Beijing's building boom has already spawned a wealth of novelty forms, with a stadium in the shape of a bird's nest, a theatre nicknamed the egg, and a TV headquarters that has been likened to a giant pair of underpants. But the official People's Daily newspaper might have trumped them all with its new office building, which appears to be modelled on a colossal phallus.
Photos of the scaffold-shrouded shaft have been circulating on Weibo, the Chinese micro-blogging site, to the authorities' dismay, with censors working overtime to remove the offending images. "It seems the People's Daily is going to rise up, there's hope for the Chinese dream," commented one user. "Of course the national mouthpiece should be imposing," added another.
The 150m-tall tower, located in the city's eastern business district, appropriately near OMA's pants-shaped CCTV headquarters, is the work of architect Zhou Qi, a professor at Jiangsu's Southeast University.
"Our way of expression is kind of extreme," Zhou told the Modern Express newspaper, "different from the culture of moderation that Chinese people are accustomed to." He explained the design was inspired not by part of his anatomy, but by the traditional Chinese philosophy of "round sky and square earth" – the tower tapers from a square base to a cylindrical top. He claimed that the elongated spherical form was designed to recall the Chinese character for "people" from above. The fact it might look like a male member from below was clearly a secondary concern.
Cleaner-minded commentators have compared the building to everything from a steel-framed penguin to an electric iron, a giant juicer and an aircraft carrier. But perhaps Zhou should take solace in the fact that his tower joins a long tradition in architecture – from the thrusting Dionysian columns of ancient Greece to the sturdy stone linga of Hindu temples.
Beyond the ancients, phallocentric design found fertile ground most notably in revolutionary France, where architects Jean-Jaques Lequeu and Claude Nicolas Ledoux were continually preoccupied with penile plans.
In his unbuilt design for a House of Pleasure in 1773, Ledoux conceived a "lonely phallus", lined with bedrooms along its length, culminating in a large ovoid salon at the head, while testicle-shaped galleries framed the entrance. A second design elaborated his allegorical ideas about sex, with private bedrooms arranged to "thrust out from the circular ring of the building, metaphorically representing penetration, the circular ring representing the vaginal passage and womb of the female," according to architectural historian Paulette Singley.
France's penchant for the priapic continued into the 19th century, promoted by figures such as the painter Jules Breton, who suggested that the Luxor obelisk in Paris be adorned with a suggestive female hand grasping its girth, and the Vendome column be embellished with a clambering naked woman. More recently, architect Jean Nouvel has seemingly been keen to maintain the tradition: both his Torre Agbar in Barcelona and the Burj Doha in Qatar have attracted sniggers.
But China's authorities have yet to see the funny side: searches for the "People's Daily building" on Weibo are now simply met with the message "According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, search results cannot be displayed."
小編摘錄影片精典對話：
記者：你覺得這棟建築像甚麼？
小孩：迪士尼樂園！
主持人：我不知道迪士尼發生了什麼事？！
《人民日報》新造型大樓坐落於北京東三環，塔樓的建築高度超過了150米。設計師是南京大學的團隊。而央視大樓的女性臀部向上的造型是外國人設計的，該設計師明確表示是惡搞，說是個色情設計。
一位網友說：從央視大樓的臀部絲襪大褲衩，到人民日報的大陽具造型大廈，再到海南島最高樓等等，全國標誌性建築，都可以看出，中國開始進入生殖器崇拜時代。
《中華書畫報》總編輯畫家吳高龍說，據網友報料，據說這就是正部級《人民「日」報「射」》大樓，這是誰設計、誰拍板、誰投資的？他說，「中國真不缺人才，這鳥樓建成後，我建議上面再設計一個高壓水槍噴嘴吧！這樣就更形象、更逼真、更有創意了，如此一來和央視『大褲衩』姦情就名正言順了。」
可以肯定的是，這兩座大樓將進入史冊，而500年後的人會把這當成神話故事，不會相信這是真實發生過的事。
不管如何，最近美國的娛樂節目惡搞了人民日報的新造型大樓，當圖片展示出來時，現場觀眾們哄堂大笑。攝製組曾拿著這大樓的照片來到好萊塢大道，讓小朋友們說說它象什麼，純真無邪的小朋友都給出了自己的答案，又惹得節目現場觀眾們笑成一團。
有中國網友說：中共在自己統治區丟人還不算，還丟臉丟到國外去了！
參考資料：
中國之聲
http://big5.soundofhope.org/node/359760
METRO新聞網
http://metro.co.uk/2013/05/03/newspaper
英國衛報
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2013/may/10/beijing-peoples-daily-giant-penis
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