This is the view from my street on a miniature model level. When I was younger, I didn't even have the patience to put together a model airplane without gluing my fingers together or without putting it down for a few weeks while I pretended I was Andre Dawson.
I have now discovered my new heroes. A group of dedicated individuals who do something that I never could do, make all of Beijing on a smaller scale.
They are the mad geniuses behind the Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall. At the Hall, you'll find one of my favorite things in modern Beijing, a miniature model of the entire city. And this city is HUGE. Insanely big. To give you an example of the detail they put into this, here is my apartment - yes, the pink one. In real life, it's pink too.
The area of the model is about half of a basketball court. And it's centered in the middle of a room. Where the model stops, it then bleeds into aerial shots of the rest of the city, extending deep into the mountains and countryside. The model is detailed enough to pick out all of the landmarks—the CCTV Tower, the new Olympic Buildings, The Chairman's picture looking out into Tiananmen Square and each building of the Forbidden City is perfectly detailed. However, I didn't notice any smoke spewing factories on the outskirts of the city...
The place also details plans for the city of until 2020. But living in the future is enough of the future for me. I could barely handle the model let alone the future future.
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