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How often can a difficult thought make a beautiful rhyme? I was right on Wuxi's tentative and wobbly place branding; and on the comparison with Manchester or - even better - Bolton. But I confused the Tiannang Temple - an hour away in the next Prefecture - with Xihui park, within the town's borders and rus in urbe: which is equivalent to thinking Walton Hall is Trinity College Chapel... But my point I think stands; and a deeper 'Orientalism' point is made at the end...
How often can a difficult thought make a beautiful rhyme? I was right on Wuxi's tentative and wobbly place branding; and on the comparison with Manchester or - even better - Bolton. But I confused the Tiannang Temple - an hour away in the next Prefecture - with Xihui park, within the town's borders and rus in urbe: which is equivalent to thinking Walton Hall is Trinity College Chapel... But my point I think stands; and a deeper 'Orientalism' point is made at the end...
How often can a difficult thought make a beautiful rhyme? I was right on Wuxi's tentative and wobbly place branding; and on the comparison with Manchester or - even better - Bolton. But I confused the Tiannang Temple - an hour away in the next Prefecture - with Xihui park, within the town's borders and rus in urbe: which is equivalent to thinking Walton Hall is Trinity College Chapel... But my point I think stands; and a deeper 'Orientalism' point is made at the end...
Horizons Of Wuxi The brochure picture does not show the Tiannang Temple and Pagoda as I first imagined, but the relatively new Xihu Park (1958).
So we have a place which is both of
Wuxi and in Wuxi
even though it is a thirty-minute drive
from Wuxi. In my earlier talk, I suggested that scenic Wuxi was not completely suitable as a place branding for Wuxi; and that if Wuxi has a heart and the
Ascott Hotel is there, this is certainly
not the scenic part: it is the busy, commercial part. We read in Wikipedia of Wuxis amazingly rich set of industries both old and new: textiles, solar panels, software and bicycles; and in the New District, precision machinery, fine chemicals, mechanical and electric integration, bio-pharmaceuticals and new materials. A comparison with Bolton, England is apposite. Bolton is the thirty-second town in the UK by population, with about 250,000
people (remember Wuxi is thirtieth in
China). It is most famous for its industry, having, in 1929, 216 cotton mills and 26 dying or bleaching works.
Here is a contemporary illustration, for
nearby Manchester. Today, Bolton is most obviously a blend of old and new, country and city.
You can see the Victorian Town Hall
and the distant hills in the background, with the residential area in between. There is a new football stadium
which is lit up at night, another parallel
with downtown Wuxi.
The brand of Bolton has been
studied, and the results are interesting:
One of the largest towns in
England Very good motorway links Near airport Potential as international visitor destination Well suited for meetings and conferences as a nice place near country and well-connected Many hotel rooms (6000 people can stay a day)
Beautiful buildings: industrial
history represented; the city made cotton Has 'country park' with building from an earlier part of the town's history within the city Near open country: the West Pennine Moors: Pennines are a range of hills and Moors is the
kind of wild country near
them, with grasslands, mosslands and ancient woods. International level football stadium Excellent commercial centre and many cafes and restaurants Has restored many old buildings Has defined brand values as
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Open - friendly, welcoming
and inclusive Colourful - characterful and interesting Sound - decent reliable and trustworthy Wuxi is in the similar position of having its more scenic attractions a little way outside the city centre: the lakeside Liyuan Garden, Lake Tai, the Lingshan Buddha, Xihui Park (where the slightly misleading photo in the first was taken) and the Plum Blossom Garden.
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But in addition, it has the Grand
Canal and the Yangtse River. This photo from an official website gives the flavour
And here is Wuxi by night
So, if we set that against this
beautiful and timely picture of Xihui Park in autumn, we can
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understand a little of the
paradox of Wuxi.
What about culture and art? Can
they help define the brand? As it happens, Wuxi was the birthplace for a great Chinese artist of quite recent times, Chen Chi, who spent most of his life in America; and of the composer
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and erhu player Blind Abing
Chinese name Hua Yanjun. Here are some of Chen Chis paintings mixing an old Chinese technique with modernity
and here is one of his more
Chinese works
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Of Abing, we can hear his
famous Moon Reflected in Second Spring in various performances on this webpage http://chinablog.cc/2009/02/besterhu-masterpiece-ever-moonreflected-on-second-spring/ with perhaps his own performance the most touching; and the orchestral arrangement, with shimmering dulcimer
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accompaniment, the most
exciting. (The Second Spring Under Heaven is situated in Wuxis local Ji-Chang-Yuan royal gardens). * All this analysis and the comparison with Bolton does not take us very much closer to pinning down the brand identity of Wuxi, but it does hint at its richness. Indeed, we are left with a picture as vague as this masterpiece by an earlier, mid 17th century artist fromWuxi, YuWenshan.
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Perhaps this picture of the west
part of Wuxi from Mount Qingshan sums up the dilemma
In Europe, this was known as
rus in urbe countryside in the city and is defined s follows by Encyclopedia.com rus in urbe an illusion of countryside created by a building or garden within a city. The phrase, which is Latin and means literally country in the city, was coined originally by
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the Spanish-born Latin epigrammatist Martial
(ad c.40 to c.104).
So shall we stick with Horizons
of Wuxi? In the end, in the eastern way. No definition, just a question hanging in the air, as in these wonderful lines from the poem, Green Jade Table in the Lantern Festival by Xin Qiji: Flowers bursting into bloom in the sky, stars falling like rain (fireworks/meteor shower), Whole streets filled with perfume, jeweled horses pulling ornate carriages, fish and
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dragon lanterns dancing
throughout the entire night. A body decorated with golden thread and butterfly trinket, laughter that has a subtle fragrance. Having searched for this person until exhaustion, when suddenly turning back by chance, I find her standing lonely in the far end of the street in the waning light. These lines, in fact gave the name for the search engine Baidu (meaning hundreds or thousands of times).
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Perhaps the better translation of
the last line is the one which incorporates these words: "Having searched thousands of times in the crowd, suddenly turning back, She is there in the dimmest candlelight." (