Tuen Mun, A city contained...

Dear Gentle Reader,

The Korean War was active from 1950 to 1953, but, it never really ended.

An armistice was signed in 1953 though peace was never declared.

Further, North Korea recently declared its withdrawal from that armistice on May 27, 2009.

But, this article is not about a home for peace, or war, on the Korean Peninsula, or anything on the Korean Peninsula.

It's not even about the Korean War, except tangentially.

This post is tangentially about the Korean War as the Korean War saw the first great growth of metalized containerisation for shipping.

The USA found that metal containers, instead of wood, once standardized, were harder to destroy, more difficult to pilfer from, and quicker to load, unload and transport.

With these insights, CONEX, the CONtainer EXpress project of the USA's Department of Defense, began and thus the Korean War marks the dawn of modern containerisation (as opposed to the twilight of (wooden) transport containerization which started in the late eighteenth century; it was a long twilight, baby).

Nineteen years after the start of CONEX, 1972, in turn, saw the dawn of containerisation in international, civil (as opposed to military) trade in Hong Kong.

In 1972, the first dedicated container ship to arrive in Hong Kong, the Tokyo Bay, docked in Kwai Chung.

By 1975/1976, container cargo was already accounting for 51% of the total dead weight tonnage of cargo exported or imported in the world (today more than 90% of non-bulk cargo is shipped via containers).

By 1980, Hong Kong had eclipsed Osaka, Japan, to become the third largest container port in the world.

By 1987, Hong Kong had eclipsed both Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and New York, USA, to become the number one container port in the world.

Of course, when those containers aren't being shipped out, they sit empty.

Idle.

And land is not cheap in Hong Kong, as your humble scribe found out when looking for a container for his life, and the belongings of the Hero and the Heroine.

Containers that are not filled with goods to be shipped frequently end up in Tuen Mun, a suburb city of a half million people outside of Hong Kong.

Tuen Mun started off its days as defensive gate city (channel gate is what Tuen Mun translates to).

Tuen Mun formed a defensive channel to stop foreign threats; not that it was ever effective against non-Chinese threats, like the British...

But, now, all threats to Tuen Mun are contained...

For, you see, Tuen Mun is where many of the unused shipping containers sit.

Recently, China's export trade has dropped by over 26% in dollar terms. That represents a lot of containers.

This means that the number of containers sitting idle has grown...

So, some are used in novel ways.

Like this lovely house,

with a carport, and a covered garage/workshop (the landscaping, admittedly, leaves much to be desired, but it is low maintenance).

Some structures, of course are more downmarket.

Some structures are almost hillbilly market (or hillybilly, as the Heroine likes to say).

While others are more mid-market.

The flip side of reduced trade is, apparently, increased housing.

And I have long thought that much housing, in Hong Kong, is simply containerization of people.

Now, in Tuen Mun, my suspicions have been confirmed.

Tschuess,

Chris

Postscript

Speaking of containers, and Tuen Mun, my mysterious scholarly Buddhist reader (but never commentator?) in California would likely not forgive me if I didn't mention Pui To.

And, having seen the tools that Buddhism reserves to use against its enemies (go back into the archives...) ...I want to stay on the right side of Buddhists...

So.

The great Buddhist missionary, Pui To, arrived in Tuen Mun in 428 AD in his own drinking cup, transformed into a vessel for travelling the drink (the waterways of the Pearl River Delta).

(In comparison, I drink and travel, or travel and drink, but rarely do I travel my drink. Your humble scribe is so déclassé...)

Pui To, however, did more than experiment with containers (drinking cups) and their efficacy as travelling objects.

Pui To, as a very devout Buddhist, would go to the local markets, buy live fish destined for the kitchens, and release those same live fish back into the water.

Further, the fish that never made it back to their watery homes, the dead ones, well, Pui To would inter these fish in specially constructed mausoleums... ...architectural containers to hold and memorialize the dead. (Why? Because Buddhists generally respect all life as sacred.)

So, Tuen Mun has not only had a long history, but has had a long relationship with containers transformed.

2IFC, Hong Kong, and global power manifested through buildings

Dear Gentle Reader,

Welcome back. Again.

It's gratifying to see you after a month-long interregnum.

On Monday, I provided documentary evidence that Batman was in Hong Kong.

Today, I look more closely at that documentary evidence. 

See that building rising up to the left of Batman? 

The one in the mid ground of the Batman photo? 

That building is the imposing, César Pelli designed, 415.8 m (with radio antenna)(1364.2 feet) tall 2IFC (International Finance Centre, Tower Two).

Strangely, 2IFC is usually pronounced IFC Two... Don't ask me why.

In fairness to other buildings around the world striving to be tall and to be counted, the architectural height, the height without aerials or lightning conductors, of 2IFC is only 406.9m (1335 feet). 

That still makes 2IFC the tallest building, currently, in Hong Kong, and the eighth tallest building in the world. 

When the Burj Dubai is finished in a couple of months, 2IFC will drop to being the ninth tallest building in the world.

On a Batman-related aside, 2IFC is the same building that Batman broke into in "The Dark Knight".

It is also the building that Batman is standing in in the promotional picture, shown below for "The Dark Knight".

Finally, and paradoxically, it also the building visible in the distance, to the left of Batman, in the same promotional picture... 

How Batman accomplishes this is unknown to your humble scribe.

Seeing the same building, in the distance, that Batman is standing in is proof of movie magic to your humble scribe.

(Your Hero could have explained this to your scribe, but he is strangely absent. He apparently absconded from his catnip rehab clinic and left a note saying that he is looking for a Miss Kitty. ?. Can anyone explain this?)

As you can see, 2IFC, with its lucky 88 floors (over twenty floors are double height for trading floors) and its 62 elevators, dominates the Hong Kong skyline.

Soon, the ICC (the International Commerce Centre) being built in Kowloon will surpass 2IFC (Two International Financial Centre) in height. 

But, ICC will be on Kowloon, facing 2IFC. 

2IFC and ICC staring at each may be an architectural, financial reminder of Scylla (Σκύλλα) and Charybdis (Χάρυβδις), the twin classical monsters perched, respectively, on a massive rock and a whirlpool on opposite sides of the tiny (as narrow as 3.1 km or 1.9 miles) Straight of Messina between Sicily and Calabria.

Scylla and Charybdis destroyed and devoured all the sailors who attempted to sail by them; woe to the financial peon who tries to get between 2IFC and ICC.

Actually, a posting on the oligopolistic nature of Hong Kong might be interesting, at some point in time...

But, back to 2IFC.

When I researched the global statistics on 2IFC, and other buildings for comparison, I discovered something interesting.

With status comes competition. 

OK. That's obvious.

But, fights for building the tallest and highest have yielded different definitions and ways of measurement.

There are now four categories of potential highest buildings, or, more properly, structures. 

For reference these are: 

(1) structures (supported) is the category for structures built solely in the air (as opposed to rising out of the sea), and these structures can be supported by cables or by guy-wires, as many radio aerial structures are--these structures are measured by pinnacle height, or the maximum built height, for measuring and ranking purposes; 

(2) structures (media-supported) is for structures like oil platforms that are partially supported by mediums like mater--these, again use pinnacle height; 

(3) free standing structures (so no guy-wires)-- are for non-inhabitable buildings like the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, and, again, pinnacle height is used; and

(4) buildings-- are for inhabitable structures and these are measured and ranked using architectural height, id est the height of the habitable building, not the pinnacle height.

What your humble scribe thought interesting was not the four categories of structures and how they were measured. 

Once the categories were defined, I was only interesting in determining the forty tallest buildings within category four.

What is interesting is the geographical and chronological distribution of the forty tallest buildings in the world.

11 of the 40 are in the United States of America (USA).

8 of the 40 are in the People's Republic of China (China).

7 of the 40 are in the United Arab Emirates (UAE, specifically Dubai).

6 of the 40 are in Hong Kong.

3 of the 40 are in Malaysia.

2 of the 40 are in Taiwan.

The remaining 3 structures are in Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and Australia.

Of course, China officially controls Hong Kong, although Hong Kong still gets to assert limited aspects of sovereignty until 2047. 

That means that my geographical listing of the 40 tallest buildings could be modified to read:

14 in China;

11 in the USA;

7 in the UAE; and

8 elsewhere.

Or, we could slice the tallest buildings in the world regionally.

20 of the 40 are in Asia.

11 of the 40 are in North America (OK, the USA).

8 of the 40 are in the Middle East.

1 of the 40 is in Oceania (Australia).

It is interesting to note that 0 of the 40 tallest buildings in the world are in the old world, altus mundi, Europe. 

The Russians were planning to build a contender in Moscow, but it has been scrapped due to the global financial meltdown.

Also, 0 of the 40 tallest buildings in the world are in the cradle of the world, Africa, where we all come from, which ought to surprise nobody given the paucity of global wealth located within Africa.

But, we could also look at this list historically or chronologically.

First, a tiny aside.

The original, architectural, land-based use of the word skyscraper, when the term shifted in use from the tall masts on ocean-going sailing ships to tall buildings, was for the Home Insurance Building completed in 1885 in Chicago. 

The Home Insurance Building was a whopping ten stories tall. (It is no longer standing and is certainly not on the list of forty, which is why it was an aside.) 

I will deal only with the standing buildings that still make up the 40 tallest buildings in the world, although I will include the  World Trade Center in the historical list for historical perspective and analysis.

So, onwards to the chronological groupings of buildings...

 

Even though the Great Depression started in 1929, the earliest two buildings on the list are the Chrysler Building, built in 1930, and the Empire State Building, built in 1931, both in New York.

The Great Depression saw a boom in road, reservoir, and dam construction in the USA through federal legislation authorized by President Hoover's (Hoover's presidency was 1929-1933) Emergency Relief and Construction Act, 1932, and then further stimulus brought in by FDR (President Franklin Delano Roosevelt) (FDR's presidency was 1933-1945, four terms!) as part of FDR's New Deal.

The Great Depression did not see, however, a boom or even a continuation of the building of skyscrapers.

The skyscraper building lull, after the Great Depression, lasted almost forty years, until 1969.

1969 saw Chicago's explosion resume, after the 1885 Home Insurance Building, with an order of magnitude gain over the first skyscraper the world had seen. 

1969 heralded the 100 storey John Hancock Centre measuring up at 344 m or 1129 feet. 

1970 and 1971 saw the World Trade Centre's Twin Towers completed, although they are not counted in the top forty because they are no longer standing.

1973 saw Chicago's Aon Centre and, in 1974, Chicago's Sears Tower being completed.

The next construction lull lasted 9 years until Houston's JP Morgan Chase Tower was completed in 1982.

1989 saw Chicago's AT&T Corporate Center completed as well as the US Bank Tower in Los Angeles.

Finally, 1992 saw Atlanta's Bank of America Plaza completed.

That marks the completion of the first 8 tallest buildings from my list of the 40 tallest buildings still standing.

It also marks 8 of the USA's 11 buildings in that list of 40 buildings.

1992 also saw the first non-American entry into the tallest building in the world.

The first non-America entry to the list of the 40 tallest buildings in the world was the topping out of the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea, of all places.

31 of the 40 tallest buildings in the world were all completed in 1996 or later.

Of these 31 buildings, only 3 were built in the USA. 

Of those 31 buildings built in 1996 or later, 27 were built in Asia or in the Middle East.

Power is shifting.

It's visible.

And the very new world, or the very old, depending upon your perspective (modern financial clout versus a civilisation's age) is feeling pretty triumphal.

 

Tschuess,

Chris