[Caitlin]

Here is a link and one paragraph of a fascinating article on the new personal architecture of China.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/25/features/home.php
Recreating the home for China's rising leisure class

By Elaine Louie The New York Times

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 2006


…….
This kind of tension between deprivation and luxury - an increasingly salient theme in the new China - informs much of Ai's work, including the art piece he displayed on a recent visit: In one of the cavernous, sparely furnished rooms in his house, two enormous celadon bowls, about a meter in diameter, were each full of 230 kilograms, or about 500 pounds, of freshwater seed pearls that gleamed in the sunlight. When he was young, he said, and his family was poor, he associated pearls with "the corrupt," the only people in China who could afford to buy them…….

[purepearls]

That is very interesting and quite ironic, especially now that he can afford to buy them in large quantities.