The Disgrace that is The National Grand Theatre of Beijing

The National Grand Theatre, situated west of the Great People's Hall, occupies an area of 118,900 square metres, and sits on a construction site of 149,500 square meters. It costs 3.8 billion Yuan, an amount which could have subsidised five million poor students' educations. To show how arrogant and out of touch the regime is, and how careles it is to the needs of the poeple it rules, it has ignored every expert, all of whom has strongly …

…which is led by a geriatric politburo with little if any real education, ignored them (see the palava over the Three Gorges Dam). Instead the ruler, Jiang Zemin, was determined to have it built as soon as possible for his mistress, Song. As a result some now call the theatre the "National Grand Brothel." [Theatre and brothel sound almost the same in Chinese because theatre is ju Yuan in Chinese and brothel is ji Yuan.]