During this free week when the Chinese Garden is luring people to visit and fall in love with what they see, management is holding out its hands in the form of 4 large solid donation boxes, and just to make sure the free loaders get the message, the boxes are painted orange. That's right, orange, the one color that lovers of Ming Dynasty tastefulness pray never to see used in the garden. The color beloved of hunters, highway construction workers, and Hooters' waitresses.
How did this color breach the walls of good taste that were supposed to keep out the philistines? Lay the blame on the heads of the hydra that is the garden's re-branding effort : new name, new busy-ness, new color scheme. Everything will be bold, bold, bold! You see, orange is the color of the chop that is seen on Chinese paintings. Thus it is the color of the garden's new logo, which evokes a chop. But the orange that is not overpowering when used in a small chop on the edge of a painting positively scorches your eyeballs when covering all four sides and the top of a box. Evidently what's important to management is it gets your attention, even if it makes you want to don sunglasses.
Too bad management couldn't have been more creative with donation containers. They could have just covered the bottom holes of orange safety cones and let people drop money into the top hole. Orange donation cones would have cost less, taken less effort to make, and would have been no less effective at attracting attention.
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