Feng Shui, Perhaps?

Beijing has displayed billboards, wallscapes and superlarge-format graphics on scaffolding to add color to the grey skies as backdrops to the 2008 Olympics. Some graphics hide unfinished construction projects with pastoral scenes and Olympic emblems. Some suggest a peaceful, thriving village that hovers, mirage-like, beside a desolate construction site.

Others, however, serve as Hollywood-like scenes to TV reporters, who admit, on air, that they’re not allowed to say what’s behind them is a backdrop and they’re not really standing in front of a beach scene because the real scene is not too scenic.

Murals with idyllic scenes and scaffolding that displays the finished construction project are common sights in cities throughout the world. Their purposes are fairly clear – they idealize the cityscape or advertise an event.

The purpose of many graphics displayed in China, however, can’t be clearly fathomed. Large-format posters of political figures speak for themselves. The green-painted mountainside in Fumin County, in southwest China, still can’t be explained. Instead of planting trees and shrubs, the government painted the barren Laushou mountainside green after it loomed naked following intense quarrying. Villagers told outsiders that maybe officials were practicing feng shui or trying to be eco-friendly. Is Astro-turf green an Earth element or a symbol of wealth and prosperity?

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