{ design@tive } information design

China has begun to restrict visas for foreign visitors. The Washington Post presents several perspectives on why this is happening, including Olympic security concerns and a growing sense of nationalism among Chinese.

On paper, the visa rules for China have always been strict. But in recent years, foreigners could turn to a thriving gray market for their immigration documents. For a small fee, agencies would gather all the paperwork required for coveted visas allowing visitors to remain in the country for as long as a year.

That abruptly ended in April.

China all but stopped issuing multi-entry visas and began requiring tourists to submit documentation such as hotel reservations, plane tickets and other information. Police officials also began randomly stopping foreigners in the street and questioning them about their status in the country. Immigration officials increasingly made unannounced visits to companies to check the paperwork of foreign employees.

Market Watch also published a brief article on CIBT, that also claims that visa regulations are becoming more complex.

Mr. Diehl cautioned Olympics-bound travelers that “going directly to the Chinese Embassy or consulates to obtain visas has proven frustrating for many individuals and groups who have been turned away due to the lack of proper support documentation often resulting in multiple return trips. Sending your application by mail is even riskier. Until recently, a Chinese visa was valid for one year and permitted multiple entries. Now, people need official invitations, flight and hotel confirmation, and in some cases bank statements and other documents to apply for a visa.”

In addition to frustrated potential visitors to China, the economy is also experiencing difficulties due to the new visa restrictions. The Wall Street Journal reports on the vacant hotels in Beijing, built for Olympic visitors and other tourists who are now hampered from entering China.

The worries about a possible glut have grown in recent weeks. Many of Beijing’s newest hotel rooms are sitting empty following the government’s tightening of visa restrictions as part of public-safety measures tied to the Olympics. Even during the Games, occupancy rates may not be as high as originally predicted. The tourism bureau says that more than three-quarters of Beijing’s five-star hotels are booked for the Olympics, but at four stars, less than half the rooms are reserved.

Autodesk announced recently that it will be working with the city of Salzburg, Austria, as the first pilot city in Autodesk’s new Digital Cities initiative. The Digital City initiative is Autodesk’s technology designed to provide a collaborative environment for visualizing, analyzing, and simulating the future impact of urban design and development at a citywide scale.

Autodesk has chosen to work with Salzburg to help it integrate its city data into a detailed 3D model of the city. Scientific personnel from Salzburg University’s Center of Geoinformation will assist with the implementation of Digital City for the city of Salzburg. This combination of city data with realistic visualization and simulation tools reportedly will allow Salzburg to view and interact with the city landscape and to analyze the impact of future urban planning, tourism, and economic development projects before they are built.

“I am very pleased to announce the launch of this pilot project which holds considerable significance for modern urban administration. With Autodesk as a leader in design innovation and the University of Salzburg drawing on its many years of experience in the geoinformation area, we have two internationally acknowledged partners joining forces to realize this future project. The digital city model will help cities like ours better understand the impact of proposed urban projects,” said Heinz Schaden, mayor of the city of Salzburg. “This type of pilot program will help us better understand how we can create an attractive and sustainable future for Salzburg and its people.”

“Salzburg is one of the most progressive, well known cities in the world and so they are a natural choice to participate as our first pilot city. Our Digital City technology can help the city and community of Salzburg communicate, collaborate, and deliver projects in a more effective — and sustainable — way,” said Lisa Campbell, vice president, Autodesk Geospatial. “We are proud to work with them and our longstanding partner, the University of Salzburg, to create a business tool that will help Salzburg plan and operate sustainable development essential for tomorrow’s high-performance cities and economies.”

In previous post in which I discussed chinese calligraphy, I talked a little bit about chinese calligraphy’s history, and my impressions of its influence in contemporary chinese design. Since a lot of people have been asking me for more on the topic, I’ve decided to post on YouTube some videos of a trip my wife, a couple of friends and I did to Zhu Jia Jiao, one of the many river towns just outside Shanghai.

In Zhu Jia Jiao, we’ve met Master Yue Le, a local artist that makes his living on creating banners/posters for tourists that visit that town: with our little domain of Mandarin, we’ve asked him to create some banners to represent something he would consider typical.

He was very kind to explain to us that — in traditional chinese culture — one would hang banners at the door of the house, wishing neighbors and visitors good omens; such tradition is still kept in most cities around China, but mostly during festivals and special occasions, like the Spring Festival.

In the first video, he tells us he is going to paint one of the most chinese typical wishes, which is “Welcome Home” (I would say that is a pretty cross-cultural wish, right?). Like an artist, a poet, or a designer, he make some sketches on a little notebook before painting the banners, trying to figure out the most auspicious characters to use.

In the second video, he paints the message “Huan Ying Guang Lin Wo Men De Jia”, which roughly translate as “Welcome to Our Home”: note how master Yue tries to make the visual alignment mentally, as if he was hesitating to start before painting.

In the last part, he paints our names; obviously, our western names have to be “converted” to Chinese, which usually involves either one of two strategies: first, try to find words that sound like their original western names, like “John” would be translated into “Jiang”, or — second — find the equivalent words to our names in Chinese; like my name “Itamar” — which in Tupy-Guarani, an indigenous language in Brazil — means “Coral Reef” was translated into “Hai Yan”.

In China, calligraphy is much appreciated — note how many locals gather around master Yue — but is not widely practiced by the younger generations, and it is a risk of dying. So, it was really nice to see the interest of the young ones gathering around master Yue, ask him questions, and observe him at work.

Shanghai sunset: pollution
credits: mysticmaggatha

Since the beginning of its economical opening — when the first 5-year plans were devised in 1979 — China has being growing at an incredible speed, with its GNP numbers jumping from 44 billion dollars to 1.6 trillion dollars in just 20 years.

Such growth has pushed the Chinese manufacturing industry into devouring huge amounts of natural resources in a alarming way: in 2004, China — the 8th largest economy in GNP scale — consumed 8% of all the oil, 31% of all the coal, 10% of all the electricity, 30% of all ore, 30% of all steel, 19% of all aluminum, 20% of all the copper and 40% of all cement produced in the world.

Adding such demand for natural resources to low efficiency means of production (the power-generation, steel and chemical industry in China spends 40% more energy in comparison to developed countries) and we get one of the most polluting countries in the planet: according to the World Bank, 6 out of the 10 the most polluted cities in the planet are in China.

Worries about the quality of life of its people — as well as with its the capacity of continuing to grow in a sustainable way — has recently lead the Chinese Central Government to changing its development macro-strategy for the next five years: new initiatives (both state-run and private) of development zones/projects will emphasize on environmental and sustainability issues. Sectors such as Information Technology, financial and tourism will be stimulated, and special incentives will be given to create investments on technological innovation.