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Chinese professor constructs his own mountain atop Beijing penthouse

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Parakeetman

No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
This is going to end in tears.

Seriously.

china_apt_collapse2.jpg
 

Parakeetman

No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
Better description: Chinese asshole destroys apartment building, fucks other tenants.

Dont worry am sure the other residents will soon be lynching his ass and tossing him off from the top the first sign anything goes really wrong.
 

numble

Member
He put in a swimming pool and put his own elevators up there, too.
http://beijingcream.com/2013/08/wealthy-quack-beijing-rooftop-villa-is-an-asshole/

And Al-Jazeera video (includes photos of another building with a couple of houses built on top):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT0Ca8CGQvI


Check out the above video about this construction in Beijing’s Haidian district. When Zhang moved into his penthouse duplex in 2007, Room 2605, there was a deck upstairs, and after getting the proper permits, he began renovating it into something… bigger. In December 2008, local authorities notified him that he had to stop, because his project was causing water and gas leaks. Did Zhang listen? Did he stop to think about others? Did he use a bit of rational thinking?

Nope, he expanded it to 800 square meters, and added rocks, a swimming pool, and private lifts.

“I think he just has money and do whatever he wants to do,” apartment owner Lee Xiaoming told Al-Jazeera. “One day, more people feel uncomfortable about it, we will stay together and get him to clean it up. And that’s all we can do.”

All the relevant chai (demolish) notices have been posted. If Zhang doesn’t turn up soon, authorities will go in and tear it down themselves.

“A culture of impunity for the wealthy and well-connected,” Al-Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett says. That’s Zhang. That’s the worst of your entitled expat friends. That’s fu’erdai like the yayaya girl. Don’t root for this.
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
He put in a swimming pool and put his own elevators up there, too.
http://beijingcream.com/2013/08/wealthy-quack-beijing-rooftop-villa-is-an-asshole/

And Al-Jazeera video (includes photos of another building with a couple of houses built on top):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT0Ca8CGQvI

Insane. And it looks like he didn't use glass fiber, but some kind of mortar. I can't imagine the structure coping well with all that weight. Also, his occupation makes a lot more sense. I don't think a teacher could ever get the money (nor have the connections) to pulls such stunt.

The little village on top of the shopping mall was also kind of crazy.

Badly constructed new building that toppled over, I believe. No one inside.
Not exactly (although the construction quality was more than a bit suspect). They were excavating an underground parking near the building, but the architects/managers were a bunch of dumb fucks and when heavy rains came, much of the ground from below the tower was washed out. http://www.hoax-slayer.com/13-story-buliding-collapse-china.shtml
 

Cartman86

Banned
lol wait has he made his money off alternative medicine scams? The AlJazeeraEnglish video says he makes his money as a private "Chinese medicine practitioner".
 
Magically, he'll have "legitimate" documents.

I think normally, yes - these purported "legitimate" documents would simply materalize.

However, this is too publicized a case so should anything really happen due to structural failure, whoever signed the papers would be raked over coals for it; I doubt anyone in their right mind would sign the documents and risk execution for graft.
 

Big-E

Member
lol wait has he made his money off alternative medicine scams? The AlJazeeraEnglish video says he makes his money as a private "Chinese medicine practitioner".

Many people in China still prefer Chinese traditional medicines. I was just in a hospital that specialized in traditional Chinese medicines and it was packed with a fucktonne of people. My mother in law had apparently thrombosis and the treatment they gave was acupuncture.
 
N

NinjaFridge

Unconfirmed Member
It looks pretty cool, but it's a disaster waiting to happen.
 
Many people in China still prefer Chinese traditional medicines. I was just in a hospital that specialized in traditional Chinese medicines and it was packed with a fucktonne of people. My mother in law had apparently thrombosis and the treatment they gave was acupuncture.

It's possible for bullshit to be popular.
 

numble

Member
He says he'll tear it down.

Internet users found videos of him online claiming to cure various diseases with a new form of acupressure and the government is investigating his company.

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/08/13/beijing-high-rise-sprouts-mountain-retreat/

...

One day after local management officials posted a notice on the door of his top-floor unit demanding he either provide proof that structure is legal or demolish it within 15 days, Zhang Biqing on Tuesday told state media that he would tear down the fake mountain landscape (in Chinese).

The villa came to the attention of local media over the weekend and immediately went viral on Chinese social media sites, where Mr. Zhang has been crowned with the title “most powerful apartment owner.” According to the building’s property management company and urban management officials, it took Mr. Zhang six years to transform what was originally a 340-square meter (3,700-square foot) penthouse into the current 800-square meter mountain fantasy lodge, with neighbors complaining the entire time.

The story is the most recent, and arguably the most bizarre, example both of the extravagant spending on real estate in country with few other investment avenues and of the power of the elite to live outside the rules.

The building on which Mr. Zhang built his mountain is part of Renji Shanzhuang, a high-end development where apartments can cost upwards of 80,000 yuan ($13,000) per square meter, according to residents and realtors. Despite paying dearly for the right to live in the building, residents told China Real Time, they were forced to contend with refuse in the hallways and drilling noise as a result of the construction on the roof. Sometimes, a building manger said, residents were kept awake late at night by the sound of karaoke drifting down from Mr. Zhang’s villa, but their complaints went unanswered.

A recent visit to the building revealed construction material and fragments of fake rock piled up in the corridors above the 26th floor.

Zhang Hong, head of property management at Renji Shanzhuang, said she had tried to relay complaints to Mr. Zhang (no relation) but was only ever able to reach the housekeeper. “We have done all we can do,” she said, adding that she had never been inside the penthouse.

Mr. Zhang is the owner of Qijingtang, a company that claims to have invented a new form of acupuncture. According to the official Xinhua News Agency, he was also formerly a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference of an unnamed district in Beijing.

The CPPCC is a legislative advisory body largely made up of businessmen, cultural figures and others who are politically well-connected.

On Monday, social media users reacted with disdain to an interview Mr. Zhang apparently gave over the weekend to the Beijing Morning Post, a local newspaper, in which he struck a defiant tone and refused to discuss details of what he had built on the building’s roof (in Chinese). On the popular Sina Weibo microblogging service, some users dug up and circulated videos of him claiming to be able to cure various diseases through acupressure.

On Tuesday, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper posted a message to an official social media saying the State Administration of Industry and Commerce was investigating Mr. Zhang’s company, though it did not say why (in Chinese).

Mr. Zhang could not be reached for comment.

“Tear it down! It should all be torn down!” Guo Zhengdian, a resident on the 23rd floor, said on Tuesday, claiming that he could hear the sound of electric drills in Mr. Zhang’s place despite living three floors down.

While Mr. Guo and other residents said they feared the weight of the fake mountain had compromised the integrity of the building, Mr. Zhang told state broadcaster China Central Television that the artificial hills were built with very light material and posed no threat to the building (in Chinese). He also said that the materials served as insulation and they would benefit the residents.

State Administration of Industrial and Commerce officers are also investigating his company, according to official media.

It wasn’t immediately clear how much Mr. Zhang had spent on the villa. Real estate advertisements listed a 371-square-meter penthouse with 1,080-square-meter patio in the same complex at around 30 million yuan.
 

Al-ibn Kermit

Junior Member
I could almost admire the absurdity of it if he planned it properly and had permission from his neighbors. I mean WTF did he use concrete rather than wood/fiberglass?
 

shira

Member
I could almost admire the absurdity of it if he planned it properly and had permission from his neighbors. I mean WTF did he use concrete rather than wood/fiberglass?

"Mr. Zhang told state broadcaster China Central Television that the artificial hills were built with very light material and posed no threat to the building (in Chinese). He also said that the materials served as insulation and they would benefit the residents."

Lol even the mountains in China are fake.

e8cA7oc.jpg


ABOVE the clouds. . . .
 

TUSR

Banned
I could almost admire the absurdity of it if he planned it properly and had permission from his neighbors. I mean WTF did he use concrete rather than wood/fiberglass?

A civil engineer would never approve it regardless of what the neighbours say.

Building's load was probably never calculated with a mountain on top, even with a large factor of safety involved.
 

Lamel

Banned
I would love to live there. Seriously.

When I have a house, I want my own little nature preserve in my backyard. With some rocks and streams and shit.
 

numble

Member
There is a live feed of the place now:
http://live.video.sina.com.cn/room/news2


State broadcaster CCTV reported through Sina Weibo that demolition work began at 8am on Thursday (in Chinese). The property management company in charge of Renji Shanzhuang said it did not know whether the demolition was ongoing.

Sina has set up a live feed of the villa that showed no demolition occurring when China Real Time checked it at 3:30 p.m. It did, however, appear to show a drone flying overhead, so perhaps there will be more videos forthcoming from Flycam.

From:
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/08/15/watch-birds-eye-view-of-high-rise-mountain-villa/
 

industrian

will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
Somewhat related, the phenomenon of illegal rooftop structures in Hong Kong:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/01/world/asia/hongkong-rooftop-slums

They have those in Taiwan too, but they're generally higher quality. IIRC it's because in Taiwan the law says that a building over 5 floors must have an elevator. So to circumnavigate this extra cost, they just built 5-floor buildings and a few years later build a separate apartment on the roof.

I've lived in three of them (and currently live in one.)
 

gimmmick

Member
I... hope to god he involved a structural engineer to make sure that the building doesn't completely cave out under the weight.

It's China lol. God what a dick move. I'd hate to be living under that. Can you just imagine the structure caving in when you are sleeping? How the hell did the government let this happen? This would never fly in the US.
 
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