The campus where I work is the smallest and daintiest In contrast to the little smiley face cartoon characters who represent authority figures in Zibo, the architecture of public buildings is designed to impress and awe. The vocational institute where I work has three campuses and each campus features lavish use of public space, huge plazas, granite columns that wouldn't be out of place in Karnak, long flights of stairs and imposing (in one case cantilevered) buildings. At these temples of knowledge, the lone human being takes on ant-like proportions.
A former teacher told me that walking across the plaza is not fun in winter with a stiff breeze in your face. To be fair, there are also lots of trees and plantings on the campuses and even an ornamental lake at the South Campus.
It's not hard to spot government buildings in Zibo City. They are huge and often more architecturally interesting than the equivalent structure back home. Take the government buildings in the city where I used to live in Canada. Kelowna's school district headquarters, its City Hall, the college, and the auto insurance office, are one or two-storey buildings that have a sort of modular, semi-permanent look to them. In China, an orgy of building means lots of new government buildings.
A former teacher told me that walking across the plaza is not fun in winter with a stiff breeze in your face. To be fair, there are also lots of trees and plantings on the campuses and even an ornamental lake at the South Campus.
It's not hard to spot government buildings in Zibo City. They are huge and often more architecturally interesting than the equivalent structure back home. Take the government buildings in the city where I used to live in Canada. Kelowna's school district headquarters, its City Hall, the college, and the auto insurance office, are one or two-storey buildings that have a sort of modular, semi-permanent look to them. In China, an orgy of building means lots of new government buildings.
| In Zibo, when you go to pay the electric bill, you step into a marble palace with 20-foot high ceilings and a service counter that's the length of two tennis courts. And of course there are guards out guarding everything, but I think that's mostly a) a cultural hangover, b) for job creation and c) to keep an eye on the parking lot. The same is true for the other government places I've visited to get my residency permit. Soaring ceilings, lots of granite, and plenty of staff. I'll try to grab pictures of these -- the first time I was in one of these offices I didn't want to make waves by taking pictures, but my companion later told me he thought there would be no problem if I did. |  Overpass between two of the campuses |
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