Burb - A Magazine From The Future

WWW # 2010-2020 LOOKING BACK AT A GLORIOUS DECADE # # # # # #

GREAT WALL MAKE-OVER PET OF THE FUTURE HAUNTED IN THE MEGAMALL FAT CAT CRUSHED ARE CELEBS WATCHING US? PLUS MUCH MORE INSIDE...

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CC, October 14, 2020 Mayor He Xin Cheng (何新城 ) opening statement at the Cunning City’s (诡异之城 )

10th anniversary celebrations Welcome citizens! Welcome visitors! Ten years ago this land under our feet was farm land. Ten years ago the sky was gray with dust and soot, and our hands blistered from spades and rusty shovels. Today we are here to look around us at what we have created. We have created a dream. A dream of glass and concrete, of parks and avenues, schools and office towers. In this our beautiful city has excelled where so many have failed. Far from the glare of Shanghai, the prowess of Guangzhou, and the splendor of Beijing, we have blossomed. Without hesitation we have developed beyond a mere production

center to become a powerful trade hub, an educational center, a tourist destination, a shopper’s paradise, a city of the masses. Today this city is a metropolis, and one of the most competitive on the globe. To get here we have walked new and uncertain roads. We have built with blind courage and persistence. We have abandoned the existing and relinquished tradition. We have denied the permanent and embraced the dynamic, and evolved even beyond ourselves. Today this city is all cities. Every morning it reveals itself in unseen ways. It’s like a forest — its roots digging deep in the hard soil, its branches our dense roads and bridges, its canopy of green like our terraced estates. Today the Cunning City no longer is a city. It is a world. A world where we live, produce and consume. You will all agree when I say, this brave new world we have built together: its structures so extravagant they make other cities redundant; its artificial landscapes so subtle they can rival Mother Nature herself. Who can resist such glorious temptations when it nurtures us, serves our desires, and our pleasures? The Cunning City always knows what we want. It’s a friend with a mind of its own, and a body at work for us  bURB

day and night. Behold its arteries throbbing in the dark. Today for the first time we look back and take pride in our achievements. Onlookers, local and foreign were curious — critical sometimes. Policy makers have often tried to deprive us. But the Cunning City was strong from its conception. It is not an instant city, but an urban nucleus unfolding rapidly. Its success formula is widely imitated. The Cunning City has unleashed a social revolution. Too many cities were merely thrown up by well-connected businessmen and over-zealous officials. Their vitality perished with the first cracks in the paint. Their concrete shells, now empty, lie scattered around the landscape. We have invested together, avoiding opportunism and state squander. Many of you gathered here today left the fields or abandoned the factories and construction sites to build your own home, your own city. Now we all benefit from the prosperity of the Cunning City Corporation. Those days the world around us was in turmoil, occupied by greed and religious extremism. All we believed in was progress! Mass migration was our exodus. The new city was our promised land. Our faith: Progress, Performance and Prosperity With this belief, you, the citizens have designed a city in the likeness of your own desires. You have packed

the center to its full commercial potential, and sculpted suburbs to fit effortlessly into your comfortable consumer lifestyle. Who wanted walls or gates, when shopping could be so seamless? Who wanted to wait, when you could instead always be moving? Today we can add two more Ps – those of perfection and play. What’s left for us is to enjoy the ride. This presentation was brought to you by Omnigroup, your friendly affiliate!

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CONTENTS

burb 0agazine: concept and artwork: neville mars texts: adrian hornsby, neville mars layout: neville mars, adrian hornsby graphical contributions: xiong yi fei, jeffrey ludlow, vanessa lee, alexis martin reyna, jeff gompertz & yoko taketani, Wang zi contributing authors: louis coulomb, erich schienke, elena simons, jeremy mercer, beatrice ferrari, Wei Wei shannon This page )5((]H+ +XPDQV7R2FHDQV team: neville mars, hou xiu, li xin lu

POLITBURB Brain-Melt-Eurotrash Still spilling off ships and into trouble

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Hot From The Dragon’s Mouth Dark stuff afoot in the north west

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Cunnning City Facts & Figures Catch the latest via r exclusive datastream

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COOL NEW STUFF! From Ming to Bling! Check out ancient China 2020-style

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Wanna Haves! R latest wish list

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Carving Out Neighborhoods Blast of light for the Cunning City

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IN THE HOME The Rise of the Phoenix Panda Who said genebenders can’t be cute?

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My Home — My Network Find out how Apple never needs to go outside

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TALK OF THE TOWN! Marriage 4 a Moment He’s blue — she’s pink …

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Fat Cat Trampled in Cat Crazed Stampede! Whoa, but how did that happen?

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What a Podd Question! Kooky celebs get their spy pods

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Ghost in the Sponge Strange things afoot in r favorite mall-chine

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PERSONAL FOCUS 66 Urban Growth A story of er-road-ed dreams and new high-deas! Yoko Where Are You? / Unidentified Youth Odd disappearances and haunting scenes

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SPORTS AND LEISURE Shanghai Shehui’s Silver Signing The Puds net another big name

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64 High Art for the Faint at Heart Fancy a spot of culture? Well just look around you!

SPECIAL FEATURES

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The Cunning City 10 years on and more alluring than ever

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POLITBURB

Brain-melteurotrash MIGRANT MIGRANE This month another dilapidated European freighter, ironically dubbed the MS Bright Future, ran aground coming into China — this time quite literally under the nose of Pudong’s celebrated Golden Mao. It’s hard to imagine what the father of the CCP would have had to say, but it seems unlikely he would have felt much sympathy for the 286 illegal European immigrants on board. As individuals they may have been dirty, malnourished, and sick, but as part of a growing trend, they represent further administrative headaches and international embarrassment. This is the last in a string of such incidents, including illicit migrant vessels caught docking near Shenzhen, Qingdao, and on Chongming Dao island, as well as European stowaways found in numerous freight containers up and down the coast. No estimates have been released for how many may have slipped through the net. The risks associated with EU-China people trafficking are considerable. The smugglers themselves are notoriously brutal, and to avoid suspicion, will devise complicated and lengthy travel routes. It is suggested that illegal migrants are often subject to abuse en route, and held for many years in debtbondage upon arrival. This form of migration is however no more than a dark tributary to the much wider flow. An increasing 14 bURB

number of Europeans are arriving in China through regular channels, and showing every indication that they intend to stay. T r a d i t i o n a l l y EU m i g r a t i o n t o China has come from Turkey and the Balkan areas, but a gathering wave is now observable from regions further north. This is largely attributable to the “melted brain” syndrome, where burnt out creative sectors and bad loans have led to economic instability and rising unemployment. But the migration is not all joborientated. Learning-migration also has a significant role to play, with a substantial growth in the number of students traveling to China. Figures from 2019 show a 36% increase on the previous year, making Europeans by far the largest single group in the class of foreign students enrolled in institutions of higher learning in China. Early indicators show that having completed their studies Europeans do not return home. According to the OECD, the return rate over the period 2008-2019 was only 14.1%. While this is all indicative of continuing Chinese economic strength, questions hang over the issue of urban integration. European communities tend to be segregated within the city, and internal violence between different ethnic factions worries the PSB, who increasingly are being forced to view the influx as a threat to urban security. bURB 15

FROM MING TO BLING! COOL NEW STUFF!

GREAT WALL GETS A 2020 MAKEOVER

Sick of pics of the drab old wall in decline? “No more!” says Guo Pu, the construction magnate who has taken on the task of bringing it up to date. ‘I’m not just talking about a wall face-lift here,’ says Mr Guo. ‘I’m talking about the whole thing: implants, bigger lips, smaller nose, cheekbones, ass — the works! That wall is old, but we’re going to make it sizzle!’ 16 bURB

You can’t doubt the man’s enthusiasm, and, with the whopping 800 billion RMB he’s bringing to the project, his power to make things happen. The proposals include: •

replacement of damaged stones with neon-pink kevlar bricks

• full end-to-end coating of the wall with high gloss teflon

• an automated anti-vandal taser protection system • speakers every 50m playing mood music and nature sounds Much of the original wall was built during the Ming dynasty in the 14th and 15th centuries. Now at last it looks like Ming’s gonna get his bling on! bURB 17

POLITBURB

Hot!!! from the Dragon’s DISTANT SOUNDINGS Fragmented reports have been circulating this week that US military forces made an incursion into Xinjiang province in north western China. According to one source, this is part of a covert operation aimed at ‘backing Muslim separatists in their struggles against repression and intimidation at the hands of the Chinese military.’ At an international press conference Chinese officials vociferously denied any attack, while at the same time condemning the idea as ‘unlawful aggression.’ The suggestion of humanitarian concerns was deemed a ‘human rights smokescreen [being used] to influence developments in the great Yugsar basin.’ The area has been thrust onto the international stage ever since deep NMR mapping revealed a 400 billion barrel oil field beneath its dusty plains. Satellite images suggest Russia has begun to mobilize troops on its Kazakhstan and Mongolian borders, signalling an intention to respond if the putative conflict threatens to spill-over into its territory. Since global oil production peaked in 2013 the US has focussed all of its military might on securing energy supplies and maintaining transportation routes. This has been the source of significant tension between the US and China. It now looks as though ten years of economic tit-for-tat between these two countries may have finally come to a head. The zero-sum interdependencies of the Wal-Mart era are a quaint memory of a gentle early millennium. China has shifted from being the US’s discount overseas factory to a verti18 bURB

Mouth

cally integrated and highly efficient economic powerhouse, with a thriving internal market, and strong economic ties with populous Brazil and India. What’s more, until recently, China’s foreign reserves were bulging with US dollars and treasury bills even while China no longer depended nearly as much on exports to grow. Economists seem to agree on only one thing these days: when the oil price broke the mythical $300 a barrel in 2017, the global economy suffered a deadly blow. Since then, the lights have virtually gone out in Africa, and much of South America is down to a flicker. The smaller, less resilient – mostly European – companies have either collapsed or been taken-over by larger ones, further consolidating global corporate structures. Mergers and acquisitions have brought together the most unlikely of couples. Last week saw the hostile take-over of Ballistika, Russia’s largest military hardware manufacturer, by the mammoth Exxon-GE-Pfizer Group (EGPG). Most of Ballistika’s dozen or so plants are situated in North Eastern China — plants which have for the last 6 years been China’s foremost supplier of advanced missile technology. But with the suggestion of US troops trickling into Xinjiang province, some things may be about to change. As many commentators have pointed out, the most important bURB 19

cont. from page 18

developments in recent years all seem to be hinged on whether or not adequate supplies of energy can be secured. There isn’t a major multinational in the world that doesn’t have a stake in the oil and gas supply chain, be it upstream or downstream; be it in shipment or commercialization. Many alliances have been built around political objectives. One of these has been to squeeze China out. Facing chronic widespread power outages and oil price spikes, China has been forced to step up coal production dramatically over the last few years. Calls by Beijing to reopen at once hundreds of derelict and ill-equipped coal mines grimly echoes the Great Leap ventures that brought so much hardship and environmental degradation. About one third of the coal is currently being converted to liquid, synthetic fuel to make-up the two million barrels a day shortfall from conventional oil. The rest is ei-

ther burned on site or transported to power plants around the country. The amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by China has doubled in the last five years. Perversely, some might claim this is an indication of how well things are going. After all, the true scale of global warming cotinues to be hotly debated. The quintupling of freak hurricanes since the beginning of the century is suggestive, but climatologists from the Hadley Center predicted a waterlogged Benelux by 2020, and this appears not to be the case. And so, until it is, to some there is no global warming. This seems to be the mindset predominating in boardrooms, and up and down the global strip mall. Here in the Cunning City, the man on the street is little concerned with the world’s conflicts and upheavals. He’s worked hard to be able to consume hard, and no border skirmish is likely to upset that.

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IN THE HOME

The Rise of the Phoenix Panda This month saw the final goodbye to the giant panda as scientists finally admitted defeat, and agreed to scrap their stock of frozen panda embryos. Attempts over the last few years to culture the embryos, either in artificial environments or in the wombs of closely related species, have led to one failure after another. There has been growing criticism of what has become known as the “panda pit”, and the oversized global “panda pocket” when it comes to funding. ‘It’s not a technology issue,’ Dr Zhu, head scientist at the Wolong breeding center insists. ‘We have very advanced fake wombs, and with the right drugs you could make a crocodile give birth to a panda bear. The wall we’ve come up against is simply an exhausted genetic stock. Ultimately it’s the quality of the embryos you have to deal with, and frankly, they’re junk.’ This argument is no revelation, but rather confirms what skeptics have been saying for years: that when it comes to the giant panda, we left it too late. Things started to look seriously bad for the world’s favorite bamboo-binger back in 2005. A massive simultaneous efflorescence of arrow and umbrella bamboo in the mountainous regions of both Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces led to a wide-spread die-off of the two bamboo types most favored by the panda bear. The already low wild panda population suffered high death rates. Over suc22 bURB

ceeding years a number of bloated panda corpses were found on village garbage heaps, where, rummaging for sustenance, they had confusedly ingested batteries, plastics, and various heavy metals. In the meantime pandas in captivity continued to feast on “panda powerbars”. However, the concern for scientists was maintaining a sufficient genetic pool to ensure the overall health and diversity of the species. In 2008 an initiative was brought in to map the genome of every remaining panda individual: at that time 75 in all. The task was completed in 2011, but increasingly pandas born from this tiny base were showing recessive traits, including brownish fur and distinct behavioral oddities. Fears around Asperger’s syndrome pandas seemed to be confirmed by low levels of social behavior, and a reluctance to engage in mating. Centers exposed pandas to massive quantities of video footage of reproduction in the wild, but while this did provoke an outrage about public expenditure on “panda porn”, as well as widespread sales of pirated dvds, the pandas themselves weren’t getting hot. ‘It just didn’t seem to float their boat,’ Dr Zhu comments, remembering sadly that period. By 2014 the wild panda population was officially zero, and center workers were becoming increasingly pessimistic about the outlook for the species in captivity. Numbers had sunk to 51, and sexual activity was at an all time low. ‘All of our cur-

rent embryos date from this period,’ Dr Zhu notes. ‘That means our entire genetic stock is 51 bummed out panda bears. We’re not even dealing with a full deck.’ But while Dr Zhu and his team were determined to drive down to the very bottom of this dead end alley, a splinter research group calling themselves Pandas For Tomorrow (PFT) decided to explore a different route. ‘We had always been interested in the possibility of cloning,’ Dr Xu, spokesman for PFT, has told us, ‘but the directors at Wolong were too attached to some dated idea of “natural generation.” The challenge was always to persuade very conservative board members to allow us to harvest their precious panda stem cells. That’s why the Clonotron was such a breakthrough.’ Panda stem cell harvesting was generally regarded as a threat to potential fetuses, and therefore rejected out of hand. But just as things looked to be deadlocked, a parallel technology came to the rescue. The Clonotron, developed in South Korea, allowed a new genetic map to be imprinted or reprogrammed onto an existing stem cell cluster. And while panda stem cells weren’t forthcoming, PFT, in a bold move, decided to pursue a “phoenix panda hack”. Using genetic information from the 2011 census, Dr Xu came up with new “theoretical” pandas, and then printed their genomes onto stem cells garnered from American raccoons. Raccoons are closely related to pandas, and with a little fine tuning, Dr Xu was able to design ge-

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SPORTS AND LEISURE cont. from page 22

nomes that would take. The phoenix panda burst into the public sphere in 2017, when it ambled down the catwalk of Paris Fashion Week for top designers Prêt-àPorter, and had that infamous bowel movement. Prêt’s dwindling global popularity seemed to be confirmed by the silent comment of this brand new species, but while Prêt was out, the phoenix panda was very very in. Naturally docile, readily adaptable to domestic food, and at only one third the size of a giant panda, the faintly striped phoenix panda quickly became the luxury pet to have on the end of your diamond leash. Stars were caught on camera with them, and city tycoons had them sitting conspicuously in the

backs of their vintage petrol-burn cars. But the practically limitless supply of raccoon stem cells has been bringing the availability and affordability of the phoenix panda to the upper-middle classes. A cub now retails at a cool 500,000 RMB, and just about every chic district in the city has its peppering of owners. Analysts are expecting a sharp rise in demand following the official extinction of the phoenix panda’s unlucky forebears. Dr Xu taps the ash off the end of his exquisite Cuban cigar. ‘Sure I lament the death of the giant panda,’ he says, ‘and this admission from Wolong is something of a gravestone. But nature moves on. And business is booming.’ ADVERTISEMENT

SHANGHAI SHEHUI’S SILVER SIGNING Three million jerseys emblazoned with the number 10 sold in the first week alone. A guaranteed full house for every game at the newly-expanded Honhkou Stadium months before the Jia A season kicks off. The football demigods in Madrid, Manchester, and Milan weeping bitter tears of frustration. Thus far, Shanghai Shehui’s 1.8 billion RMB gamble on the magical touch of Rudolfo is paying off. The reigning Chinese champions stunned the football world by 24 bURB

signing the most coveted prospect in history to the richest contract in history. Rudolfo, a fleet striker with an assassin’s touch around the net, scored an aneurysm-inducing 47 goals for Corinthians last season, leading the Brazilian club to victory in both their domestic championship and the Copa America.

Rudolfo was the target of a dozen top European sides, including Real Madrid who had offered a record transfer fee of 200 million euros to lure him to San Bernabeu. But Shanghai’s director of player operations, Sun Qi, flew to Parque Sao Jorge to negotiate directly with the player and the club, and won GO TO page 61

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Rise & Shine: the great awakening

Like the gasses involved in the Big Bang, huge clouds of people were compressed into the Cunning City. Superheated centripetal forces had amassed an indefinable amalgam of energies, materials and individuals. Urban tissue swelled, but like those moments right before the Bang, everything was ingeniously packed together. Vaulting the need for physical proximity, packets of light bolted up and down optic fibers, drawing the scattered fragments of the world’s aspirant metropoli into a unified cunning web. Global capitals merged and demand-threads co-aligned in the continuous presence of the strong urban force. Global rivalries ceded the battleground to a unified structure for desire. The Cunning City was only too capable — too swift and supple — when responding. Its

lissome fabric was able to move and stir change, thus activating the full commercial potential of its own unique condition. Its ability to process consumer urges fedback into urge-generation, with an inevitable spiraling upwards. National and ethnic identities unwound in the context of vectors of such extreme magnitude. As people traversed the fluid virtual and physical spaces of the Cunning City, they became chameleons — translucent bodies refracting the urban context. Constantly shifting character, the first conclusion was that each person had become many people. But in fact, the opposite was occurring. Just as the Cunning City had collapsed distance, and substituted choice for will, it was melding individualities … GO TO page 36

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14 percent small settlements, 47 percent urban. Current population spread: 12 percent rural, 18 percent small settlements, 70 percent ur On October the 5th, the United Nations announced that global population had reached the 10 billion mark, just 8 years after passing 9 billion. Population density now amounts to 19.6 inhabitants per POLITBURB square kilometer. CUNNING CITY - FACTS & FIGURES Females burst into tears 29 times a year on average, beating males by 450 percent. Population spread in 2000: 39 percent rural, 14 percent small settlements, 47 percent urban. Current population spread: 12 percent rural, 18 percent small settlements, 70 percent urban. Urban area totals 102014400 square kilometers. Rural area totals 408057600 square kilometers. Last year’s migration from rural to urban area x 1000: January 367, February 243, March 156, April 156, May 278, June 293, July 368, August 271, September 255, October 199, November 133, December 250. Inhabitants by age 0-12: 16 percent, 13-18: 20 percent 19-45: 32 percent, 46-65: 9 percent 66-80: 13 percent 81-150: 10 percent. If all of this year’s Valentine’s cards were attached in a chain, they would span the earth 1.8 times. ‘To do’ lists contain an average of 14 items. Within the built area of non-residential construction, shopping accounts for the majority- 33 percent- of the area, followed by 20 percent for living, 17 percent for offices, 10 percent for industry, and 9 percent for education, 6 percent for infrastructure and 5 percent for recreation. Last year, 350 children were reported to the police for glass breakage resulting from snowball games. Median height of residential construction in urban area is 45 floors. Median depth of residential construction is 9 floors. Those living above the 60th floor engage in sexual intercourse 1.3 times more frequently than those living below the 15th floor. Champagne consumption is 3.1 times higher. Sewer capacity increased by 36% in the last twenty years. Inhabitants of the park regions are three times more likely to develop caries before the age of 17 in relation to the average citizen. Females pay 5.4 visits to the bathroom, males go to the little room 3.4 times a day. Migration from Less Developed Countries (LDC’s) to More Developed Countries (MDC’s) amounts to 132.000 per month. In city centers households occupy an average of 31 square meters, while suburban residency averages 45 square meters and rural households enjoy 61 square meters. Suicide is up by 5 percent in the last 5 years. Demographic indicators suggest a trend towards shrinking families in dense urban areas, countered by a strong increase in household members for suburban areas. Household size for rural areas is expected to remain steady at 4.3 members. Single parent families: 44 percent, two- parent families: 39 percent, other: 17 percent. Families enjoy the following domestic dwellings: 23 percent apartments of which 34 percent owned and 66 percent rented, 17 percent lofts of which 37 percent owned and 63 percent rented, 9 percent villas of which 73 percent owned and 27 percent rented, 12 percent farms of which 89 percent owned and 11 percent rented, 3 percent bungalows of which 79 percent owned and 21 percent rented, 6 percent mobile units of which 96 percent owned and 4 percent rented, 13 percent homeless shelters of which 0 percent owned and 85 percent rented, 17 percent on the streets of which 0 percent owned and 0 percent rented. Per thousand inhabitants, households keep 80 dogs, 154 cats, 39 hamsters, 390 goldfish, 21 parrots, 37 rabbits, 293 stick insects, 21 gerbils and 189 other. The world population travelled a total of 64000 billion kilometers last year (6800 km per capita). Citizens in possession of a car are 2.1 times more likely to also own a monthly subway subscription. Travel on foot takes an average of 14 minutes per trip, of which 6 minutes are spent in elevators, 4 minutes in semi-covered space, 3 minutes in open air and 1 minute otherwise. Taxi rides are considered a ‘special treat’, an ‘emergency convenience’ or an ‘obsolete nuisance’. Subway- station employees spend 12% of their working hours cleaning discarded fee tickets from the ground. National trips by pals 41 percent, aeroplanes 23 percent, public transport 22 percent, cars 10 percent and human power 4 percent. International travel utilises aeroplanes 54 percent, pals 23 percent, public transport 19 percent, boats 2 percent and human power 2 percent. Air travel increased by 67 percent in the last ten years. Within this period 872 new destinations were opened to air traffic. 76 serious crashes (>50 fatal victims) and 98 minor crashes (<50 fatal victims) occurred. Airline seat spacing has been increased on many commercial flights to accommodate for an increasingly obese populace. Wallets contain 3 paper notes, 11 coins, 3 plastic cards and 17 gold tooth chippers. Private corporations account for 96 percent of GDP. Tax rate dropped by 7 percent in the past two years. Tax income dropped by 9 percent. Governments filed 44 antitrust lawsuits against multinational corporations, of which 17 led to financial settlements and 27 were pronounced unfounded. The ten largest corporations employed 800 million workers resulting in a total profit of $ 7466 billion. If commercial enterprises were combined with countries and ordered according to annual revenue or gross domestic product depending, China would be the first nation state to appear on the list in position 28. International goods trade totals a yearly 15,3 billion megatons, of which 30 percent transported by road, 28 percent by train, 27 percent by air and 15 percent by sea/river. Last year 430550 patents were registered. ‘Lessons from the Little’ is becoming a major trend as adults discover how much essential knowledge on computing children have to offer, and kids recognise a source of income. In the meanwhile toddlers have lost interest in last year‘s fad, the Down Syndrobot. Hours of sleep by age: 0-1: 15.3, 2-5: 10.0, 6-12: 9.6, 13-18: 7.0, 19-45: 6.5, 46-65: 5.7 66-80: 9.3 81-150: 9.6. Starting 9th of February performance artist Alicia Saunders will be showing her 4 meters of purple toe and fingernails after a successful aesthetic nano-treatment. Average jobholders get 12 days of vacation a year, which they prefer to spend ‘by the seaside with my family’ 28 percent, ‘at meditation camp’ 22 percent, ‘refurbishing my home’ 14 percent, ‘playing Pester the Poor’ 7 percent, ‘looking for a new relationship’ 6 percent, ‘other’ 21 percent. Long distances are crossed in an effort to enjoy these activities in exotic places: 63 percent of respondents visit another continent, 22 percent go to another country and 15 percent stay home. Sharp competition has driven many small hotels out of business, but the major chains have more locations on offer than ever, especially by the coast. Civil wars rage in 38 backward nations where liberation movements battle democratic government. Shi’ites continue to dominate 78 sober, peaceful nations. In the 34 More Developed Countries Libertarianism and Empowerment are reigning ideologies, though strains of Sunnism and Back to Body movements can sometimes threaten the status quo. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reported last year that the world’s 225 richest people now have a combined wealth of $3.4 trillion. That’s equal to the combined annual income of the world’s 4.5 billion poorest people. Seventy countries were worse off than 15 years ago. At present, 6 billion people live on less than $2 per day while 1.3 billion get by on less than $1 per day. Seventy percent of those living on less than $1 per day are women. With global population expanding by 120 million per year, World Bank President Marshall J. Bush cautions that, unless we address “the challenge of inclusion” 30 years hence we will have 7 billion people living on less than $2 per day. Median width of pavements: 1.7 meters. Since World War II the public has come to see terrorism, not war, as most disturbing experience. After some minor Left Wing and Palestinerelated attacks in the seventies, the world was virtually free of terrorism for three decades. A modest hijacking incident in New York at the beginning of the millennium sparked a new surge of attacks. Al Qaeda has since inspired Sunni and atheist anti-civilization militia to carry out a plethora of terrorist acts, of which the annihilation of Israel is most memorable. Methods used successfully in the last decade: 54 common explosives, 19 hijackings, 13 biological weapons, 7 neurobombs, 3 dirty bombs. All directed at major MDC cities or sites of tourism. The relatively new neurobombing is expected to occur with increasing intensity in the coming years with Saudi Arabian arms industry going steady. 23 percent of citizens sleep in multi-protection tents, 54 percent own and often carry protective garments, 31 percent live in the moment and 13 percent would purchase protection if only they could afford it. Thanks to sustainable manipulation, pigs yield 245 meat consumptions, up from 230 five years ago. Bacon is 20 percent leaner. The median package of sausages contains 8 sausages. Aroma Lard is becoming increasingly popular as a sandwich spread amongst the lower classes. Children prefer strawberry, banana, coconut flavours. Adults prefer andouilette, aubergine and coconut flavours. Worldwide energy consumption: 31 percent petroleum, 28 percent renewables, 15 percent natural gas, 16 percent nuclear, 7 percent coal and 3 percent incineration. In the LDCs, 80 percent 28 bURB bURBlakes, 29 of illnesses are water-related. Worldwide water withdrawals from water bodies have risen from 700 m3/person/year in 2000 to over 1300 m3 today. Freshwater

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next issue:

Cities to the moon PFFW

EEEI

I!

# Moon Metropolis mushrooms with a ring of brand new satellite stations. Efforts to curb moonsprawl are initiated, but inhabitants argue there is no shortage of space. # Luxury hotels open on Moon Metropolis, only how are the mohitas? # Moon relocation: fine for some, but does it help us down here? Get the C.C. perspective. A Burb.moon exclusive reveals all ...

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1 Paris 2000, Koolhaas according to Mars: “Urbanism is nothing more than the strategic injection of inhabitants, directly followed by the meticulous planning of a red light district to ensure a twenty-four hour economy”

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Britney’s house see p.49

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Through the collective gratification of its citizens, the Cunning City has developed a mind of its own. 36 bURB

lucid commercialism == = fast fluid change

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W E N O G E R I P EM

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COOL NEW STUFF!

Do you feel your street has become too compact, your neighborhood too full and you don’t see the sun enough? Do not despair. The City’s planners have not abandoned you. A new solution engineered to revitalize the most dense districts of our Metropolis has been successfully implemented in two overdeveloped quarters. Head of design of the Light for Life project Jun Wu explains: ‘The easiest way to understand the urban operation we have developed is if you think of it removing the core from an apple. With this procedure we literally carve out neighborhoods from the urban tissue and return daylight. At all strategic crossings vast atriums will be cut from the existing building-mass to allow a stream of sun to penetrate the inner parts of our City. Light will trickle down and be dispersed by multi-faceted glass domes covering the shafts. Finally the intricate inner spaces of our City will be experienced in their full splendor. The smooth tube-shaped walls we have created will take over the role of the exterior facade. With the buildings turned inside out, it will be the job of the voids to convey the feel of the different areas in which they are nestled. Inside, for those in possession of the valid pass of course, easy access to the neighborhood is granted, and a system of closed-circuit cameras ensures safety.’ The homes of nearly 3 million peo40 bURB

ple will be affected by the urban renewal of the Light for Life project. Concerns have been raised by home-owner groups about possible evictions related to the project. ‘The demolition of residential space has been a serious concern during the design process. We wanted to avoid forced evictions at all cost and I personally can assure the residents the current relocation is only temporary. We have solved this problem by creating a much more efficient layout of the apartments around the atriums and a slightly smaller surface area per dwelling. In return you can enjoy the luxury of a glass elevator that takes you right from the underground parking through the atrium straight to your apartment or even to the rooftop. These two minutes should be a dazzling experience. From the top of the atrium the daunting scale and bustling activity of our City can be fully appreciated. You will see crowds of people plummet down in the elevators around you and soar by on escalators crisscrossing through space. It is my belief that in this predominantly interior world we live in, some bestowal of authentic daylight will be the strategic supplement we need to ensure a bright future for our City.’ How will these tubes be carved out and where will the debris go? An inside perspective on the technical challenges of the Light for Life project continues in our next issue. bURB 41

in the home

Apple is another happy newcomer to the Cunning City!

‘Hi! I’m Apple. I moved into the my-home-my-network development last Spring when my village got swallowed. At first I thought, “Oh no! Reform housing — NO WAY!!”, but I couldn’t have missed the mark by more! Here you can really feel the aura of continuous improvement our City is achieving — and on every level of scale! My apartment may be small, but links directly with the grocery store, the mall, the cinema … Just about everywhere I ever want to go feels like a part of my bedroom! I’m really living in the network!’

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TALK OF THE TOWN!

Romance

MARRIAGE 4 A MOMENT V.D.U. Prometheus meets Lolita in Heels at the … Okay so you’re a total SCREENIE, but you’re always stuck in front of the WRONG screen. You’re always either pushing DATA or stuffing FILES or bent over STATS about OTHER PEOPLE. They’re out there SPENDING MONEY and HAVING A GOOD TIME, while you’re pinned in an office like an OX under a YOKE, or a BEAR in a TRAP, or maybe like the thing you resemble most, which is a SHRIMP IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER SCREEN!!!!! And every week your boss comes in and piles on MORE PRESSURE and TIGHTENS DEADLINES, which means you WORK LATER and EAT MORE. What’s left of your day in terms of TIME FOR YOURSELF is a SMOKE beneath a GLASS SKYSCRAPER as you shuffle back to catch the Drail home. And maybe, you think to yourself, MAYBE, I’ll catch a few ZZZs on the train, somewhere in between SPONGEMALL and the OMNICOM MONUMENT. You’ll need them, coz you’re not going to bed — OH NO — you’re not even going home … Okay so you’re YOUNG, you’re CUTE, you’re out of SCHOOL but sometimes you still wear the UNIFORM just coz it makes you feel DIRTY. You don’t WORK coz it’s BORING and you don’t WORK OUT coz you’re still skinny as a KID and twice as BAD. And anyway you don’t EAT ANYTHING you just DRINK CLEAR COCKTAILS and suck the SUGAR off of the rim of the glass. OKAY, so SOMEtimes you eat SOMEthing — like a REFRIED PANCAKE with SOY SAUCE and HONEY and a pair of PIG’S 44 bURB

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GIRLS:

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EARS on top — YUH-HU-HUMM!!!! Or maybe, you think to yourself, MAYBE, some RICH GUY is gonna take me out tonight to some FANCY RESTAURANT and buy me a BEAR PAW, coz I’m THAT SEXY … Okay, so you’re not even gonna get any sleep on the D-rail, coz the SCREEN is in there too, and you can’t not CHECK the STOCK, and what about that VMAIL you were waiting on? and while you’re here you might as well take a look at what there’re playing on U-TV (DAMN Cindy is looking HOT! HOT! HOT! these days). You know you can’t just be doing ONE thing at ONE time — it has to be MULTIPLE things ALL THE TIME. If every cell in your body isn’t feeling SQUEEZED then you’re not MAXIMIZING, and if you’re not doing that …. So you figure, OKOKOKOK, I’ll let ONE side of my brain go to sleep while I keep up with the SCREEN with the other. Then after 2 minutes I’ll SWAP OVER and rest the other side for 2 minutes and work with the … and then I’ll SWAP BACK … and so on like that until I get home maybe 36% REFRESHED! The truth is you’re one of those guys who’s always half SLUMPED and half FRENETIC — SCRABBLING for SOMETHING in the middle of a half EMPTY car, with a bit of old MAGAZINE blowing about your shoe. And that’s when you feel it: that STRESS to CONFESS — maybe it’s SOMEONE you’re looking for — SOMEBODY — only you don’t know WHERE TO GO. You’re always in the RIGHT place but at the WRONG time, or in the WRONG place at the … Okay, so you’re SEXY, but you know you’re a total SCREENIE too. You go to the RESTAURANT, but only if they’ve got U-TV on the TABLETOP. You go to the SPONGEMALL, but you spend the whole day driving SOFTPODS through POSTREALITY, or sunbathing under a 3.8 YOTTAPIXEL SUN. You uploaded your V-LIFE profile into UWORLD, and now you’re hooked 46 bURB

on the personalized TURKISH SOAP OPERAS they’re churning out about you — about your ROMANCE in the CALDERA with a fictional HOTELIER. It follows you EVERYWHERE. It’s playing on the MIRROR in the HAIRDRESSER’s, and on the ADVERTISCREENS in the SHOPS you go in. It comes with you as you ride the D-RAIL and wander in the PARK, passing from SCREEN to SCREEN to SCREEN as you walk. You COLLECT OBSESSIVELY to have the SAME THINGS as her — as you. You haven’t seen your OWN FACE for months; only the DIM REFLECTION of it behind the IMAGE you are watching. You’ve been TAKEN OVER. You’ve become an expression of DATASTREAMS. In this CITY, you have NOTHING YOU HAVE TO DO and yet your LIFE IS SO PRECIOUS. You’re FLOATING. You’re like a FRAGRANT DREAM. The only thing that remembers where you’ve been is the TRAIL OF COMMERCE — the OMNICOM slips which SOMEBODY ELSE is picking up … Okay so the 2 of you FIND EACH OTHER because YOU ARE BOTH LOST. You are STRAY PARTICLES in the city, but there is an URBAN GRAVITY which sucks you TOGETHER. It happens in the SKYWALKS or somewhere along the CONTINUOUS COMMERCIAL CORRIDOR. Maybe in the ICECREAM PARLOR, where SCREENFACADES have turned the building inside-out. You see EACH OTHER, and the CONFLUENCE OF UNMET DESIRES turns into MOMENT IN SPACE, and an ACT OF CONSUMPTION. The environment has MEDIATED LACK by SUPPLYING TOUCH. One of you NEEDS the KISS of AIR and FREEDOM. The other NEEDS a PRESENCE in THE REAL WORLD. It is an opportunity to BUY THINGS TOGETHER, and maybe RENT A ROOM. It is a MARRIAGE 4 A MOMENT — a FLEETING THING, as TOTAL as it is EPHEMERAL. For an hour, or even perhaps a little less, neither of you are looking at screens, or even conscious of them. YOU CAN GO BACK NOW. BACK TO WORK — TO PLAY. GAME OVER. INSERT COIN. bURB 47

TALK OF THE TOWN!

FAT CAT TRAMPLED IN CASH-CRAZED STAMPEDE! ‘I just don’t know why it had to happen to Cindy,’ sobs Lu Qian. We are standing in the CBD, right in the very spot where less than a week ago Lu Qian’s precious pet met her fate. It was in this foreboding Beijing canyon, between sheet walls of reflective glass, that Cindy — a ginger tabby weighing in at a massive 15lbs — was trampled to death. ‘I’d been telling her she had to lose some of that catty fat, and we really had to get out more,’ Qian tells me. ‘Now I only wish we’d stayed at home.’ Since its official inception back in 2016, arguments around “equality day” have been raging. There are those who say it’s an admirable form of charity, and why shouldn’t the givers have a little fun? Others insist that “fat cat” executives tossing great wads of RMB from the exclusive heights of their skyscrapers is just another sick expression of the wealth gap. It all started with two CEOs bragging in a skywalk about how their bonuses had gotten so big they could throw half out the window and not even notice. After a dash of daring, and with a lick of that competitive spirit, the pair were stuffing all the dosh they could find through an air vent to the outside world. What neither of them had expected was how elated this would make them feel. Word got out among the board rooms, and pretty soon top floors across the CBD were crammed with businessmen with serious cash. The notes were fluttering down. Reactions in the streets below were wild. Regulations ensued, with the product we all know today as “equality day” — an annual moment of madness in the city, when rich executives throw money out the window, and flash crowds follow the wind to push and grab at whatever they can get. The terrible tragedy for HAVE Lu Qian and her cat Cindy is that when the wind YOU EXPERIENCED changed suddenly, their innocent walk SOMETHING was overrun by a cash-crazed STRANGE? TELL US stampede. ABOUT IT AND MAKE A ‘I managed to QUICK 10,000 RMB! jump

Send us your real life story – if we print it, we’ll send you up to 10,000 RMB! Don’t forget the gory details, and any pictures you might have snapped! Contact us through www. bURB.tv wit h your name, age, address and mobile number!

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D D PO ! A ON T I A T WH UES Q C.C.ers have been wondering for months what the deal can be with the crop of odd pods turning up on the tops of our skyscrapers. A bURB exclusive reveals that these these are being used as luxury lookout posts by EX-CELEBS, who sit watching the millions that once gazed up at them.

CREEPY Fame, money, and glamour certainly do bring happiness, but can also be a dangerously addictive mix. Once hooked, stars let their cravings race out of control, and cold turkey leaves them looking creepy and acting weird. ‘It’s just like any other lethal emoti-drug cocktail,’ says bURB celeb expert Hu Sin. ‘You see the same patterns with people who load up on sexcess, compulsive partying, or massive noshnanza food binges. It’s all “hello handsome” while you can keep up supply, and “so long sanity” as soon as it starts to dry up.’ ‘Some of these celebs have become so dependent on media attention that when they feel the limelight fading, their whole lives go from

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swell to hell,’ Sin remarks. ‘They’ll hang out at tourist hot spots just to get into other people’s holiday snaps. Some will even expose themselves to CCTV cameras in the hope that there’s a security guard somewhere watching.’

PUZZLED But this new pod development marks a buck in the trend. Former attention seekers seem to be turning a telescope of their own back on the world, and this has sent both experts and relatives spinning. ‘I don’t know what she does up there all day,’ says Lynn Spears, mother of former teen idol Britney. ‘She used to be so outgoing. Now she tells me she’s surveying the city — well what does that mean?’ Britney Spears, 38, declined to com-

ment, but sources have led us to believe that her pod is sitauted atop the Omnigroup tower in downtown C.C. The pods themselves are relatively cheap and flexible, and, with the right connections, you can set one up just about anywhere. It seems that Spears, along with a host of others, is cashing in old favors in exchange for a top spot to drop a pod, and sit and city watch. No-one knows how far this trend will run, nor how many more pods are likely to appear in the near future. But Hu Sin is certain of one thing: ‘As the Cunning City raises up and spits out celebs faster and faster year on year, the pool of potential city watchers out there is going to keep on growing. The kinds of favors you’ll need to have in hand for a really good pod location are going to get bigger, and more extreme. What sorts of things? Well that’s a matter for the starlets, and the guys with really big towers.’ bURB 49

cont. from page 48

back and squeeze behind here,’ Qian explains, as she shows me a marble pillar at the foot of the Jing Hu Bank Tower. ‘But Cindy wasn’t so fast — how could she be?’ At over twice her recommended weight, and living off a diet of king prawns and KFC, it’s hardly surprising Cindy didn’t make it. But who could have anticipated the bitter irony: that the generosity of her fat cat compatriots up in the office towers would have brought about her untimely death? ‘Those people were scary,’ Qian tells me, as she describes the crowd she watched rush past that day. ‘I saw hunger in their eyes.’

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TALK OF THE TOWN!

GHOST IN THE SPONGE pneumatic skin

Ever since our story last month about how clairvoyant Minnie See felt a presence in the new Spongemall, our inbox has been literally bursting with your responses. Thousands of BURB readers have visited the mall with their spook-sensors pricked up, and come back to us with sightings and strange tales. Who the ghost is or quite what they want is yet to become clear, but one thing’s for certain: it loves retail! ‘The Spongemall’s a great place to hang out,’ explains Minnie, ‘and so we shouldn’t be so surprised if someone from the spirit world thinks so too.’ But whether it’s the thousands of great bargains, the fantastic range of food, or the just the lively atmosphere that draws the ghost there is anyone’s guess.

SPOOKY ‘Spirits have divested themselves of their earthly shell, and so they actually can’t eat normal food. I don’t think this presence has anything to do with Yumsy Noodletopia,’ Minnie insists. ‘It’s about something deeper, which perhaps we can’t even perceive.’ But we spoke to Lin Kao, 44, of Yumsy Noodletopia, who couldn’t disagree more. ‘Personally I’m not all that superstitious,’ says Kao, ‘but I know our noodles are superlicious. I don’t see why the ghost wouldn’t make Noodletopia his top spot in the Spongemall. After all, he’s still got a nose — I mean ghosts can still smell, right? Smell that! Mm mm mhmm!’ One thing the Sponge-Specter may appreciate about his favorite haunt is how easily you can glide in and out of the space, and with all the glass atria, it’s always full of light. 52 bURB

What’s more, because the mall is a co-op, owned collectively by representatives from the hundreds of different stores within, there’s no sense you are intruding on a corporate sphere. ‘This is very important,’ Minnie tells us, ‘because ghosts don’t like places where they feel they have no right to be.’ A number of readers have felt the soft transitions of the Spongemall may have something to do with it. ‘It’s funny, you know,’ laughs Wang Mi, 19, a student who likes to spend lunchtimes in the Spongemall. ‘When you go there you don’t really feel like you’re going into anything, and then before you know it you’re in the middle. One time — I was wearing this cute little tartan skirt — I was deep in when I felt a wind on the backs of my knees. I knew immediately the presence had come in with me, probably accidentally, and had only just realized it himself! Then I turned round and there was this old man blowing bubbles at me. The whole thing was incredibly exciting.’

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BRAZILIANS transparent deck

But not everyone has such a great experience. Career girls Wen Wa, 24, bURB 53

cont. from page 52

and Fun Li, 22, were traveling up to the wax clinic on level 4 to get Brazilians when they encountered the phantom. ‘We were on the escalator,’ Wa starts to explain. ‘It’s a double helix so you spin round as you go up and there’s always plenty to look at. But then somewhere around two and a half there was this awful eggy-cabbagey smell.’ Li goes on: ‘We were stuck behind these two businessmen so we couldn’t start walking to get up out of it any quicker. The men were both really fat, and I think they’d just been drinking at some business lunch or other. They seemed a bit wobbly. We just had to stand there and watch their backs, and wait for the smell to go away.’ ‘It was a bit gross at the time, but I’m glad at least to have met the ghost,’ Wa reflects. The mischief doesn’t stop there. People have not only felt and smelt the wraith, but some have heard it too. Sun Hong, 32, was sitting minding his own business on the public square on top of the Spongemall when he had a ff-fffvairy strange encounter.

HUGE!

‘I was just sitting on a bench,’ Hong says. ‘It was all pretty normal. There were some oldsters playing mah-jong, and a few kids rollerskating. Perched on a wall were these two girls with big knockers 4 — and I mean HUGE! — andHaier, they were wearing these a successful mainland +ownHaier t-shirts. You know brand, lendsHaier pieces of its logo o western brands entering the So they had that, with Asian Market. the Its logologo? is portioned ut to brands needing the hair, ice the two mop-tops right over ream or underwear. Openinglittle up he way for Global brands to their I was just staring at align themselves withnipples. an already iconic them. And then there was this like image. deep voice in my head saying, ‘Go downstairs and buy a bottle of Great

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Haier, a successful mainland rand, lends pieces of its own logo western brands entering the n Market. Its logo is portioned to brands needing the hair, ice m or underwear. Opening up way for Global brands to ign themselves with an already iconic image. 54 bURB

Haier shampoo.’ Well I wasn’t going to mess around with a poltergeist or whatever this thing is, so I did what he said right there and then. Thank God he’s left me alone ever since. That trip was scary.’

double level

MACABRE Of course, the man who has seen the most macabre mall moments of all is Zhi Yu, the chief security guard. ‘I don’t think there’s a single part of this Mall that that ghost hasn’t been,’ Yu informs us. ‘And I’ve been watching. He’s on all the levels, in the light as it comes through the spongy panels, and he skulks around the Hotel Without Operator — peeping through keyholes I’ll bet!’ The retail program of the Spongemall is interspersed with hotel floors, offering people rooms for as short or long a period as they like (you just swipe a smartcard at the door). It’s filled with tourists, exhausted shoppers, schoolgirls doing a spot of homework between class and volleyball practice, sneaky couples stealing a moment, and people just taking a break. But there’s creepy company in there too these days it seems. A number of guests have described incidents of mysteriously losing small items, hearing ‘sounds’, seeing ‘things’, and experiencing odd or even ‘out of this world’ sensations while staying there. ‘There was even a crazy incident in the cinema-elevator, on the other side of the building,’ Zhi Yu shares with us. ‘This guy spent almost a whole day Great just riding up and down, watching a trailer for the new Shell & Motorola movie. It was like he was a man possessed.’ The movie is about a group of polar bears, who use cell phones to call each other and say goodbye before their ice floes melt.

public square

art gallery

conference center window shopping

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internal passages

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of r! n te o i c s e s e l sp r p al m i em s ’ st ng i t Ar Spo e th

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ROUTE 1

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spotted

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PRESENCE FELT

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PEEPING TOM

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PERSONAL FOCUS

cont. from page 24

the bidding by tripling Madrid’s offer. ‘Our goal is to become the best club in the world,’ Sun said at Rudolfo’s introduction ceremony. ‘This is simply the first step.’ Last season, Shanghai proved the strength of the Chinese football league by advancing to the finals of the FIFA Club World Championship, thrashing European stalwarts Bayern Munich and Chelsea along the way. With Shanghai’s signing of Rudolfo, as well as recent high profile acquisitions such as Mark van Broken by Hyundai Beijing and Omario Hernandez by Shenzen Jianlibao, some experts are predicting this to be the beginning of an era of Chinese football dominance. ‘It’s true that Chinese clubs may not have the tradition of great European clubs like Juventus or Olympique de Marseille,’ said CCTV football commentator Xie Donghug. ‘But at the moment, the Chinese clubs have the wealth and willingness to pay the top salaries. In this sport that’s what will make the difference.’

Unidentified Youth In the north-eastern waterway of the Tai Yang Gong district of our City the body of a young woman has been found. The body emerged early Saturday morning, floating downstream from the sewage system towards the Haidian student compounds. The woman, estimated to be 23 years old and of Korean descent, is assumed to have committed suicide. Autopsy on the body has revealed a high concentration of the drug DBD (a hallucinogenic found in mind-mints). The drug however is not likely to be the primary cause of the woman’s death. Casualties of the genetically engineered drug are highly uncommon. This shrouds the death of the woman, who remains unidentified, in mystery. Found facing upward in a pristine white dress, officials described the scene as ’bizarre’. Questions have been raised about a possible link to the Spring Suicides of 2017. The seven young girls who commit-

ted a ritualized group suicide were high-ranking followers of the Urban Demons. This religious sect was believed to have been dismantled after the arrest of their leader Eric E. (better known as “The Architect”). The steadily decreasing speed of the expansion of our City is speculated to be a cause for so-called Urban Demons to take up their practices. Followers of “The Architect” believe the continuous success, particularly urban expansion, of our City is the result of their periodic sacrifice of young women. Police have declined to comment, but the theory is substantiated by a tattoo found on the body. The image on the left ankle depicts the letters J and E intertwined, surrounded by a red heart. The CC metropolitan police have issued a statement urging anyone with information regarding the identity of the woman to come forward.

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armament

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SPORTS AND LEISURE

High Art for the Faint at Heart Art is on the rise. This weekend the mayor of the Cunning City will take center stage at the grand opening ceremony of the largest museum to date: The Modern Art Center for Brilliant Urban Experiences or MACBUX. The opening will take the mayor and her entourage on an audio tour across 9 different urban districts at a comfortable 12 miles an hour. Along the entire two hour ride the museum will feature a rich mix of contemporary art producers from all corners of the globe. But MACBUX is more

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than a large modern museum; most prominently it features the greatest cultural achievement of this century: The Cunning City. This makes for an unprecedented urban experience. As a result of the impressive scale of contemporary art-installations and sculptures (on average works have quadrupled in size over the last two decades) art more and more operates solely at the level of our City. The increasingly dense networks of our City have been effectively spun together by a single building that of-

fers its audience a provocative, efficient and intensely dynamic experience of mega-art with our City as its natural urban backdrop. It is a fact tourists have always been drawn to the most precious, white and minimalist environments in town: museums. Here their long journey is rewarded with the global culture of internationally renowned artists contained by a structure of internationally renowned architecture. The radically abstract shape of the MACBUX perfectly distances itself

from our City it displays. The main volume seems carefully draped like a giant handkerchief or glove, hovering amidst the patchwork of our infrastructural masterpieces, housing estates and brain parks. The innovative architecture of the 36 kilometer long tubular structure waves through the most diverse areas our City has to offer. The dilapidated and chaotic areas, such as the upcoming Chinatowns, can be observed up close by citizens

and tourists alike. On a travelator one glides through the smooth glass tube that will take you from our City’s cultural center right down to its historic ruins. Surrounded and protected by a safe and controlled environment the tour incorporates disregarded districts and will bring you face-to-face with the generally forgotten population of substance abusers and prostitutes in the deserted back streets and alleys. This makes the MACBUX a truly remark-

able urban experience. A strong tingling sense of a long lost urban reality took hold of this reporter entering the last stretch of the ride. It invigorates the art on display with a layer of social sensibility not seen since art was still made by artists. Moreover it confirms even the darkest corners of our City can and should be perceived as breathtakingly beautiful. Open Tuesday to Sunday. Tickets available at all D-rail entry points or online at www.macbux.gov.cn

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PERSONAL FOCUS

Urban Grow th

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“I simply couldn’t believe what had happened. I thought my life was about to come full circle and my dreams would at last come true. But instead this was turning into the worst day of my life …” Yin Jun — better know as the King of Feet — is turning the gray spaghetti roads around the Cunning City into fields of hope. His story, one of remarkable dedication and love for both his City and his family, started at a very early age. READ ON OVERLEAF FOR FULL STORY!

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grew up in the village. To me the Cunning City was always the jewel on the horizon — a shimmering world of riches and brilliance, but with a cold center. I was always drawn to the city, but 68 bURB

still there was something holding me back. It was like a voice in my boyhood head. As I grew older, the voice became real. It was my little brother talking to me. Hui was 6 years my junior, but

by the time he was 5 he had read more books than me, and spoke like a wise man. ‘Do not spend days on just eating.’ he would say to me, quoting the ancients. But Hui was also a very natural boy.

He loved to watch for spring blossom on the apple trees, and divine for underground water sources. He could be perfectly content with his books, a well, and a little land for rice and bee-keeping.

Desire But I didn’t have Hui’s pure soul. I felt the allure of the city even on my skin. At the age of 14 I was almost mad

with desire. One evening I stood on the veranda of our little house gazing at the Cunning City, growing brighter in the distance as night fell. ‘What should I do,’ I asked Hui. There were tears in my eyes. ‘How can a bURB 69

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sparrow know the will of a swan?’ he answered. The next day Hui fell ill. He was shivering, and had a very high fever. Anything he ate or drank just ran right through him. Three days later he was dead. I knew that somehow the Cunning City had sucked up his life to draw me in. We buried Hui in the garden beneath the apple tree, and that night I set out. As I walked I made a promise: ‘Hui, I’ll never forget you. I’m going to make it big in the Cunning City, and then once I’m rich I’ll come back here and plant a whole orchard of apple trees. And in the middle of the orchard I’ll build a mausoleum, with a statue of you 10m high, all plated in zinc and gold, with mermaids and dolphins and horses.’ Our family was poor, and could only afford a very humble grave.

Success When I arrived in the Cunning City I got a job giving women foot massage in an enormous mall. I have always harbored a curious fascination for women’s feet, and the work was something I both enjoyed and was good at. Clients liked the way I made them feel, and would ask specially for me. When moving walkways were introduced around the city, women suddenly found they had extra freetime when they went to do their shopping. I saw an opportunity, and started my own foot massage company, with “pit-stop” booths offering foot services to women as they got on and off the travelators. It was a great success. Soon I had booths at all of the major transport nodes. But I didn’t stop there. I opened a line in luxury foot experiences for women. It reimagined KTV, sauna, bathing, and exclusive food and drink within an environment dedicated to the pleasures of the foot. Next we started to offer callipodian cosmetic surgery. Now there are tens of thousands of women with arch lifts and toe implants, and hundreds of different clinics. We were the first to 70 bURB

bring the wonders of plastic surgery exclusively to feet.

The Homecoming At the end of the fiscal year last March I went through my entire estate. It’s true I wasn’t in the C.C. top 100, but those guys are unbelievably rich. I still had ten times the money I needed for what I said I’d do, and a lot more beyond. It was time to go back home, and find Hui’s grave. The morning I left I was so excited I nearly peed myself. But I managed to hold it in somehow, and got into the car to start driving west. It had been ten years. I thought my life was about to come full circle, and at last I would realize my most precious dream. But traveling outwards the city seemed to be coming with me. Areas I remembered as little migrant villages were all built up. Fields had been taken over by vast entertainment complexes, and enormous residential blocks followed one after another for what seemed like

forever. The feeder roads were all vast but the traffic was still bad. At various points subway lines burst into the open and disrupted the roads. I got spun around several times, and as I didn’t recognize anywhere anymore, I was soon horribly lost. It took me almost all day to find where my home used to be. Now it was nothing more than a knot of tarmac and concrete. The Cunning City had been expanding ever since I left, and swallowing up anything in its way. Giant infrastructure had been run right over my parents’ home, and over Hui’s grave too. I looked at the roads all jammed with buses and cars. It was one of the worst feelings in my life.

Yin Jun’s Cow-tel is set to tell a whole new story about urban growth. 60m tall and powered entirely by cow farts, it might seem like a milky dream, but could be built as soon as 2023!

them are fake. No mausoleum, no problem! I said. I’m a real C.C.er now — I move on, and I make things happen. The day I spent wandering around forlornly looking for Hui’s grave, I met a lot of new people. They all live out there, in between the roads. When you get big infrastructure, you also get a lot of offcuts and space beneath flyovers. Families put up makeshift homes in the gaps and run little workshops — you wouldn’t believe how busy those places can be! And they’re not just sewing buttons. They’re doing some hi-tech stuff too, like making the tiny solar powered boom boxes which play birdsong throughout the Cunning City. What I started to see was a big in situ labor force, and a lot of underused land. When you add up all those little bits, there are fields and fields! I still hadn’t forgotten my orchard idea, and I began to see a possibility opening up. I was so excited I was scribbling ideas down on the cuff of my sleeve. The first thing I did was hire a team to plant apple trees. We hung daylamps which shine just the right color light, and so growth is really fast, and you can harvest every 4 months. Whatsmore, the run-off rainwater from big roads is very tough, and so the apples we grow

practically never rot. In fact they shine like tires! Finding clients was easy, and soon I was selling apples all over town.

Appletastic! But it doesn’t stop there … There’s been a lot of talk about urban farms, but this was the first time anyone had really made it work. The secret was to fragment the farm into lots of little pieces, and plant it out among the urban wastelands. Apple trees are quite big and so you need a decent offcut, but you can keep going down in size according to what’s available. We fit 15 strawberry plants on a scalene triangle of less than 0.2m2, and there are patches like that everywhere! But we’re thinking big too. I started to wonder if there were some way of gathering together my scraps and stacking them. As we always say in the Cunning City, “Stack Up or Crack Up!” I’ve got my labcoats working now on a high-rise farm (pictured left). We’re calling it the Cow-tel because we’re integrating livestock, and using the methane from the cows’ farts to power the heat and electricity for the building. We might even have some surplus power to sell back to the grid — on top of the milk!

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A Real C.C.er When your vision’s off, then you should change your glasses, they say in business, and it’s true in life too. It wasn’t possible to build the mausoleum, but those kinds of places are creepy anyway, and nine times out of ten the corpses in bURB 71

SPECIAL FEATURE

FREEZE: H2O (Humans to Oceans) DREAM SOLUTION OR COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY NIGHTMARE? Advocates call it the “Noah’s Ark of ideas” and “a city for an evolved humanity”. It is a city they feel will offer the depoliticized free space necessary at a time of increased global tension, apparent diminishing democracy and intensified censorship. But how free are the FREEZE vessels? And can they, amidst increasing pressure to territorialize international waters, stay afloat? Pioneer and principle spokesman Hou Xiu reveals all in our Interview with an Earthling …

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interview with an earthling was born in 2012. Right after China and America had gloriously captured all but one of the Olympic medals. Only the gold medal for archery passed them by. It was won by my father; a monk from a small island in the south of Japan. After that any international competition seemed fruitless. For my father it was a clear demonstration of the two superpowers dominating the world. Even the success of boom countries like India, Brazil and Russia didn’t prevent the cultural and political dominance of the PRC and the USA.

With nowhere to hide the time was ripe for drastic measures. He designed the first of the Xu Ni Shan; the mother ship of a fleet of a thousand H20-vessels (Humans to Oceans) that now roam the world’s seas. Ever since the launch we have been maneuvering between the force fields of these two insular, one party continents. I was born here; on the mother ship. Together with my peers I am the first generation of a new breed of floating population. We are a strain of humanity evolved within a neutral environment. Surrounded by the endless horizon of the sea our vision is unobstructed. Protected by the impenetrable walls of the glass architecture our bodies are uncontaminated. As the ice caps continue 74 bURB

to melt and the water levels rise we remain calm and afloat. We are a people encapsulated by freedom; living in bubbles void of politics or ambition, promises and disillusions. Our thoughts flow freely, new ideas and inventions emerge and evolve unhindered. Born and raised in a state of suspension; constantly in motion; adrift, we remain undetermined and undeterred. Cities are no longer defined by the roads that lead there. Our global migration and modern technologies have collapsed geographical space, and remapped what was once a hierarchy of capitals and mega-cities. All that is left is a floating plane of lines, across which points move in all directions, all at once … and no two points are either closer together or more distant from each other than from any others. The confluences and intensities of these lines ignore existing territories, and indeed perform acts of deterritorialization. We proclaim today it has become inevitable to disown place, and instead imagine flows. Our mountains are the result of just such an act of imagining. To be floating is to be neither rising from anywhere, nor falling toward anything. Our hollow floes neither adhere to nor transcend anything. We offer no ideology, and we have no roots. We are neither leaving, nor staying. We are decentered, and we decenter everything around us. Civilization up to now has focused on the to and from, on destination and departure, the here and there. Constantly in motion we live in the now; in the middle where things cross and change. Today our people represent all

corners of the world. The fleet has become an un-discriminatory refuge; a hideout for hackers and anarchists, a safe-haven for scientist and artists, for secret lovers and freedom fighters alike; a borderless nation confined to the international waters. Personally I have never touched the shore. I am however like anyone here perfectly in touch with the world, and the reality of the main land. As I understand it’s a material world; money driven and power hungry, dangerous and lonesome. But this might not be evident to the rest of the global population. Unlike the 7.5 billion souls left behind, we have unlimited access to real information. The world’s 29,000 TV stations paint a picture of contradictions and fabrications. Our satellites receive uninterrupted and uncensored data from across the globe. Our hackers offer unfiltered web access. The network of H20-vessels is today the central super-node of the world wide web, a new HUB disrupting the stale arrangement of mega-servers and mega-cities and the lopsided access to information they represent. We offer a plateau of limitless connectivity. Now information is the true continuum of intensities. We have reconfigured the axes of the global topology, of capital, creative sectors, ideas, identity, influence. The physical localities of power are forced to come to terms with our virtual space. And indeed in the past the world has been confronted with this new reality, when the makers of the infamous V-virus brought the global economy to a standstill in a virtual pandemic. But this did not only affect the economy;

it temporarily curbed pollution levels and silenced lingering wars. It was a moment of inspiration for many; its inventors are living anonymously amidst our people. Within this environment paradigm solutions for global problems have emerged that we are trying to implement on the mainland. We govern ourselves through simple open-source democracy; we have developed the formulas for a global currency. We breathe the pure air that we produce. We cultivate our own food in hanging gardens of fruit

and vegetables and farm our proteins in cubicles of countless insects. Nuclear energy propels us forever forwards and incidentally protects us from aggressors – it would simply be too destructive for any terrorist state to attack and sink us. But let me be clear. I am speaking to you here today not as a representative of any kind, but as a proud individual and a common human being that has the luxury of living a common life. As this message reaches you, enjoy a short moment to let your mind go blank. Your life,

your home, your city, your religion, your society are not predetermined. There exists a state void of local concerns; a clear mental space that will allow you to flourish. A non-political space that can absorb the lives and ideas of any spirited human being. Admittedly this will sound hard to comprehend at a time of increased global tension, false democracy and fake freedoms. But a modern Noah’s Ark of pure thought is roaming freely in your area. Take a moment to envisage freedom … we still have room for you. Hou Xiu child of Freeze

“Nothing less than the most tantalizing worlds have been created by the early Modernists. Their renderings of relentlesly rational cities illustrate the ambition to maximize the efficiency of the built environment. Space itself was altered. Like designers through the ages they set out to bring to life the dream at the heart of every inspired architect: to create completely floating buildings on the scale of the city, simultaneously rejecting urbanism and gravity.”

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项目介绍：“冰山一瞥”是非政治空间的不断上升的产物。一个超现实化， 但又在不断上升的全球紧张局势，逐渐减少的民主制度以及增加的审查制度 中及其需求的一个空间。一个没有疆界烦扰的空间。随着世界海水的上升， 一个自由漂浮的诺亚方舟的理念。

FREEZE is a response to the rising need to achieve non-political space: space that can absorb the lives and ideas of an evolved humanity. FREEZE is highly utopian yet painfully necessary at a time of increased global tension, diminished democracy and intensified censorship. It is a space void of territorial concerns — a futuristic Noah’s Ark of ideas, roaming as freely as the world’s sea levels are rising.

FREEZE (H2O) — Humans to Oceans

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TOWERING CHINA domino installation, 5.2m x 3.7m DCF / Neville Mars

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