New New Garden Gets A Makeover

Not much happens in our neighborhood, other than dog-walking, old people puttering, and our favorite Dalian sanitation crew member working (and relaxing).  But today, the talk (or rather, gawk) of the town is the sudden and horrific renovation project at the building next to mine.   新新园, which Marberly fondly refers to as New New Garden, is getting a makeover.



Things move fast in China.  They put up the scaffolding yesterday, and now a good portion the building is shoddily covered in a mosaic of mismatched blue tiles.  However, New New Garden is a somewhat extensive complex, so I wonder about the scope of this project. On the other hand, they (whoever they are) also recently installed new doors on our building - they are blue, too.  Maybe someone's got a color scheme in mind. Kim thinks the work is so bad that it must be some kind of under layer.

Witness the extent of the shoddiness:



The designers were going for an intentionally random, monochromatic geometric theme, but you have to take many, many steps back for it to "work".  So many steps, in fact, that you can't even see it anymore!

I rushed over with my camera and documented the progress while the workers stared at me from atop the scaffolding.  An middle-aged man with tinted glasses was also checking out the scene. 



"What are you doing?" the man in the tinted glasses asked me.  "Taking pictures."  He was confused. "Why?" "Because it's interesting," I replied.  "Interesting...?  Haha!" (Foreigners are so strange, he must have been thinking to himself.)

Forty-five minutes later, I was on my way back from a run, and he was still there, gesturing with his hands perpendicular to each other and expounding on the importance of getting the corners flush. (Which hadn't happened.)

Obviously I wasn't the only one interested.
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That's all the news for today, folks.  I know you're breathless to know about future developments at New New Garden.  Your humble blogger will keep you in the loop.