BEIJING — It's the building Beijing residents love to hate.
The dome of the new National Center for the Performing Arts glows luminescent as it emerges from a reflecting pool like a pearl or a rising sun. At least that's the impression the French architects of Beijing's arts center wanted to create.
The $360-million complex, an extravaganza of titanium and glass bigger than New York's Lincoln Center or Washington's Kennedy Center, is supposed to shout out to the world that Beijing has arrived, both as an economic and cultural capital. But to many here, the center resembles nothing grander than an egg plunked into a pot of boiling water.
In fact, since it opened in December, the building has already acquired the nickname of "the egg."
"Egg" is not a flattering epithet in Chinese, being attached to various insults such as ben dan (stupid egg) and huai dan (rotten egg). (There is no "good egg" in Chinese slang.)
"Personally, I do not like the nickname 'the egg,' but everybody has a right to express his opinion," Deng Yijiang, vice president of the center, said during a recent Chinese New Year reception.
French architect Paul Andreu's design was selected in 1998 by the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party's Central Committee, which decreed it would "contribute to the development of Chinese spiritual civilization, advanced social culture and harmonious society," according to an exhibit in the center's lobby.
Among the rejected proposals was a building resembling a clock radio and one that looked like a giant Snickers bar.
The positioning of the ellipsoidal dome in the middle of the pool is meant as a tribute to the ancient Chinese concept of round sky and square earth. But many traditionalists find the modernistic design a disruption to the feng shui, or harmony, of Beijing and therefore the nation.
The capital of the Middle Kingdom is laid out in a series of concentric circles around the Forbidden City, the former residence of the emperors, and the arts center is adjacent to the sacred inner circle. The site is just to the west of Tiananmen Square's Great Hall of the People and so close to the country's most famous portrait of Mao Tse-tung that some say the founder of communist China is raising an eyebrow in astonishment at the outrageous architecture.
