Fallingwater(s) in Beijing and Shanghai

Frank Wright's Fallingwater, Pennsylvania, USA

Fallingwater in Shanghai

Fallingwater in Beijing

[via abbs]

CAIP lectured @ Chinese Designers' Region

CAIP co-founder Fei Wang gave a lecture, "Three Heterogeneity Studies of China, between the 18th Century and Contemporary" at Chinese Designers' Region (CDR), London, in June 25th, 2009.

Thanks for William Chen's invitation and nice discussions!

[This is old news. Due to China's Great Fire Wall, blogspot is blocked as always. Sorry for the late update.]

囧 Building in Chongqin

Someone found out a residential building in Chonging like a face, and very popular Chinese character 囧 (jiǒng).

from wikipedia:

"Jiong (Chinese: 囧; variant: 冏; Hanyu Pinyin: jiong3; British Cantonese: Gwing) is a Chinese character meaning a "patterned window" or "as bright as the light peering from outside the window". The character is now rarely used in this sense.

Internet emoticon usage

The character for "Jiong" is nowadays more widely used on the Internet as an ideographic emoticon representing a range of moods, as it resembles a person's face. It is commonly used to express ideas or feelings such as annoyance, shock, embarrassment, awkwardness, scorn or the internet meme "DO NOT WANT".

The use of Jiong as an emoticon can be traced to 2005 or earlier; it was referenced on 20 January 2005 in a Chinese-language article on orz.[1] The character is sometimes used in conjunction with orz, OTZ or its other variants to form "囧rz", representing a person on their hands and knees (Jiong forming the face, while r and z represent arms and legs respectively) and symbolising despair or failure."

[via tianya]

Zipper Pond in Taiwan

Ju Chun, a renowned Taiwanese sculptor, created this breathtaking Zipper Lotus Pond for the Juming Museum, located just outside Taipei, Taiwan.

[via toxel]