精靈之城：德里一年 City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

• 作者：威廉．達爾林普/著
• 原文作者：William Dalrymple
• 譯者：黃芳田
• 出版社：馬可孛羅出版日期：2003年  新星出版社  出版年: 2006-
•  
•  　 印度，一個大眾耳熟能詳卻又陌生的國家，德里，則是印度史上衝突不斷又充滿頑皮惡作劇精靈的都城。儘管德里曾經千年復千年，一次又一次地遭到侵略者焚城， 但因有精靈的守護，這個城市也一次又一次如火鳥般浴火重生，就像印度教徒所相信的輪迴轉世之說，肉體會經由一再的輪迴直到變得完美為止，德里似乎也注定要 百年復百年地以輪迴後的新姿出現。　　作者威廉．達爾林普帶著無限的好奇，與藝術家妻子從英國遷居到遙遠的前英國殖民地德里，他拋棄意識形態與種族優越感，記錄親眼目睹的德里景象與耳聞的德里掌故，穿梭於歷史與現實之間，述說印度人眼中的「精靈之城」--德里的古往今來，以及英國殖民遺風。
  　　達爾林普從房東普利一家的古怪妙事開始，穿插錫克教徒好友計程車司機與各行各業，如蘇非秘僧、回醫、放鴿人、閹人圈�等小人物的故事，最終以印度史詩《摩訶婆羅多》的內容與考古學家所發掘的遺址相呼應，引導我們出入新舊德里之間，得以一窺真正「精靈之城」的精神所在。
  作者簡介
  　 　威廉．達爾林普，蘇格蘭人，於佛斯海灣（Firth of Forth）的海邊長大。劍橋大學畢業後，曾為《獨立報》（Independent）專欄作家。年方二十二歲，便出版了暢銷又備受好評的《在薩那都》 （In Xanadu），此書曾於一九九?年獲得《約克郡郵報》（Yorksire Post）的最佳處女作品獎，以及蘇格蘭藝術協會春季圖書獎；並曾入圍John Llewelyn Rhys紀念獎。一九八九年他遷居德里，在當地居住四年，為本書蒐集資料並為《星期天通訊》（Sunday Correspondent）、《觀察者》（Spectator）、《觀察家》（Observer）以及《週日時報》（Sunday Times）等報紙撰稿。曾獲《週日時報》年度英國青年作家獎威廉．達爾林普與藝術家奧莉維亞．弗來瑟（Olivia Fraser）結婚，目前在倫敦和愛丁堡兩地居住。
  

  詳細資料

• 叢書系列：書房旅行家
• 規格：平裝 / 464頁 / 18*13cm / 普級 / 單色印刷 / 初版

埔里

想起江兆申生前在那溪邊建的園早已被地震大破壞 等等
1991年9月自國立故宮博物院退職之後，先生移居南投埔里的鯉魚潭側，建「揭涉園」。田園的山光水色，

讓先生將中國的山水繪畫，與文人的雅趣美學，推展出一番新面貌。這時期的江先生創作力旺盛，作品質量俱佳，並且經常受邀參展與講學。1992年「戊辰山水冊」為大英博物館收藏，於臺北市立美術館舉行「江兆申書畫展」，次年選擇五十件作品巡迴展出，首展在北京中國美術館，續展於安徽省黃山市博物館。並回鄉祭拜祖先嚴慈塋地，初遊黃山。1994年5月，黃山白雲溪景區摩崖石刻「臥石披雲」竣工，應邀遊山並勘察石刻。

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• 我周六去一場讀書會 碰到許多昔日建國英雄
• Fireproof Moth:「撲火飛蛾：一個美國傳教士親歷的台灣白色恐怖」

A Year in the World ( Frances Mayes ) 地球玩一年 這是專家的玩法......

還是自幾的家鄉消息較重要

感謝吳國精

南投埔里行.pps 6453K   View   Download

埔里阿嬤陳綢歷時三年募款籌建的「少年家園」，十六日終告落成。數十年來，她強忍著近兩百次化療痛楚，南北奔波募款，除了圓貧童的升學夢，就是要救社會邊緣的學童；她 ...

少年家園啟用 陳綢阿嬤淚謝各界善心‎ 自由時報

Chongqing rolls on

Chongqing rolls on

A city’s deposed leader had tried to be different. But was he?

Apr 28th 2012 | CHONGQING | from the print edition

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LIKE many local governments in China, Chongqing’s has an exhibition hall devoted to its dreams. Its scale models show an urban core sprawling outwards with thickets of new apartment blocks: cheap housing for the masses built at vast government expense. Bo Xilai, who governed the region’s 30m people, 5m of them in Chongqing city, made big spending on public works his hallmark. His purge was seen in some quarters as the result of a struggle between two competing models of governance: the “Guangdong model”, in which economic liberalism is matched with pragmatic decision-making, and the “Chongqing model”, emphasising the importance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and traditional socialist values. But the Chongqing model trumpeted by Mr Bo’s supporters was by no means unique to Chongqing. Nor is it dead.
In closed-door meetings and in veiled attacks in the media, Communist Party officials have been heaping opprobrium on Mr Bo and members of his family. Their aim, it appears, is to make allegations stick that the Bos were corrupt and that his wife was complicit in the murder of a British businessman. A New York Times report claiming that Mr Bo wiretapped phonecalls between China’s president Hu Jintao and senior officials visiting Chongqing reiterated the fact that Mr Bo is now politically finished. But many of his economic policies, though the subject of a bitter dispute between the two ideological camps, will probably prove resilient, for they are more in line with party doctrine, or at least common practice, than either camp admits.

In this section

• »Chongqing rolls on
• The monkey and the mouse

Mr Bo and his officials avoided using the term “Chongqing model” to describe the south-western region’s formula for securing such accolades as one of the fastest-growing provinces or provincial-level regions in the country (at 16.4% last year) and, more controversially, one of China’s happiest places (in some state-media surveys). But even after Mr Bo’s sacking on March 15th, government-owned bookshops in Chongqing continued to stock books that discuss the model and Mr Bo’s role in implementing it.
Liberal scholars in China have delighted in picking apart Mr Bo’s policies, which they characterise as a lurch back towards Maoism. Their harshest attacks have been on his attempts to revive “red culture” by encouraging the singing of revolutionary songs and on the brutal methods (if not the aims) of his crackdown on organised crime.
But state-controlled media have shown far more restraint. This might reflect differences among Chinese leaders over how to assess Mr Bo and his leadership of Chongqing. But it is also likely that even Mr Bo’s enemies in Beijing worry about launching an assault on his policies, for fear that it might encourage criticism of the central leadership’s own economic strategy. Much of Mr Bo’s approach took root under the leadership of his predecessor, Wang Yang, who went on to become party chief of Guangdong province (and champion of the Guangdong model). Mr Wang is widely expected to join the Standing Committee of the Politburo later this year (a spot Mr Bo coveted). Mr Bo’s chief economic strategist, Chongqing’s mayor Huang Qifan, was a strategist in both administrations. He remains in office and seems still to be engaged in policymaking.
Mr Bo’s strongest supporters are diehard Maoists and members of the so-called “new left” who believe that China has strayed too far towards Dickensian capitalism. But this group has projected onto Chongqing an image of communist rectitude that does not fit the reality of the region’s development nor Mr Bo’s own proclivities. As one foreign businessman put it, Mr Bo would “signal left but turn right”. Jiang Weiping, a Chinese journalist who was jailed for five years after writing articles critical of Mr Bo, and is now living in Canada, calls him an “opportunist”.

Take, for example, his much-touted admiration for SOEs. Mr Bo was quoted in 2010 by state media as saying that China should not import Western-style ways of doing business based on pure private ownership. “We need to have things that are state-owned,” he said. Mr Huang, the mayor, has boasted of a sixfold increase in the net value of state assets in Chongqing between 2003 and 2009. But the private sector has grown vigorously too. Its share of Chongqing’s GDP rose from about half in 2005 to more than 60% five years later, roughly the same as the national level.
One of Mr Huang’s strategies has been to lean on SOEs to boost the region’s coffers. Chongqing officials say local state firms have given 15-20% of profits to the government in the past five years, and that this will increase to 30% by 2015. Mr Huang has described the rate of contribution of SOEs to government revenue in Chongqing as the highest anywhere in China. Officials say this has enabled Chongqing to keep its business tax at 15%, compared with 25% elsewhere, and spend more on “people’s livelihood”. Though liberal economists in Beijing wince at Chongqing’s embrace of SOEs, they too have been calling for much higher payouts from them as a way of boosting funds for welfare.

Some Chinese economists wonder how long Chongqing can continue spending as much as it does without piling up crippling debts. The planning exhibition showcases Chongqing’s “ten big cultural facilities” (begun before the arrival of Mr Bo): lavish buildings of Pyongyang-style pomposity, including a “grand theatre” second only in size to Beijing’s. These have cost Chongqing a total of more than $1.5 billion so far. That is small beer, though, compared with the $7.6 billion spent by Mr Bo on a “Green Chongqing” campaign that has included mass tree-planting, in which some trees have ended up dead, locals say, because of the unsuitable climate.

But Chongqing’s spending is nothing unique. China is littered with wasteful “image projects” built by local chiefs. Central leaders may condemn some of Mr Bo’s extravagance, but they will tread carefully when it comes to his most conspicuous outlay: $15 billion for 800,000 apartments to be rented out cheaply to the poor. Chongqing’s rapid implementation of this colossal undertaking, beginning in 2010, led the central leadership to argue for similar projects nationwide. This was seen not just as a way of keeping the poor happy, but of shoring up China’s economy during the global downturn.

The scheme’s shortcomings are obvious in Chongqing, just as they are elsewhere. In one newly built cluster of apartment blocks a resident complains that a trip to the city centre takes two hours by bus. There are few shops, and many of the apartments are still empty, he says. At another new development, farmers nearby say they had to surrender their farmland to make way for construction and were not properly compensated.

Mr Bo may have talked like a leftist, but his tactics for getting work done fast and keeping the money rolling in would be familiar across much of China. He has bent over backward to court foreign investors. He offended his leftist allies by approving a multi-billion dollar chemical project involving BASF, a German firm. Much of Mr Bo’s economic strategy has been explicitly encouraged by the central leadership. In the end, in a party that prides itself on consensual, colourless leadership, it was Mr Bo’s highly visible efforts to boost his public image that hastened his undoing. Chongqing itself will carry on.

Hong Kong: Refugees who built empires but leave a patchy legacy

“香港夢”今昔Refugees who built empires but leave a patchy legacy英國《金融時報》 徐曉瑜, 漢妮•桑德爾香港報導


Hong Kong's wealth lies in the finely manicured hands of a few tycoons who made their fortunes overwhelmingly in the property market, writes Henny Sender. They remain the beneficiaries of a system whereby the local government makes most of its money by selling land development rights at auctions in which only a few have the resources to bid. With supply tightly controlled, prices remain high and both sides prosper.
香港的財富集中在少數養尊處優的富豪手中，他們主要是在房地產市場上發蹟的。在當前的體制下，香港政府的主要收入來源是通過拍賣的形式出售土地開發權，但只有為數不多的富商擁有競標所需的資源。這些富豪仍是該體制的受益者。由於供應受到嚴格控制，地價居高不下，政府和商人都賺得盆滿缽滿。
It was not always like this. Hong Kong is a city of refugees. After mainland China fell to the communists in 1949, the most successful of the refugees who ended up there were initially the industrialists of Shanghai, many of whom had m​​ade their fortunes in textiles. Recreating their manufacturing empires in their new home under the British flag, many turned to Standard Chartered for finance, helping that institution to become the colony's pre-eminent bank.
但這種格局並非歷來如此。香港是一座難民之城。 1949年共產黨在中國內地執政後，許多人逃到香港，其中最為成功的難民起初是上海的實業家，他們有許多人依靠紡織業發家。來到香港後，他們在英國人的統治下重建自己的製造業帝國。在這一過程中，許多人都向渣打銀行(Standard Chartered)尋求貸款，推動渣打成為香港首屈一指的銀行。
Over time the more flexible business refugees – such as the families that controlled the Nan Fung and Wing Tai groups – transformed themselves into property developers.
隨著時間的推移，那些比較靈活的難民企業家——比如控制著南豐(Nan Fung)和永泰(Wing Tai)集團的家族——轉型成為房地產開發商。
But ultimately the biggest fortunes were made by refugees from neighbouring Guangdong and Fujian, who arrived in the colony with none of the industrial baggage of those who came from Shanghai. The standard-bearer for this group is Li Ka-shing, the ports-to -property tycoon who is Asia's wealthiest man. He and others among that later wave of refugee tycoons often obtained finance through HSBC, boosting the fortunes of that bank, part of whose roots lay in Shanghai.
不過，來自與香港毗鄰的廣東、福建兩省的難民最終分走了最大一塊財富蛋糕。與上海的實業家不同，他們來到香港時沒有工業包袱。這一人群的典型代表當數亞洲首富李嘉誠，他所涉及的業務範圍十分廣泛，既有港口業務，也有房產開發。於是，又一批難民漸漸成為香港富豪，在這些人中，李嘉誠和其他人往往通過匯豐銀行(HSBC)獲得融資，從而幫助這家具有上海背景的銀行累積了財富。
The commanding position of real estate in Hong Kong business meant others were often crowded out. Twenty years ago, big manufacturers such as Patrick Wang of Johnson Electric could not borrow from banks without property as collat​​eral, regardless of how robust their order books and cash flows were.
房地產在香港商界佔據的主導位置，意味著其他產業經常會受到排擠。 20年前，大型製造商如德昌電機(Johnson Electric)的汪穗中(Patrick Wang)在向銀行貸款時必須用地產作為擔保，儘管企業的訂單和現金流都很穩健。
But that grip appears to be loosening. While some of the property empires – such as Mr Li's Cheung Kong – remain in their founders' grasp, some are in the midst of raging family battles for control in the wake of the demise of the patriarch, such as at Sun Hung Kai, the group currently the subject of a judicial investigation.
不過地產企業的控制權似乎正在放鬆。儘管一些地產帝國，如李嘉誠的長江實業(Cheung Kong)仍然由創始人控制，但另一些在創始人去世後，已經陷入了家族成員對企業控制權的激烈鬥爭，如當前正受到司法調查的新鴻基地產(Sun Hung Kai)。
Many smaller property developers have been squeezed out as the government has put ever larger lots of land up for auction. As a result, some prominent figures in the industry – such as Ronnie Chan, who inherited the Hang Lung group from his uncle – backed the campaign of Leung Chun-ying, the “anti-tycoon” candidate, in his successful bid for election as chief executive of the Hong Kong administrative region.
由於政府拍賣的地塊越來越大，許多規模較小的地產開發商被排擠出局。因此，地產業的一些知名人物，如從叔父手中繼承恆隆集團(Hang Lung Group)的陳啟宗(Ronnie Chan)，對“反富豪”的候選人梁振英的競選給予了支持。梁振英已當選香港特區行政長官。

譯者/何黎

gold pounded out bit by bit Myanmar's Hidden Capital 緬甸新首都掀開神秘面紗

Society

Myanmar gold pounded out bit by bit

Their work is monotonous, back-breaking and devastating to the health. But young men in Myanmar take pride in carrying on the tradition of gold pounding.

Drops of sweat glisten on Thant Myint Ti's forehead as he heaves a giant hammer and pounds it down. His muscles flex under the strain. He has already been working for five hours today pounding gold in Mandalay.
"It is really back-breaking work. It takes a lot of muscle power," he explains, leaning back, exhausted. Thant Myint Ti has been a gold pounder for 15 years. The rhythmic, monotonous pounding can be heard in front of the shop and echoes throughout the neighborhood of Myat Par Yat.
There are around 50 traditional family businesses that produce fine leaf gold. They range from smaller operations to larger companies, like Cho Soe Win's, which was founded by her grandfather and has been in her family now for over 100 years.
Traditional craftsmanship

Placing the gold before hammering

Now nearly 100 people work for Cho Soe Win. In the shop the gold pounders stand closely together - bare-chested, lean, muscular bodies slightly bent over, slowly pounding out gold wrapped in bamboo paper and deerskin with three-kilogram (seven-pound) hammers.
"First, the men pound the gold for a half hour, then for an hour and then for five hours on end," Cho Soe Win explains. The methods used to produce gold leaf have hardly changed throughout the centuries. Today, machines can only be used for a few processes. One gram of gold makes 200 thin leaves of gold that are one-thousandth of a millimeter thick - thinner than a stroke of ink on a piece of paper.

Time is measured in coconuts

A traditional water clock tells the men when to rotate duties. It consists of a coconut shell in a pot of water. The shell has a small hole in it and when it fills up with water and sinks, one hour is up. After an hour of monotonous hammering, they get a 15-minute break.
Retired at 45
Thant Myint Ti sits in the sun in front of the shop chewing on a beetle nut. His teeth are stained red from the nuts, but they help him to relax, he says. The 31-year-old has chronic back pain. "The back suffers the most from this job. In the evening, I use traditional medicine to treat the pain," he explains.
Most men start working as gold pounders at the age of 16, after six months of training. After around 10 years of work, most gold pounders get bad backs. Forty-five is the usual cut-off age, after which the body can take no more. "But there is one 60-year-old who still works with us," Thant Myint Ti says.

Women cut the gold leaf for sale

While the men do the back-breaking pounding, women carry out the second step in the production process. They sit in a wind-protected room around short tables and cut the fine leaves of gold.
"It has to be completely protected from wind, otherwise the gold would blow away or get damaged," Cho Soe Win explains. The drone of the pounding in the background mixes with chattering as the women talk amongst themselves while carefully working on the gold. On the wall, there is a poster of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who watches over their work.
Gold-plated culture

Damage to health is part of the job

Than Myint Ti gets up and re-ties his longyi, a traditional Burmese garment he is wearing around his waist, and goes back to work. "If I had a son," he says, reaching for his hammer, "I would not want him to become a gold pounder. It is hard work and it is not good for the body or spirit."
On the other hand, the job is well paid. The high season is winter. That is when the companies get the most orders. Thant Myint Ti and his colleagues can earn up to 5,000 kyat – slightly less than 5 euros - per day. On average, the daily cost of living in Mandalay is about one euro. Myanmar's average monthly wages are among the lowest in Southeast Asia. Thant Myint Ti is proud of his work - it is a trade that is held in high esteem in the country. The work is even said to be healthy. "The healers say the consumption of gold is good for preventing heart disease. So eating leaf gold is good for the heart," Cho Soe Win explains. People enjoy gold with bananas or honey.

A Buddha statue gradually grows in size, one gold leaf at a time

But the leaf gold is mainly used in Buddhist temples and pagodas. Mandalay's Mahamuni Pagoda is a prime example. The fine gold is in high demand at the pagoda; depending on size, it runs from 300 to 700 kyat - from 30 to 70 euro cents. Hundreds of Buddhists travel to the pagoda daily and kneel before the giant golden statue of Buddha to pray. Men approach the statue and paste on fine leaves of gold. Throughout the decades so much gold has been pasted on to the statue that in certain spots it is 35 centimeters thicker. A giant golden Buddha - pounded out and re-formed by the gold pounders of Mandalay.
Author: Monika Griebeler / sb
Editor: Simon Bone

緬甸新首都掀開神秘面紗

Luke Duggleby for The Wall Street Journal

週二﹐一位清潔工在緬甸新首都內比都的一家超市外清掃停車位。

緬

甸為打破與外界的堅冰而做出的最新嘗試或許讓人捉摸不透﹐但在參觀完緬甸偏遠而神秘的新首都內比都之後﹐有一點是一目瞭然的﹐那就是：緬甸領導人正在下一盤大棋。

近 期在印尼舉行的東南亞國家聯盟(Association of Southeast Asian Nations﹐簡稱：東盟)峰會上﹐東盟十國決定讓緬甸在2014年擔任輪值主席國﹐此項決定對緬甸而言是一件好事﹐它肯定會提高內比都的知名度。緬甸 尋求通過擔任東盟主席國來提升國際聲望﹐作為主席國﹐緬甸要舉辦一系列外交峰會﹐會吸引到數千名外國人到訪內比都。

《華爾街日報》 (Wall Street Journal)記者前段時間跟隨一個政府授權的訪問團參觀了這座嶄新的城市。內比都是在過去十年里建起來的﹐以取代殖民地時期的前首都仰光﹐前些年基本 不讓西方人進入。一名記者兼攝影師在參觀中發現﹐有許多跡象顯示﹐儘管多年來緬甸受到西方嚴厲的經濟制裁﹐但緬甸領導人仍將該國視為亞洲的重要一員﹐並期 望在未來讓緬甸更加開放。

一個能容納大量國際航班的新的大型機場正在建設。政府還在興建兩座體育場﹐用於舉辦地區性體育賽事﹐同時﹐開發商正在興建大型酒店。

記 者參觀了新建的緬甸國際會議中心(Myanmar International Convention Center)﹐這個龐大的會議中心週邊是多片空地﹐是由中國出資援建的。記者還看到一個巨大的穹頂展覽館﹐狀似飛碟﹐和一般的美國大學籃球館差不多大﹐ 用於做國際寶石貿易。由於緬甸人權紀錄不佳﹐美國禁止和緬甸進行寶石貿易﹐但緬甸並未因此停止寶石貿易﹐而是增加了對中國及亞洲其他地區的出口。

從前﹐訪問這座城市的西方記者一般不暴露身份﹐他們要偷拍照片﹐還要保持低調﹐以免被發現甚至遭到驅逐。

Luke Duggleby for The Wall Street journal

緬甸軍政府承諾將放寬之前的強硬路線政策，並爭取擔任2014年東盟輪值主席國。本圖集收集了該國首都內比都的一些照片。圖為位於內比都的歐巴達丹蒂佛塔(Uppatasanti Pagoda)。

不過﹐《華爾街日報》此次的訪問得到了當局的批准。緬甸當局之前還同意《華爾街日報》採訪政府官員﹐向他們瞭解緬甸的最新改革進程。在經歷了幾十年的軍政府高壓統治後﹐緬甸採取了一些改革措施﹐包括放鬆媒體管制和釋放數百名政治犯。

在 內比都老機場一座稻田環繞的低矮建築里﹐政府官員迎接了《華爾街日報》記者一行。官員們告訴記者他們有“自由時間”﹐想看什麼都可以。這些親切的向導大體 上履行了承諾﹐帶領記者用好幾個小時來參觀這座據稱佔地幾百平方英里的巨大城市﹐參觀路線包括一座購物中心﹐一些酒店﹐一座大型倉儲超市和一些政府住宅區 （不過沒有參觀議會）。

內比都是一座經過總體規劃的城市﹐劃分成賓館區、住宅區和政務區等不同區域﹐這座城市的氣場把當地居民給震住了。許多人有點茫然不知所措﹐因為內比都太大了﹐而他們則缺少城市生活經歷。長長的馬路上沒有車﹐交通警察站在路邊的樹陰下﹐看著遠方的牛車在犁田。

內比都有一些六車道和八車道公路﹐其中幾條基本是空的﹐只有自行車、摩托車和偶爾駛過的汽車﹐有時就像空盪蕩的閱兵場一樣。這些公路往外延伸出去便是灰白色的土路﹐通往佇立著高腳樓的村莊﹐或者橫穿過稻田。

相關閱讀

中國在緬甸嘗試“佛牙舍利”外交
克林頓下月將對緬甸進行歷史性訪問
緬甸政府：緬甸改革不可逆轉
昂山素季：對自己的傳記片不感興趣
專訪：昂山素季支持緬甸政府近期改革

儘 管緬甸處於赤貧狀態（緬甸是亞洲最貧窮的國家之一）﹐但內比都的十幾個大型交通環島處仍擺放著精心照料的盆花﹐還有景觀草坪﹐有噴水裝置澆灌週邊的綠化 區。內比都的賓館區有大約30個項目﹐其中包括設有67間客房的安國酒店(Hotel Amara)“城市度假村”﹐內有一個可供企業舉行會議的行政樓。

指派給《華爾街日報》記者的向導們在內比都一個主要景點的檢查站被警察攔住﹐告知不允許在該景點拍照﹐這是建在山上的一座金色佛塔﹐可俯瞰內比都全城。不過﹐在與主辦本次活動的政府官員通過電話之後﹐記者一行獲準拍照了。

這是一座壯觀的佛塔﹐供奉著來自中國的神聖佛牙舍利。政府官員拍了些訪問團參觀佛塔的照片﹐第二天有一篇關於記者參觀該景點的短訊刊登在政府喉舌《緬甸新光報》(The New Light of Myanmar)上。一名軍隊准將歡迎記者一行有機會再來。

記者一行還會晤了緬甸信息文化部長以及其他一些官員﹐會面是在一個隱藏於灌木叢和密林中的政府辦公樓里進行的。隨後﹐記者們在專人陪同下回到機場﹐期間在機場附近一個咖啡館短暫停留﹐喝了點蘇打水﹐聊了會兒天。

當 內比都幾年前首次亮相時﹐曾遭國際媒體及許多外國外交官挖苦。外國記者通常將內比都形容為距仰光300公里的“叢林”避難所或“戒備森嚴的深宅大院”。記 者們認為﹐古怪的前軍政府建內比都是出於風水因素﹐或者是為了防範美國──以及緬甸本國人民──入侵﹐據報道稱這裡有一個巨型地堡網絡。大多數外交官拒絕 搬到內比都。

Luke Duggleby for The Wall Street Journal

當地一棟在建酒店。

但緬甸問題觀察家也指出﹐緬甸領導人設計這個城市是為了完全擺脫仰光──英國人稱之為Rangoon──破敗的基礎設施和殖民地印記﹐用更加現代的模式重新打造緬甸。

政 府前規劃人員溫明(Win Myint)曾參與設計內比都﹐現在他在仰光做私人顧問。他說﹐政府領導人十年前開始勾畫內比都建設藍圖時就有一個清晰的願景。他們希望規避亞洲其他首都 面臨的問題﹐比如近鄰曼谷臭名昭著的交通堵塞﹐他們還需要有足夠空間容納多達一百萬居民（目前據信還不到這個數字的一半）。

他說﹐設計人員參觀和研究了其他國家的首都和政府行政中心﹐包括馬來西亞總體規劃的布城(Putrajaya)。布城就在吉隆坡南邊﹐設計人員認為其距吉隆坡這個大城市太近﹐車輛太多。

溫明稱﹐“如果你搞不清楚他們的用意﹐你只能下結論說這些人瘋了。”

他說﹐“當然﹐我們也許也有一些錯誤”﹐但我們為“做出正確決定”付出了努力。

溫明表示﹐華盛頓等城市曾經也是新首都﹔他認為一旦新機場建成﹐入駐內比都的企業增加﹐玉石行業有望得到支持﹐屆時內比都可能會像這些城市一樣發展壯大起來。

政府住宅區附近已經出現了一些戶外咖啡館和路邊攤﹐還有卡拉OK歌廳。

緬甸過去曾經放棄過一些宏偉計劃。緬甸上世紀九十年代啟動改革﹐放鬆國家對經濟的管制之後﹐曾經希望吸引更多遊客﹐並在中部名城曼德勒(Mandalay)建起大型國際機場﹐將其變成國際交通樞紐。

但經濟制裁和其他一些問題使這些計劃夭折了﹐位於曼德勒空曠郊區的機場很大一部分已經廢棄。

內比都也一樣有可能成為一件昂貴的大而無當的擺設。記者採訪了一位到訪內比都的中國外交官﹐他是從仰光過來出差的。他說他覺得內比都比較無聊﹐還有一點讓人摸不著頭腦。他說﹐“你只能待在賓館或者去看佛塔。”

但他補充說﹐“這是一座年輕的城市﹐到處都還在建設﹐也許在十年後它就會變成一座非常大的城市。”

Patrick Barta
Whatever happens with Myanmar's latest tentative thaw with the outside world, one thing is clear after seeing this remote and rarely visited capital: Myanmar's leaders are thinking big.

This may be fortuitous: Thursday's decision at a regional summit in Indonesia to let Myanmar assume the chairmanship of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2014 all but ensures that Naypyitaw will take on a higher profile. The position, which Myanmar sought as a way to raise its international standing, involves hosting a lengthy series of diplomatic summits and could draw thousands of foreign visitors to the city.

On a government-authorized tour this week of the shiny new city--built over the past decade to replace Myanmar's former colonial-era capital of Yangon, and mostly off-limits to Westerners in previous years--a Wall Street Journal reporter and photographer found numerous signs the country's leaders see Myanmar as a major player in Asia despite years of tough economic sanctions from the West, and expect it to be more open in the years ahead.

A massive new airport is under construction with space to handle rows of international jets. The government is adding two new stadiums to help host regional sporting competitions, while developers are building sprawling new hotel complexes.

There's a gigantic new Myanmar International Convention Center--built next to empty fields, and funded by China--as well as a vast domed exhibition hall that looks like a flying saucer (and is roughly the size of a typical American college basketball arena) for international gem sales. Trade in Myanmar's famous precious stones is blocked in the U.S. because of the country's human-rights record, but that hasn't stopped Myanmar, which just sells more of them to China and other parts of Asia.

Western journalists who visited the city before typically did so undercover, shooting furtive photographs and keeping a low profile to avoid detection and possible deportation.

The Wall Street Journal visit on Tuesday, however, was approved by authorities after they agreed to a request from the newspaper to interview government officials about the country's latest overhaul process, which has included relaxations on the media and the release of hundreds of political prisoners after decades of harsh military rule.

The Wall Street Journal journalists were picked up by government employees at the city's current airport, in a low-slung building surrounded by rice paddies, and told they had 'free time' and could see whatever they wanted. For the most part, the cheerful guides made good on their promise, providing a multihour tour of the vast city--which reportedly spreads over hundreds of square miles--that included stops at a shopping mall, some hotels, a 'big box' hypermarket and a series of government apartment blocks, though not the parliament.

The sweep of the master-planned city, which is divided into different zones for hotels, residences and government buildings, dwarfs its inhabitants, many of whom seemed a bit bewildered by its size and lack of street life. Traffic police stood under the shade of trees along long roads with no traffic, watching ox carts poke by in fields in the distance.

Several of the six- and eight-lane highways were largely empty except for bicycles, motorbikes and occasional cars, at times resembling empty parade grounds. Chalky dirt roads radiate out from the highways, leading to villages of stilt houses or across rice fields.

Despite the country's crushing poverty--it is one of the poorest in Asia--the city's dozen or so giant roundabouts included neatly-tended potted flowers and landscaped grass, while sprinkler systems watered green areas nearby. The hotel zone included about 30 projects, including a 67-room Hotel Amara 'urban resort,' with an executive wing with space for corporate seminars.

The guides assigned to The Wall Street Journal were stopped by police at a checkpoint for the city's main attraction--a towering golden pagoda on a hill overlooking Naypyitaw--and told cameras were not allowed on the site. But after a phone call to officials sponsoring the visit, the way was cleared.

Government employees took photos of the visitors as they toured the impressive structure, which includes a sacred Buddha tooth relic from China, and a brief account of the reporters' visit to the site appeared the next day in the government mouthpiece, The New Light of Myanmar. A brigadier general encouraged the journalists to return.

After a meeting with the country's information and culture minister and other officials, in a large government block hidden behind scrub and jungle, the reporters were escorted back to the airport, with a brief stop for sodas and conversation at a cafe near the airport.

Naypyitaw was ridiculed by the international media and many foreign diplomats when it was first unveiled a few years ago. It was routinely described as a 'jungle' retreat some 300 kilometers from Yangon or 'fortified compound' by international news reporters, who suggested it was built to satisfy the astrological whims of the country's eccentric former military regime, or to insulate its leaders from a feared American invasion--as well as from its own people--with reports of a vast network of underground bunkers. Most diplomats refused to move there.

But observers of Myanmar affairs have also argued the city was designed by the country's leaders to make a clean break from Yangon's crumbling infrastructure and colonial legacy--it was known as Rangoon to the British--and recast the country in a more modern mold.

Win Myint, a former government planner who helped design the city, and now works as a private consultant in Yangon, said government leaders had a clear vision when they set about conceptualizing Naypyitaw in the early parts of the last decade. They wanted to avoid the ills of other Asian capitals, like the infamous gridlock of nearby Bangkok, and wanted enough room to handle as many as a million inhabitants (it currently is believed to have less than half that).

Designers visited and studied other capitals and government administrative centers, he said, including Malaysia's master-planned Putrajaya just south of Kuala Lumpur, which they concluded was too close to the big city, giving it too much traffic.

'If you have no clue, you just conclude, these people are crazy,' Mr. Win Myint said.

'Of course maybe there were some mistakes, but we tried' to make good decisions, he said.

He said he thinks Naypyitaw will likely grow into its big footprint--as other once-new capitals like Washington did--once the new airport is finished and more businesses move in, possibly to support the jade industry.

A few outdoor cafes and street vendors have popped up near government apartment blocks, along with karaoke bars.

Myanmar has abandoned grand plans before. After launching overhauls in the 1990s to loosen the state's grip over the economy, it sought to encourage more visitors and built a large international airport in Mandalay to turn the fabled central Myanmar city into an international hub.

But economic sanctions and other problems helped kill those schemes, and large portions of the airport in otherwise-empty countryside outside of Mandalay fell into disuse.

Naypyitaw, as well, could turn out to be a giant, and costly, white elephant. One visitor interviewed on Tuesday, a Chinese diplomat who had traveled from Yangon on business, said he thought it was boring and a bit befuddling. 'You just stay at your hotel or go to the pagoda,' he said.

'But it's a young city,' he added. 'There still is construction everywhere-- maybe in ten years, it will be a very big city.'

Brighton, Brighton Rock《西域的故事》

 

下雨天 雷雨夜 萬般思緒之一點微音
翻 井上靖《西域的故事》 台北 國語日報 1982 井上靖的西域阿富汗遊記《西域餘聞》陳舜臣 《西域的故事》井上靖
帕米安的大佛在數年前被炸毀



我上周被某人將bolt-hole 翻譯成"如螺栓洞的逃避所"的誤導  沒去查字典 反而問螺絲專家Justing 為什麼會這樣

今天 研究一下英國的海邊名勝地 Brighton 因為想讀七零年代末該讀而未讀的小說 Brighton Rock
我去過Brithon一次 不過小說第一頁的路線圖卻完全沒印象 所以多查一下 沒想到該城市變化甚大 Brighton Rock 一書所談的地理背景是兩次大戰之間的Brighton 現在改建很多

資料庫收有牛津文學英國和愛爾蘭

Oxford Guide to Literary Britain & Ireland:Brighton and Hove

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/brighton-hove#ixzz1t7bYxhn2

從S JOHNSON與該地因緣說起 很有意思

讀到下句 我去查牛津美國英文辭典 發現 bolt·hole在英國就是兔子等用來逃脫的穴路或濄
我才知道BOLT還有其他意思 不只是螺絲等等
Alan Brownjohn's poem ‘A Brighton’ makes engaging use of the town's reputation as a secret bolthole for Londoners:
"‘Brighton’: not far, a lie or an excuse
Like dental checks or grandmothers' funerals.
‘Did you have a nice day at Brighton?’ asks the master
Receiving a boy's forged note about his cold.



 bolt·hole  (blthl)
n.

1. A hole through which to bolt: found a bolthole in the fencing.

2. A place affording escape.

bolt[bolt¹]

• レベル：大学入試程度
• 発音記号[bóult]
• 
  

[名]

1 （門・戸・窓を締める）差し錠, かんぬき, さん.

2 ボルト, 締めくぎ. ⇒NUT

fasten ... with a bolt
…をボルトで締める.

3 急な飛び出し, 突進；逃亡

do a bolt
逃げ去る

make a bolt for ...
…に向かって逃げ出す

make a bolt for it
((略式))突然逃げ出す.

Directed by	John Boulting

Plot

This drama film centres on the activities of a gang of assorted criminals and, in particular, their leader – a vicious young hoodlum known as "Pinkie" – the film's main thematic concern is the criminal underbelly evident in inter-war Brighton.
Greene and Terence Rattigan wrote the screenplay for the 1947 film adaptation,


A new adaptation of the novel, written and directed by Rowan Joffe, was released in the United Kingdom on 4 February 2010. Joffe has moved the setting from the 1930s to the 1960s, during the mods and rockers era.^[3][4]

Revival

The original film had a run at Film Forum in New York City June 19–26, 2009, and The New York Times previewed the revival, saying "both [Greene's] Catholicism and his movie-friendliness are in full cry in John Boulting’s terrific 1947 gangster picture."^[5]


June 9, 2011, 6:23 pm

Five People Shot on Boardwalk in Brighton Beach

By ANDY NEWMAN

Dave Sanders for The New York TimesThe police investigated a multiple shooting on the Coney Island boardwalk near Brighton 5th Street on Thursday.

Five people were shot along the boardwalk in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, Thursday afternoon during a mini heat wave that had packed the city’s beaches.
Two of the victims are badly wounded, the authorities said.
The shooting took place around 5:20 p.m. on the boardwalk near Brighton Sixth Street, the Fire Department said.
The shooting unfolded on a day when a mini-heat wave and a school holiday sent hordes of people to Coney Island and Brighton Beaches, which were teeming with beachgoers — many of them teenagers — trying to escape temperatures approaching 100 degrees.
Saya Suzuki, 30, was just about to sit down inside a boardwalk restaurant with her six-year-old daughter, Sonya, when the shooting began just outside. Ms. Suzuki said she heard about six shots, then grabbed her daughter and saw two teenagers run by her.
“I just picked up my daughter and got away from the bullets,” she said. “It happened so quickly and I had to protect my daughter.”
As the police roped off the scene and combed the boardwalk, Ms. Suzuki, still terrified, stayed in the restaurant for two hours waiting for her husband. She said she had noticed other incidents earlier in the day that worried her.
“I think some gang things were happening because we heard some shots one hour earlier,” she said.
The two most seriously injured people, a man and a woman, were taken to Coney Island Hospital, where they are in critical condition, the Fire Department said. A second man, whose condition was not available, was also taken to Coney Island Hospital, the department said.
A fourth victim, a man, was in serious condition at Lutheran Medical Center, the Fire Department said. A fifth victim’s injuries were not life threatening, the police said.
There have been no arrests, the police said.

***

Brighton
From upper left: Brighton Dome, Royal Pavilion, Town Hall, The Lanes and Brighton Pier.
Brighton Brighton shown within East Sussex
Population	155,919 [1]
OS grid reference	TQ315065
Unitary authority	Brighton and Hove
Ceremonial county	East Sussex
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	BRIGHTON
Postcode district	BN1, BN2, BN50, BN88
Dialling code	01273
Police	Sussex
Fire	East Sussex
Ambulance	South East Coast
EU Parliament	South East England
UK Parliament	Brighton Kemptown
	Brighton Pavilion
List of places: UK • England • East Sussex

Brighton (ⁱ /ˈbraɪtən/) is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove (formed from the previous towns of Brighton, Hove, Portslade and several other villages) in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain. For administrative purposes, Brighton and Hove is not part of the non-metropolitan county of East Sussex, but remains part of the ceremonial county of East Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex.
The ancient settlement of Brighthelmstone dates from before Domesday Book (1086), but it emerged as a health resort featuring sea bathing during the 18th century and became a destination for day-trippers from London after the arrival of the railway in 1841. Brighton experienced rapid population growth, reaching a peak of over 160,000 by 1961.^[2] Modern Brighton forms part of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation stretching along the coast, with a population of around 480,000.^[3]
Brighton has two universities and a medical school.

Contents 1 History 2 Landmarks 2.1 Churches and places of worship 2.2 Beaches 3 Culture 3.1 Art 3.2 Films 3.3 Night-life and popular music 3.4 Festivals 3.5 Museums 3.6 Theatre and cinema 3.7 Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community 3.8 Notable residents 4 Economy 5 Education 6 Politics 7 Sport 8 Climate 9 Transport 9.1 Nearest places 10 Brighton in fiction 11 See also 12 References and notes 13 External links

History

Main article: History of Brighton

Photochrom of Brighton aquarium, 1890–1900

In the Domesday Book, Brighton was called Bristelmestune^[4] and a rent of 4,000 herring was established. In June 1514 Brighthelmstone was burnt to the ground by French raiders during a war between England and France. Only part of the St Nicholas Church and the street pattern of the area now known as "The Lanes" survived. The first drawing of Brighthelmstone was made in 1545 and depicts what is believed to be the raid of 1514.^[5] During the 1740s and 1750s, Dr Richard Russell of Lewes began prescribing seawater at Brighton.^[6][7][8]
By 1780, development of the Georgian terraces had started and the fishing village became the fashionable resort of Brighton. Growth of the town was further encouraged by the patronage of the Prince Regent (later King George IV) after his first visit in 1783.^[9] He spent much of his leisure time in the town and constructed the Royal Pavilion during the early part of his Regency. Although contracted forms of the name are attested since the 15th Century, it was not until this period that the modern form of the name came into common use.^[10]
The arrival of the railway in 1841 brought Brighton within the reach of day-trippers from London and population growth from around 7,000 in 1801 to over 120,000 by 1901.^[11] The Victorian era saw the building of many major attractions including the Grand Hotel (1864), the West Pier (1866) and the Palace Pier (1899). Prior to either of these structures the famous Chain Pier was built, to the designs of Captain Samuel Brown. It lasted from 1823 to 1896, and featured in paintings by both Turner and Constable.
After boundary changes between 1873 and 1952, the land area of Brighton increased from 1,640 acres (7 km²) in 1854 to 14,347 acres (58 km²) in 1952.^[12] New housing estates were established in the acquired areas including Moulsecoomb, Bevendean, Coldean and Whitehawk. The major expansion of 1928 also incorporated the villages of Patcham, Ovingdean and Rottingdean, and much council housing was built in parts of Woodingdean after the Second World War.
More recently, gentrification of much of Brighton has seen a return of the fashionable image which characterised the growth of the Regency period. Recent housing in the North Laine, for instance, has been designed in keeping with the area.
In 1997 Brighton and Hove were joined to form the unitary authority of Brighton and Hove, which was granted city status by Queen Elizabeth II as part of the millennium celebrations in 2000.
Brighton is sometimes referred to as London-by-the-sea.^[13][14][15]

Landmarks

Main articles: List of landmarks and notable buildings of Brighton and Hove, Grade I listed buildings in Brighton and Hove, and Grade II* listed buildings in Brighton and Hove

Palace Pier

Royal Pavilion

The Royal Pavilion is a former royal palace built as a home for the Prince Regent during the early 19th century, under the direction of the architect John Nash, and is notable for its Indo-Saracenic architecture and Oriental interior. Other Indo-Saracenic buildings in Brighton include the Sassoon Mausoleum, now, with the bodies reburied elsewhere, in use as a chic supper club.
Brighton Marine Palace and Pier ( long known as the Palace Pier) opened in 1899. It features a funfair, restaurants and arcade halls.^[16][17][18]
The West Pier was built in 1866 and has been closed since 1975 awaiting renovation, which faces continual setbacks,^[19] The West Pier is one of only two Grade I listed piers in the United Kingdom, but suffered two fires in 2003. Plans for a new landmark in its place – the i360, a 183 m (600 ft) observation tower designed by London Eye architects Marks Barfield – were announced in June 2006. Plans were approved by the council on 11 October 2006.^[20] As of early 2009, construction had yet to begin, but the area has been cordoned off.
Created in 1883, Volk's Electric Railway runs along the inland edge of the beach from Brighton Pier to Black Rock and Brighton Marina. It is the world's oldest operating electric railway.^[21]
The Grand Hotel was built in 1864 and the scene of the 1984 Brighton Hotel Bombing. Its nighttime blue lighting is particularly prominent along the foreshore.^[22]

Churches and places of worship

Further information: List of places of worship in Brighton and Hove

The 11th century St Nicholas Church is the oldest building in Brighton, commonly known as "The Mother Church".^[23] Other notable churches include the large brick-built St Bartholomew's, and St Peter's in the heart of Brighton on an island between the Lewes Road and the London Road.
There are four synagogues in the Brighton area, including the Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue (Liberal) at 6 Landsdowne Road in Hove; Brighton and Hove Hebrew Congregation at 66 Middle Street in Brighton (Orthodox), Hove Hebrew Congregation at 79 Holland Road in Hove (Orthodox) and Brighton & Hove Reform Synagogue on Palmeira Avenue in Hove (Reformed). Middle Street Synagogue, Brighton is an important Grade II listed building built in 1874–75, and one of the most beautiful small synagogues in Europe. It is presently in the process of being gradually restored by English Heritage. About 12% of the population of the Brighton & Hove conurbation are of Jewish ancestry, with a little less than half presently practicing some form of Judaism, according to a 2007 study by the European Jewish Press.
Nevertheless, Brighton has become known as one of the least religious places in the UK, based upon analysis of the 2001 census which revealed that 66,955 people (27 per cent of the population) profess no religion, almost double the national average of 15 per cent.^[24] As part of the Jedi census phenomenon, 2.6 per cent claimed their religion was Jedi Knight.

Beaches

Brighton's Kemp Town beach in summer

Boats on Brighton Beach

The seafront has bars, restaurants, nightclubs and amusement arcades, principally between the piers. Being less than an hour from London by train has made the city a popular destination. Brighton beach has a nudist area (south of the easterly part of Kemptown). Brighton's beach, which is a shingle beach up to the mean low tide mark, has been awarded a blue flag. The Monarch's Way long-distance footpath heads west along the seafront above the beach. Ohso Social is a former deck chair arch that has been transformed into a bar and restaurant.^{[citation needed]}
Since the 1978 demolition of the open-air lido at Black Rock, the most easterly part of Brighton's seafront, the area has been developed and now features one of Europe's largest marinas. However, the site of the pool itself remains empty except for a skate park and graffiti wall, and further development is planned including a high-rise hotel which has aroused debate, mirroring proposals for the King Alfred leisure centre in Hove, which were pulled in 2008.^{[25][citation needed]} In addition, part of the eastern side of the beach has been redeveloped into a sports complex, which has courts for anything from beach volleyball to ultimate Frisbee, and opened to the public in March 2007.

Culture

Art

The art community in Brighton is extensive and is showcased once a year by the artists open house event during the Brighton Festival. Directly on the beach, between the two piers is the famous Brighton Artists Quarter. Working in a row of Victorian fisherman workshops, and converted into small gallery and studio spaces, are a collection of artists using a variety of mediums and styles to produce high quality artworks that can be viewed or purchased by the general public throughout the year. There is Museum and Art Gallery in the Pavilion Gardens, which is part of the Royal Pavilion complex.^[26]

Films

Main article: List of films set in Brighton

Brighton has featured in a number of hit movies including The Da Vinci Code (2006), The Young Victoria (2009) and The Boat that Rocked (also 2009), Quadrophenia (1979), MirrorMask (2005) and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging^[27] (2008).

Quiet Additions to Notre Dame du Haut

Architecture Review

Quiet Additions to a Modernist Masterpiece

Iwan Baan

Notre Dame du Haut A new convent and new visitors’ center, designed by Renzo Piano, has been inserted down the hill from Le Corbusier’s hilltop chapel.

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

Published: April 17, 2012

RONCHAMP, France — Completed in 1955, Le Corbusier’s hilltop chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in this hardscrabble patch of eastern France attracts some 100,000 supplicants each year, architectural and religious. If critics still sometimes blame Le Corbusier for inspiring generations of soulless, cookie-cutter housing projects and office parks, he remains the high priest of Modernism for singular works like this.

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Michel Denance

Rooms for guests at Renzo Piano’s convent for the Poor Clares. Mr. Piano also designed a new visitors’ center.

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Michel Denance

A patio at the convent, designed to be open to its surroundings.

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Michel Denance

The interior of a cell, painted in orange, in the new convent, which has room for 12 sisters of the order Poor Clares. 

So it was predictable that a firestorm broke several years ago after plans circulated for a convent and new visitors’ center at the site of the chapel. Renzo Piano was the designer. Big-name colleagues like Richard Meier, Rafael Moneo and Cesar Pelli signed an online petition denouncing the $16 million project. The Fondation Le Corbusier, keeper of the architect’s flame, fumed. 

Now the buildings have opened, with some landscaping (by Atelier Corajoud, a Paris firm) and a bit of tinkering yet to come. I took a train from Paris recently and found the chapel empty on a bright, crisp spring morning (a godsend), then visited the nuns. They are not quite a dozen elderly Poor Clares, lately moved from their home of 800 years at Besançon, 60 miles to the south, which they had sold to help pay for the new place. Cheerful in their light gray habits, the sisters were finishing lunch in the refectory around a handsome glazed courtyard open to a cloudless sky. 

A few minor acoustic problems with the nuns’ concrete quarters aside, Mr. Piano and his team (Paul Vincent was the partner in charge at Renzo Piano Building Workshop) have created remarkably light and peaceful spaces that are virtually invisible from the chapel and gracefully connected to nature. Competing with Le Corbusier’s masterwork would have been a fool’s game and an affront, Mr. Piano clearly realized; spoiling it, a cinch. Doing neither, the additions insert new life onto the hill, and in the process remove a despised 1960s gatehouse that had obscured sight of the chapel from the town below. 

Humility is a virtue. That’s the obvious lesson, but doing anything, even constructing a few self-effacing buildings at Ronchamp, is a big deal. Mr. Piano solved the riddle of adding to a site without appearing conspicuously to do so by burrowing into the brow of the hill, below the chapel, and inserting the convent and visitors’ center into the cuts, half buried, with zinc-and-glass facades to let in light. He placed the visitors’ center beside the old pilgrims’ path, which winds through woods from the valley all 

A fire was crackling in the fireplace at the center when I stopped by to browse through the bookshop. A ramp led from there onto the dirt path rising to the chapel. Behind the opposite end of the visitors’ center, set apart by a tiny gate, the convent wrapped several hundred feet farther around the slope. 

It looked like a miniature hill town. Two stories of concrete cells, the nuns’ quarters and workrooms, fronted by winter gardens and linked on the inside by somber corridors and stairs, opened to trees and sweeping views. Simple corrugated zinc roofs on slender steel pillars shaded the cells, which fanned outward like the leaves of folding screens. The materials — concrete, zinc and wood — created an atmosphere chaste and calm, the smell of cedar scenting the halls, the oratory — a trapezoidal room topped by a gently vaulted roof like the keel of a boat — sparingly decorated with an olivewood altar and bright orange floor.   

Of course imposing anything on this hill, even half-buried buildings, impinges on what Le Corbusier saw in the 1950s as the “poem” of the larger site, with its interplay of forest and chapel, the chapel’s curves gesturing explicitly toward the Jura and Vosges Mountains, as if to embrace them in the poem’s narrative. 

The site had held one chapel after another since the fourth century, so it has changed often. Devotees of Le Corbusier have come increasingly to perceive it as an untouchable shrine to him. A characteristically French subtext of anti-clericalism partly fueled the contretemps, which came down to architectural preservation versus prayer, an inviolable site versus a living one. 

The Poor Clares, with the Association de l’Oeuvre Notre Dame du Haut (not incidentally, the organization that first hired Le Corbusier more than half a century ago), commissioned Mr. Piano. The aim was to devise a convent “beside the chapel that could thrive among pilgrims and tourists, and breathe life back onto the hill,” as Brigitte de Singly, the convent’s abbess, put it. 

She turned out to be Mr. Piano’s secret weapon: a once-upon-a-time French television executive and aristocrat with a longstanding interest in architecture, the ideal client who prodded and trusted but challenged the architect to come up with a design aptly quiet, slow, linked to nature and open. 

And beautiful. “Beauty gives you peace inside,” Sister Brigitte stressed to me, then laughed. “It just couldn’t cost a lot.” 

She said the sisters prayed eight times a day, five in the oratory and three in the chapel, navigating several steps and a grassy field, which isn’t easy for some of them. “But then when you are in the chapel,” Sister Brigitte added, “there is a warm atmosphere that helps you get inside yourself, whether you are Christian or not.” 

Le Corbusier’s masterpiece unfolds in the round, offering, like a sequence of Mondrians and Arps, different and uncannily poised compositions from every angle, back and front, side to side, inside and out and, crucially, in relation to the grounds. It commands the hill as the Parthenon does the Acropolis, its immense roof a great airfoil or billowing sail appearing to lift the building off the earth, and simultaneously seeming to weigh it down, compress it.

The paradox reverses inside the building. Panes of disembodied color — rectangles of bright red, green, blue and yellow stained glass — float irregularly in the dimness. A slender clerestory slit, like a halo of light, concealed from the exterior, raises the hulking roof as if magically from the concrete walls. The chapel’s gray floor rushes downhill toward the altar, the roof thrusting heavenward. The place is alive and in motion, as cool and mysterious as an ancient cave. 

What Le Corbusier called the chapel’s “ineffable space” derives not from Zen-like simplicity or Baroque extravagance but from this quasi-Cubist asymmetry of robust, jaunty, sensuous shapes, held in improbable equilibrium as if by a juggler on a tightrope. It’s a sculptural feat. Nowadays architects rely on digital technology to fashion swooping, soaring spaces that look as if they folded in on themselves. Ronchamp, by contrast, is the product of old-fashioned craft and serendipity, every surface different from every other, imperfectly, lovingly made.

 It is to Mr. Piano’s great credit that he didn’t aim for anything nearly as special. Le Corbusier had come to embrace primitive craft. Now buildings are assembled from products and systems. Mr. Piano’s additions are occasionally severe, what with all the glass, metal and hard angles, but light softens everything, especially the oratory, the convent’s hearth, where a hidden slot in the curved chancel wall, a subtle nod to Le Corbusier’s handling of filtered light in the chapel, lets in a consoling ring of sunshine. 

“Space and light and order,” Le Corbusier said, “those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.” Mr. Piano has given the Poor Clares all of those things, save the bread.