Such An Imaginary Slight

That was stupid.  I just want all the way over from Puxi to Pudong, to the convention center where my client has a booth.  I’m scheduled to join them this afternoon.  I found my colleagues, sat down and had some lunch, chatted idly then felt the vibration in my pocket.  Pulling out the phone I realized I was supposed to teach a mini course this afternoon, and not tomorrow.  I had no business being here for, as the reminder suggested things were to begin in twenty-nine minutes.  And without much further ceremony, I blasted off back across the river to the campus, in a hurry. 

Looking out over at the Shanghai Tower, built to be the world’s largest, we can laugh a little.  Our regional hegemon’s skin is ever so thin.  The Rem Koolhaas building in Beijing, affectionately known as the “big underpants” apparently became a source of embarrassment:  This is actually a coded slight:  the west is urinating on China.  The esteemed Dutch architect was apparently summoned to explain whether or not such slight was intended.  Too late, it would appear, as the crotch as already risen up over the city.  In Shanghai they weren’t too late, at the World Financial Center, Shanghai’s second tallest.  Apparently the then Shanghai mayor Chen Liangyu, became suspicious that the Japanese Mori Building Company were trying to pull-a-fast-one:  The circle atop the building was a symbol for the Japanese imperial flag.  As a result the circle was swapped for the trapezoid we currently enjoy with its attendant moniker:  the bottle opener.

But the tallest building of all has progressed to completion without a hitch.  It’s majestic, remarkable.  It bends.  Who could say anything bad about it?  I wish it had a home in New York, rather than our uninspired “Liberty Tower.”  What a compromise!  But what if someone were to mention the obvious about the great tower?  It’s bent.  Might not this also suggest an unsavory metaphor? 

Was the architect hinting that something wasn’t right in China?  Shàng liáng bù zhèng xià liáng wāi, an idiom familiar to everyone, intones that subordinates will imitate the bad behavior of leaders should the top-brass behave poorly.  Has the leadership somehow bent the nation?  Have they created something unsustainable?  No.  I think it is certainly not the case that the architect meant any such thing.  But it does make one wonder how China would handle such an imaginary slight.  This tower must be straightened!

Tuesday, 6/11/19