J’avais découvert ce lieu par hasard lorsque j’étudiais à l’Université Tsinghua en 2007-2008. Le quartier de Wudaokou est principalement composé de centres commerciaux et de quartiers résidentiels modernes. À l’époque, je me souviens pourtant que l’on pouvait aussi y trouver des restes de villages et… une vraie hutong! La hutong existe toujours aujourd’hui. Cachée au […]
I discovered this place when I was studying at Tsinghua University in 2007-2008. Wudaokou area is essentially composed of multistorey department stores and modern residential compounds. And yet, at the time, there were still some one-storey village houses and… one real hutong! The hutong still exists today. Hidden in the big city, one can be […]
Datong est une ville située dans le nord de la province chinoise du Shanxi. Elle est célèbre pour son histoire et son patrimoine ancien, mais aussi tristement labellisée « capitale du charbon », l’économie minière ayant durant longtemps caractérisé son développement. Un jour, la ville a fait l’objet d’un relooking radical. L’ancien maire de la ville Geng […]
This report on the visit I did in November 2015 will display the amazing SF architecture of several unfinished-abandoned buildings found in Datong… Strange buildings, aren’t they? Before presenting more closely their amazing architecture, I will explain where they come from… The five major equipments project (五大场馆): a semi-failure Datong, a city in Northern Shanxi […]
First of all, I thank Brïn for giving me the idea to go on this urbex, after looking at his post here. And I was not disappointed! Although it is very small, it is a pretty amazing place. This abandoned luxury villa compound is actually located inside Beijing Olympic park. How did this happen? The […]
Around the Dongsi area, right next to one of Beijing’s most peaceful traditional neighbourhoods, one building (among others, by the way!) does not quite fit in the hutong1 urban tissue. It is large, high (more than six storeys), ugly (composed of a very basic concrete structure) and it looks abandoned. What I discovered is the […]
I am a girl (yes, girls also engage in this strange subculture of « ruin exploration ») who loves to visit abandoned places in Chinese cities as a reversed though naturally connected experience of long-term field research in China. I don’t like climbing over dangerous fences, I prefer squeezing in, go under or through the fence somehow, […]
When I first learned about Shougang, it was in 2006, when this famous steel plant was going to close down and be transfered in Hebei province. I was starting fieldwork in another industrial neighbourhood linked to a factory and a scholar told me to go check out Shougang and its amazing architecture, on the Western […]