The Central Chinese Television Tower – “Big Underpants” or “Hemorrhoids”?

Although this mostly relates to our discussion earlier in the semester about high modernism, the CCTV Tower in Beijing, China has come to mind on numerous occasions during our class presentations. It wasn’t until I did some searching online when I learned that the official name of the tower is Zhongyang dianshi tai zongbu dalou (Central Television Station General Headquarters). I had come to know the building as the da kucha’r, or “big underpants.”

The “Big Underpants” was completed in 2009 by architects Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. I remember passing by the giant building on a bus while it was under construction in 2007, thinking that it was the strangest looking building I had ever seen. It was then when a friend riding with me on the bus told me, “Oh yeah, we call it the da kucha’r. I don’t know what the actual name of it is, though.”

As this TIME blog article points out, nicknaming is very common in Chinese society. Nearly everybody has at least one nickname, if not a few, given by family, friends, and colleagues. This is also the case for iconic structures such as the National Center for the Performing Arts, which looks like a giant egg and the Olympic Stadium that resembles a bird’s nest.

Of course, the people at CCTV are unhappy with their headquarters’ nickname and have been trying to promote alternative names. One possibility was the “Wisdom Window,” but that could easily turn into yet another humorous nickname of “hemorrhoids,” which are both pronounced zhichuang.

The author of this article, Austin Ramzy, makes an interesting connection to Confucius’s famous saying about the “rectification of names.” Basically, according to the Great Sage, we should call things what they really are. The Daoists, especially Zhuangzi, might argue that coming up with terminology to distinguish between countless different things only leads to confusion.

It never occurred to me that this kind of nicknaming could be an effective means of expressing public support or protest against an act of founding, such as that of the CCTV Tower. How does this nicknaming phenomenon fit in with founding and preservation? Do we see this happening in other societies? What are the effects?

http://china.blogs.time.com/2008/11/13/naming-the-cctv-tower-or-why-big-underpants-is-better-than-hemorrhoids/

P.S.: The tower mysteriously caught on fire in 2009 during the Chinese New Year, which stirred up a great deal of controversy. There are some interesting pictures and information on this website:

http://www.chinasmack.com/2009/pictures/beijing-cctv-building-on-fire-news-censored.html

City planners have long tried to remedy “white flight” (the migration of traditionally white members of the professional and business-owning classes to the suburbs) by creating cityscapes that attract and accommodate discriminating dwellers. While such planning and development can certainly offer benefits like reduced crime or better transportation options, it also raises important concerns about identity, preference and displacement.  With my Levitt Research grant, I decided to look into these issues as they affect two neighborhood’s in the Nation’s capital city, Shaw and Anacostia.



Shaw began as a bustling community of newly-freed African-Americans in the last half of the 19^th century. By the 1920s, the neighborhood had more than 300 black-owned businesses, including a bank and a luxury hotel. Home to Howard University and the jazz halls that made Duke Ellington famous, the neighborhood had a thriving cultural and intellectual scene as well.

However, desegregation meant the opening of doors for the neighborhood’s black professionals and many of them migrated to the suburbs. Race riots in 1968 were the final draw for many neighborhood businesses and the crime rates increased dramatically.

When city planners tried to improve the neighborhood, they met with neighborhood elites. The resulting plan that made the neighborhood more attractive to new professionals and other members of the upper-classes, but it failed to include any sort of protection for longtime residents of less means. Today, the neighborhood is full of newly-arrived, and often white, professionals and the once-vibrant culture of the old neighborhood is quickly fading as rents rise and residents age.

Anacostia on the other hand was a middle-class and mostly white neighborhood until the “white flight” phenomenon occurred. The influx of relatively low-income African-Americans changed the neighborhood dramatically and relatively quickly. However, racial tensions being what they were, this dramatic change made it hard for the neighborhood institutions to keep up. The lack of institutional support structures (e.g. strong schools) and the abundance of pre-existing poverty resulted in high crime and scarce (licit) commercial activity.

In the past two decades, city leaders have argued for a major-league soccer stadium, a light-rail system, and a riverfront development in Anacostia. They also recently opened a nearby baseball stadium and trumpeted it’s potential benefits for the neighborhood. But it remains to be seen whether many of these projects will be realized and, even if they are, whether or not they will benefit area residents.

For my project, I’m looking at history, theory, current events and even just talking to affected people in an attempt to figure out how various factors determine the transformation of these places. I hope that if we can identify and understand the dynamics at work in these neighborhoods, we will be better able to develop structures of governance for them that hold in balance the values of the founding and preservation processes. 

Graphic is used courtesy of the District Chronicles.

City planners have long tried to remedy “white flight” (the migration of traditionally white members of the professional and business-owning classes to the suburbs) by creating cityscapes that attract and accommodate discriminating dwellers. While such planning and development can certainly offer benefits like reduced crime or better transportation options, it also raises important concerns about identity, preference and displacement.  With my Levitt Research grant, I decided to look into these issues as they affect two neighborhood’s in the Nation’s capital city, Shaw and Anacostia.

Shaw began as a bustling community of newly-freed African-Americans in the last half of the 19^th century. By the 1920s, the neighborhood had more than 300 black-owned businesses, including a bank and a luxury hotel. Home to Howard University and the jazz halls that made Duke Ellington famous, the neighborhood had a thriving cultural and intellectual scene as well.

However, desegregation meant the opening of doors for the neighborhood’s black professionals and many of them migrated to the suburbs. Race riots in 1968 were the final draw for many neighborhood businesses and the crime rates increased dramatically.

When city planners tried to improve the neighborhood, they met with neighborhood elites. The resulting plan that made the neighborhood more attractive to new professionals and other members of the upper-classes, but it failed to include any sort of protection for longtime residents of less means. Today, the neighborhood is full of newly-arrived, and often white, professionals and the once-vibrant culture of the old neighborhood is quickly fading as rents rise and residents age.

Anacostia on the other hand was a middle-class and mostly white neighborhood until the “white flight” phenomenon occurred. The influx of relatively low-income African-Americans changed the neighborhood dramatically and relatively quickly. However, racial tensions being what they were, this dramatic change made it hard for the neighborhood institutions to keep up. The lack of institutional support structures (e.g. strong schools) and the abundance of pre-existing poverty resulted in high crime and scarce (licit) commercial activity.

In the past two decades, city leaders have argued for a major-league soccer stadium, a light-rail system, and a riverfront development in Anacostia. They also recently opened a nearby baseball stadium and trumpeted it’s potential benefits for the neighborhood. But it remains to be seen whether many of these projects will be realized and, even if they are, whether or not they will benefit area residents.

For my project, I’m looking at history, theory, current events and even just talking to affected people in an attempt to figure out how various factors determine the transformation of these places. I hope that if we can identify and understand the dynamics at work in these neighborhoods, we will be better able to develop structures of governance for them that hold in balance the values of the founding and preservation processes.