Beijing: It's Just Like Home

My hometown of Glastonbury, CT, has fairly strict planning and zoning rules, particularly with regard to signs and billboards. If I remember correctly, ours was the first McDonalds not to have those tall recognizable arches, and shortly after we moved there, the Town told a Texaco station to remove a lighted sign that could be seen for miles.

The sign below is representative of the fact that Chinese cities have no such qualms about huge, splashy, neon advertisements.No qualms, that is, until the wind came along. You see, last week, we Beijingers were promised a huge sandstorm, which would have made an excellent topic for a blog. Instead, the wind came without bringing much sand. No pictures of taxis covered in yellow Gobi dust, just gusts of grimy Beijing air cutting my delicate skin.

I thought wind was too ordinary a topic for a blog, but then again, nothing in China is ordinary. It turns out, the wind blew over many large billboards, one of which fell on woman and, sadly, killed her. The city has now decreed that all billboards on the top of residential buildings within the city must be removed by the end of June. CCTV claims as many 23 billboards will have to come down inside the Third Ring Road, which makes me think they are defining both billboards and residential buildings very narrowly - I could point to 23 signs on the tops of buildings from almost any corner inside the 3rd Ring!

So once again, I feel fortunate to have moved here in time to see the supposedly offensive advertising eyesores before they get torn down at the behest of the local authorities.