Thomas Hochmann

It's a sight that I've seen from a distance for the last 9 months, every time I have looked out from my balcony in this apartment. You can see it from almost anywhere in Guangzhou, and the scale and shape of it is enough to simultaneously fill one's heart with awe and with a bit of fear. Awe at the sheer ingenuity and engineering prowess of the human race that it demonstrates, and a kind of primal fear at the daunting, almost monstrous way it imposes itself on everything for miles around.

This is the Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower, which will be finished sometime in 2009.

I took line 3 of the Guangzhou Metro to a station called 赤岗塔 (Chi Gang Pagoda), named after a nearby Buddhist pagoda. From my crowded subway train, only I and perhaps two or three other passengers got off here. The subway station itself is shiny and utterly empty, with no passengers and virtually no staff to speak of.

Coming out of exit A, which is not 100% open to passengers due to the tower construction, I turned around and was almost knocked off my feet. There, directly in front of me and almost close enough to throw a stone at, was the TV tower.

This thing is absolutely monstrous in scale, and when you're this close to it, you could probably fall backwards trying to crane your neck back far enough to see the top. Sadly, I lack an adequate lens to capture the whole tower in one photograph at this distance.

Here you can see more of the lattice structure of the tower. You also get a glimpse of the elevator shaft running up the middle, connecting with a kind of mini-building on the inside.

At the "waist" of the tower is (or will be) an almost 600-foot long, open-air skywalk. This will eventually include gardens and, at an elevation of about 1,475 feet, a large observation deck.

This is a close-up shot of an "intermediate zone," which looks to me to be about 6 floors itself. Supposedly, areas like this will include restaurants, shops, cinemas, observation decks, and (no doubt) at least one revolving restaurant.

Notice how the lattice gets "tighter" from bottom-to-top, to create a narrow middle in the tower.

Here you can see from the middle up to the top, as it now exists. When it's finished, there will be a two-floor revolving restaurant, observation decks, and an "observation square" extending above the top of the tower itself. Given the insane height of this building, that will be a truly amazing vantage point for seeing the entire city of Guangzhou. Pollution-filled air permitting, of course. Remember that in Guangzhou, we don't have a daily weather report; we have a "soup of the day" special.

If you think about how large those cranes must be, you can get an idea of just how tall and massive this tower truly is. I sure hope it's earthquake-proof!

This final picture is my attempt to capture two things:

1) The jumbo-ness of this tower relative to its surroundings, and
2) The juxtaposition of the monster TV tower and the Chi Gang Pagoda, which was no doubt the most impressive and beautiful building in this part of Guangzhou until the tower started going up.

Old and new, wood and steel, spiritual and commercial -- side by side.

For better or worse, what more can be said?