a glamorous city

"The town of Wuxi, the regional center close by the northern shore of the lake, is not particularly attractive. Wuxi served as the capital of the Wu Kingdom for over 600 years until the Han Dynasty, when the tin mines were exhausted (Wuxi means "without tin"). It was the construction of the Great Canal, centuries later, that brought importance to local trade and industry, as it did for so many other canal towns. These days Wuxi is surpassed as a lakeside city by Hangzhou, and as a canal town with traditional gardens by Suzhou. In an effort to siphon tourists away from its more famous neighbours, Wuxi boosters have constructed many "instant tourism" sights in the past few years, most notably a slew of theme parks and the world's tallest Buddha, which smack of revenue-minded artificiality. At 88m high, this bronze-plated giant, stands as a monument to cynicism, built for the record books and to extract yuan from tourists at a spot with no religious significance."
Rough Guide to China



only tomoko decided to join me on a trip to see the site - and the first traces of construction? - of the new town I had been working on over the summer. after a three hours train ride west of shanghai, and after walking in circles in wuxi to find the vanke offices, I heard on the lobby phone that the guide, set up for us by mister fu, wasn't coming to the office today... strange. but soon a stand-in english speaking guide was found, in the marketing department. she took us to lunch, and after lunch to the site. from the car window we gazed at dozens of new or barely finished towers sliding by, along with new roads, a new bridge, and the biggest gymnasium in the world (somehow confirming the image sketched by the rough guide).


new highways already in place

the site looked more or less like I had imagined it from kobayashisan's pictures and discriptions - only closer to the lake - probably because there's not that much around the stretch of flat fields, except for brand new highways and some 'informal settlements' of local farmers that still need to be 'replaced'. our marketing girl added a special edge to the experience - she explained the project to us as if she wanted to talk us into buying a couple of units of the glamorous city ( "a glamorous city" is the litteral translation of the chinese kanji representing the name of the new town). she forgot to change the "potential buyer" tape for the "visiting designer" tape. cute - in the car on the way back, she repeated with utmost sincereness, eyes to the horizon, "this is really going to be a glamorous city"... (thanks)



above the construction site of the entrance buidling to the new town, which will function - in a first phase - as the new vanke wuxi offices and as a model house to sell the units of the project. this building - covered by my right arm on the picture below - is designed by fu himself and serves as a gateway to our civic center, of which construction is planned to kick off around february.



compare the advertising board with two pictures of our most recent model. on both pictures below you can find our section (civic center with shops, restaurants, services, parking, gardens, residences in two parallel narrow slabs) and the model house (currently under construction).


view from northwest (model house bottom left)


view from southwest (model house top left)