This is definitely now a thing. First the high-rise villa in Beijing, then the temple in Shenzhen, and now this: a courtyard atop an office building in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. An entire siheyuan! Whatever happened to rich Chinese simply investing in art?
A microblogger recently noticed a temple built upon the roof of a housing complex in Shenzhen, AFP reports, because why wouldn't there be a temple there? It seems like Zhang Biqin of Beijing isn't the only person into that sort of thing.
The temple sits on top of a 21-storey apartment. The suspected owners haven't been identified, and media have not been able to get them on the record to ask ,WTF?
The dude who built this may be a charlatan and asshole who's ignored sensible maintenance requests for four years and is about to get chai'ed, but Zhang Biqin deserves at least a little credit: his "high-rise villa" in Beijing's Haidian district makes for some pretty stunning visuals.
This is cool and all at first glance, but let's call a spade a spade: it's illegal, and not so cool if you're living underneath this rooftop villa, i.e. inside the 26-floor apartment building.
Somehow, the rich bastard who built this -- a medical practitioner (quack?) with a private business (definitely quack) known as "Professor Zhang" -- has accomplished the nearly impossible: made us root for chengguan.
Around 2 pm yesterday in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, a brother and sister duo rode a motorcycle off the roof of a building, both of them dying in the fall.
Preliminary reports have ruled it an accident. The siblings were practicing how to ride when the driver is said to have lost control.
Young thrill-seekers in Shenzhen's Bao'an District were caught doing the above on May 15. You'll note that there's no guardrail on the edge of the rooftop, slanted at a scary 45-degree angle. Was this a dare? A challenge that could only have been accepted by eager preadolescents with something to prove, to themselves if not their friends? One thing is for sure: this video not for those afraid of heights.
