Directions：Write an essay of about 400 words.
In the first part of your essay you should state clearly your main argument, and in the second part you should support your argument with appropriate details. In the last part you should bring what you have written to a natural conclusion or make a summary. And you should supply an appropriate title for your essay.
Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.
Recently newspapers have reported that officials in a little-known mountainous area near Guiyang, Guizhou Province wanted to turn the area into a central business district for Guiyang and invited a foreign design company to give it an entirely new look. The design company came up with a blueprint for unconventional, super-futuristic buildings. This triggered off different responses. Some appreciated the bold innovation of the design, but others held that it failed to reflect regional characteristics or local cultural heritage. What is your view on this?
The controversy over the unconventional, super-futuristic design of buildings in Guiyang is representative of an inevitable question for any places across the world that seek development: the dilemma between the old and the new, the aboriginal and the exotic, the local and the global, especially when it involves an external force, which in a way is assumed more advanced. In the case of Guiyang, such force would be the foreign design company that proposed such a blueprint. Bear in mind that it is invited to give the area “an entirely new look” , which is destined to elicit two opposite opinions in society because human mind is programmed to have mixed feelings toward change, which means both opportunities and risks. To make the issue more complex, the controversy over the design is not just about its unusualness but also about its foreignness.
The design of architecture should serve multiple purposes: aesthetics, utility, and most importantly the representation of the culture in that community. The function as identity marker of buildings is not unlike that of regional dialects. There is an upside for dialect speakers to acquire the standard Mandarin and it would be no big deal that they learn a second and third language. But crisis comes when they detach with their mother tongue and their local identity for only economic concerns. Bold as the futurist style may be, is that everything this place need, being “avant-garde” ? Is it necessary for the CBD of Guiyang to look like all the other metropolitans? Where will be those characteristics of the city itself?
Directly buying ideas from foreign design company is better than plagiarism, though I wouldn’t say it is the best way of innovation—it is the convenient way. It can refresh the city’s image in a comparatively short period while authentic changes take a long process. The case of Guiyang reflects the pursuit for short-term interests throughout the country—cities desire quick completion of goals and people want effortless success regardless that such accomplishment is by face value.
And if everyone sticks with the convenient option, looking up to the same criteria of beauty and good, this world will end up a cultural wasteland. I’m not suggesting that we should reject wisdoms and experiences from abroad, but that it is dangerous to fall into a western gaze when examining ourselves. Opening up and embracing diversity is not based on sacrifice of one’ s own identity, but on the contrary, showing both respect to the other and the self.
本文要求对贵阳市中心商务区饱受争议的新式建筑发表观点。在写此类议论文时，可以从该问题产生的源头（在变革中处理新旧文化、本土文化与外来文化的关系问题）出发，挖掘现象所折射出的本质（城市发展追求短期利益、盲目追求西方审美、忽视本地文化身份的独立性）问题，再提出相应的解决思路（尊重文化多样性、增强本土文化认同）。