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.