Weird Chinese building

Digging new ideas

Weird concept for this five-star hotel built in an old quarry in the city of Songjiang near Shanghai. The resort, currently under construction, will include a 400-bed hotel, a conference room for more than a thousand people, restaurants and a multitude of sports and leisure facilities (swimming pool, climbing wall...). The Songjiang Hotel itself will rise by two floors above the 100-meter cliff, and plunge on two levels under water, with a view on a giant aquarium !







Urban Jungle

An answer to the overcrowding of Hong Kong ? This strange project entitled Urban Jungle from the architect Vincent Callebaut proposes to re-domesticate nature and expand the territory of this modern city. The aim is to increase the possibilities of building real estates with a strong ecological connotation. The new spaces will be self-sufficient and produce more energy than they consume!











Beijing big wheel

Beijing big wheel will be the largest wheel in the world with a height of 208 meters! This size was chosen to celebrate the 2008 Olympic Games. A huge attraction, which should be completed by 2009. It will be able to carry 1920 passengers at once, with 40 people in 48 different cabins! One turn of the well will take 30 minutes, time to see (or not see) the great wall lost in a veil of industrial mist…








No false note for this construction

This house shaped like a piano is located in the city of Huainan, Anhui Province. The main building looks like a black piano and the stairways similar to a transparent violin.











This extravagant building is used to display housing development in the new areas of the city of Huainan, an attempt to strike the right chord of the futur buyers.







MAD IN CHINA


This Chinese project wit weird organic forms is a project from a Beijing architect agencyMAD, Ma Yangsong 马岩松, making te link between architecture and our natural environment.








The Erdos Museum 尔多斯博物馆 in Inner Mongolia is now under construction in the middle of the Gobi desert. The strange shape of the building reminds the one of a heart, not only outside but also inside with the tangle of its « arteries »






Other MAD project with the Absolute towers of Toronto, already nicknamed by the inhabitants « Marilyn Monroe » due to its very feminin et sensual outlines.










Big shorts

In the heart of Beijing, this must be one of the most emblematic buildings of the architectural madness that seized China.

The CCTV Headquarters is a skyscraper in the Beijing Central Business District.






The main building is not a traditional tower, but a continuous loop of six horizontal and vertical sections covering 381,000 square metres (4.1 million square feet) of floor space, creating an irregular grid on the building's facade with an open center. The construction of the building is considered to be a structural challenge, especially because it is in a seismic zone. Because of its radical shape, it has acquired the nickname dà kùchǎ (大裤衩)[2], meaning "Big shorts".





The building was completed in December 2008. Rem koolhaas and Ole Schereen were the architects for the building. It stands at 234 metres (768 ft) tall and has 51 floors.




Infernal Tower

On February 9, 2009 an adjacent building in the complex, the Television Cultural Center, caught on fire, while people were celebrating the Lantern Festival. The fire was triggered by fireworks illegally launched from the roof of the tower under construction. A firefighter died and the future Mandarin hotel, a theater and a recording studio were destroyed.









Godzilla

Chinese netizens were quick to spread the information and to make fun of the situation - despite its tragic dimension. They turn the photos into horror films scenes. A way, of making fun of the state television CCTV last bastion of propaganda. Via China Smack.















Shanghai big dog tower

This unique 80 meters high tower should be raised in the Pudong area of Shanghai in 2010 if it is accepted by the local authorities. The projest has been selected for the 2010 Universal Exposition of Shanghai.









Shanghai World Financial Center

After more than ten years of delay, the tallest building in China is now cutting into the already hazy sky of Shanghai dotted with skyscrapers.









The bottle opener

The World Financial Center in Shanghai, a bottle opener tower-shaped building of 492 meters tall (101 stories), has cost nearly one billion dollars (722 million euros) to the tycoon Japanese buisness man Minoru Mori.

The tower will shelter conference rooms, a shopping center, hotel, restaurants and should eventually offer 70 floors of office designed to accommodate 12,000 people. An observatory is also planned at the top of the building.







The skyscrapers and stunning panoramic view of the megalopolis is destined to become a major tourist attraction and give back to Shanghai a major key role in international business.

Currently, a single tower in the world is higher than the World Financial Center: Taipei 101 Taiwan (508 meters high). A even higher skyscraper is under construction in Dubai: Burj Dubai that should be more than 900 meters high !











The Shanghai Center










Even higher !


This building of 127 floors, and 632 meters high, is rising between the World Financial Center and the Jinmao tower in Pudong.

Chinese medecine

No half measures.

In 1995 the body of Peng Shulin is sliced in two by a lorry. His life was saved in extremis thanks to the tenacity of some twenty different doctors.

Grafts taken on his head allow them to seal the bottom of his torso. However, in the absence of lower limbs, Peng is decreased and measures no more than 78 cm.
.




Chinese bionic man

Bedridden for many years, his case attracted the attention of the center for research and rehabilitation of Beijing. Orthopedic surgeons found a way to allow him to walk again by setting bionic legs on a plastic trunk.






















Crazy acupuncture

Wei Shengchu found a radical way to stimulate his network of meridians by picking 1200 needles into his head.
Chongqing, Chine. 2007. Géti images.








Obese baby

New phenomenon in China, with the changes in eating habits the Chinese youth is facing a big problem of obesity. This baby in the north, born with a weight of 3kg, had in 8 months reached 19kg!






Hamburger baby

Conditioning starting at an early age
.






Perfusion

Perfusions and injections are very common in Chinese medicine. They are used almost systematically, whatever the disease, mild or severe, especially if the Chinese doctors are paid by the quantity they can sell.





Muddy beauties

Therapic session in the mud of Anshan
. Reuters

Chinese Fun Fish

The small guy and the béluga

The four-year old boy named Yangyang swims with a beluga (a type of dolphin)in Qingdao Polar Region Ocean World in east China's Shandong province, 2007 Ph. China photopress.

The beluga kiss









Weird giant catfish


Spring 2007 an enormous fish is caught in Huadu's Furong Reservoir, South of China. The rumour quickly spreds on the web talking about a man-eating catfish ... It says that a human body was found inside the fish. The killer catfish was 3 meters long and the head alone was 1 meter wide.




Supposedly a few humans died every year in this reservoir under mysterious circumstances but no proff could link this with this big fish. Actually, specialist of the marine world identified the giant catfish to be a young whale shark !



A slice of chinese catfish ?

The only remaining mystery is to know how this shark, on the point of being extinct and of no danger to man (they are exclusively herbivores and they have not the teeth or other possibilities to attack other animals or humans) came from the sea to the reservoir ?






The chinese octopus sunbath

The dried spectre is a very appreciated Chinese delicacy.

Not fresh fish

Dead fishes from a fish farm after the passage of an heat wave in the South of China July 2006.

Miraculous fishing

A chinese fish farmer with some of his catfish bred on the outskirts of Hangzhou. Fish farmers are said to have turned to illegal veterinary drugs to keep fish alive in contaminated ponds. Source: D. Barboza. NYT, January 18, 2008

Giants Outside China

Although it is a little out off topic with China, here is (in comparison with Chinese giants), a few other famous and very tall persons around the world :




Leonid Stadnyk :

Leonid Stadnyk, born in 1971 in Podoliantsy Ukraine, appears in the Guinness Book of Records 2008 as the probable tallest living man in the world with a height of 2.57 m. Leonid began to grow dramatically in the age of 14 after a brain surgery, which would have stimulated the production of a growth hormone. He lives with his mother in his native village in Ukraine.

Leonid Stadnyck has stop growing since 2005. It is also said that he has the longuest legs and the largest hands of all.

Although this is not yet confirmed (he refuses to have his height measured by the Guiness book), otherwise he would replace Bao Xishun, a native of Inner Mongolia, which measures 2.36 meters and hold the Guinness record so far. (Wiki)

Robert Pershing Wadlow

Robert Pershing Wadlow (born on 22 February 1918 in Alton, Illinois, died on 15 July 1940) is an American who holds the official record of the tallest man ever. Wadlow reached the height of 2.72 m for a weight of 222 kg before his death at the age of 22.

His large size was attributed to a tumor in the pituitary gland. He was still growing when he died as a result of an infection caused by a brace poorly positioned. (Wiki)

Fedor Machnov

Fedor Machnov (1881-1905), a Russian in the time of the Tsars, 2.38 meters (himself claimed to be 2.88 m).








Fedor Machnov and his wonder boots

Big is beautiful

Growing too fast ?

Where will China stop ?
(ph S T Leret)











Where is the birdy ?












The birdy ?




Phallic park

This pillory, called "The Pillar of the sky" was built in the amusement park of the city of Changchung. This would be the biggest phallic totem of the world.

"Legend says that a cruel empress was terraced by a shaman whom erected a totem in the shape of penis to remind her that she should respect the men (and their attributes)" said park director Cheng Weiguang. "Today it symbolizes the continuity of the message of our ancestors illustrating happiness and prosperity ... "

A mother visiting the park with her son, said that for her it was just a pillar, it could very well be the symbol of anything, that she could't care less !"





Giant Salamender

This man is holding in his arms a giant Chinese salamander, an extremely rare species of amphibian. Despite that it probably shared its existence with dinosaurs, it is now near extinction. This big tadpole can reach the size of 1.80 meters.










Chinese Catwoman












Adult games

Bao Xichung, the chinese giant is playing with his very freindly neighbourg










Curious slippers










Chinese bigwig

A farmer in southern China is proud to show his latest harvest of sweet potatoes.




Conquest of the moon cake

21 August 2007, a final check on the largest moon cake of China freshly baked in Shenyang, in northeast China. The moon cake, measures 8.15 meters in diameter, 20 centimeters thick, weighs 12.98 tonnes and has 10 different flavors. It was created with 12 tons of flour and baked for 10 hours.




Not a mobile phone

Mr Tan hopes to enter in the Guinness Book of Records after having built, as he claims to be, the largest mobile phone in the world. The phone is almost 1 meter high - or 620 times larger than the original model - and weighs about 21 kilos, and is an exact copy of a mobile phone manufacturered by Nokia. Mr. Tan says that the giant phone has all the features, including a camera. However, it does not vibrate when it rings and has no battery.