Ever More Phoniness

Beijing’s List of Fakes Keeps on 'Building'

"As if only faking fireworks, a singer, and a piano wasn’t enough, Beijing one-upped itself in its quest for fakery fame with its latest falsification: an entire building.

In an attempt to “clean up” the city for the Olympics and to put on its best appearance, Beijing tore down dilapidated buildings and repainted old ones. But for one construction site in Beijing’s Wangfujing, one of China’s premier shopping districts, the only thing that could have “fixed” the site was to put up huge boards that mimicked walls of a building outside the site’s construction frame.

Landor’s Ray Allen, who is living in China, discovered the phony building and wrote about his experience on his blog, noting that the “building” is actually “a computer illustration, printed on vinyl film, glued to panels and attached on the unfinished concrete skeleton of an eight-story building.”