects that did not make it off urban planners' drawing boards during the 1958-1959 Great Leap, when Premier Zhou Enlai called a halt to more new structures, citing financial reasons.
The idea to build the National Grand Theater atop the empty lot was revived in 1998 with an original budget of 360 million yuan (US$50 million) and project bids from nearly 70 Chinese and foreign architectural firms.
The Communist Party's Central Committee, responsible for making the final decision, changed the design requirements several times during the competition. In July 1999 Andreu, previously renowned for his airport architecture, was selected the winner. In an interview at the time he said he found "They wanted something new."
Andreu's radical form sparked controversy and criticism from the start, however.
The Dec. 1999 issue of Architectural Review of London described the building as having "no sense of direction, orientation or place" and called it "a familiar building type -- the airport departure lounge."
Chinese architects led by Tsinghua University complained the building was out of harmony with the existing urban environment and offered nationalist arguments that a foreigner should not build an iconic platform for the country's performing arts.
Even before groundbreaking began in Dec. 2001 the design generated a welter of nicknames, including hotpot, bombastic blob, tomb, jellyfish, spaceship, female breast, cow patty, eggshell, chicken egg and pearl. The last two are respective frontrunners as the most popular informal and official descriptions of the facility.
In its bid to project soft power the country's leaders see the venue as a cultured pearl befitting China's peaceful rise upon the world stage. Beijing's new mayor Guo Jinlong said, "Showcasing of a large number of extraordinary artists and repertoires will demonstrate the high quality and solid premise of advanced socialist culture in China."
Liu Qi, a member of the CPC Central Committee Politburo and Secretary of the Beijing Municipal CPC Committee, said, "Our goal will be advocating Chinese cultural traditions and promoting our cultural exchanges with other countries as well as enhancing the cultural well-being of our people." Head of the Culture Ministry Sun Jiazheng stated the facility will enhance China's "cultural significance in the world."
After several delays and cost overruns, the project was completed in mid-2007 and formally unveiled on Dec. 22. Wan Siqian told reporters on Friday the final price tag was 3.85 billion yuan (US$535 million), 3.6 billion for the performance spaces and landscaping, plus 250 million yuan for the underground parking garage holding 1,000 cars and 1,500 bicycles.
During the diplomatic reception one journalist was overheard saying the facility was "a beautiful waste of money." With murmurs of discontent over the cost, the allocation of scarce resources by a developing country, and an unsubstantiated perception of corruption, some working-class residents grumble the building is Beijing's biggest "baofang," a term used for a private room inside a karaoke parlor. History will decide which of these groups was right.
