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Elysium
:ornament from the West
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Elysium
:ornament from the West 1999
Yuanmingyuan Park (Winter Palace) was the royal garden in the Qing
Dynasty and the Xiyanglou District was well known for its architecture
of European style, which was ruined by the joint invaders of UK and
France in the 19th century. The relics of Yuanmingyuan is now one
of the most popular tourist resort in Beijing and is also considered
as the symbol of patriotic education.
One large piece of ground glass reflects the scenes of tourists enjoying
taking pictures in the relics. Many plaster ornamental materials of
Ancient Rome Style, on which Amitabha Sutra's scripts of description
of the West Pure Land with fluorescent paints are written, are plied
on the scene. The purple lights are switched to white lights once
every three seconds only to make the fluorescent sutra flicker in
the darkness.
The West is described as Pure Land in the sutra, comparing with the
image of invaders of the West in the modern history. While European
style has turned to be a fashion of family ornaments. From the western
style architecture in the Winter Palace in the Qing Dynasty, Chinese
people's mixed feelings of contradiction and complexity to the West
are full of imaginary elements. The architecture is but a very interesting
case.
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