I’ve been in Beijing this last week, visiting friends, but also re-visiting familiar places, buildings, street corners. One of those re-visits was to the enormous LED screen at The Place, a shopping area, which I happened to pass on my bicycle as this dizzying animation was playing above the pedestrians heads.
Posts Tagged ‘mall’
beijing souvenir 01
>revisiting…The Place
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
heels 02
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
mini models
Monday, September 14th, 2009Yesterday after many hours sitting in front of my computer, I went for a bike ride around University Town. I have yet to get a grasp on the layout of this island, and cycling around seems a good way to start. After taking a road that runs parallel to the motorway flying high above, I ended up in one of the 4 villages that survived demolition when this place was transformed into a university polis. On the edge of the village, a new shopping mall had been planted, totally alien and unfitting with the scale of the rest of the village. On entering, it became apparent that this mall, only a year and a half old, is on the verge of financial collapse. Not more than 20% of the shop space was occupied, only 4 of the ca. 20 escalators where actually on, and it was relatively dark as the lights in the central space were turned off. For villagers and their kids, however, the space seemed to offer ample opportunity to run play, running up and down the escalators., shouting down from the upper levels. An enormous, and cool ( the airco was on) space to spend a sunday afternoon. As I passed one shop display, I realized there was actually no glass in it. A bunch of little kids jumped out of it, from behind the mannequins, having a great old time.
When I asked to take a picture of them, unfortunately I could n’t explain clearly that I wanted them to jump out of the shop display for me. Instead they posed in front of it.
Here is the result:
I love how some of their poses are echoed by the mannequins behind them.


