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  热烈庆祝中华人民共和国成为60周年！ (China's 60th in Beijing)
 
2009-10-01

Today was the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and the city put on a big bash. Despite the fact that it was full-on impossible to get to see the actual parades and air shows down near Tiananmen, I still got to see a huge column of tanks and other military vehicles go rumbling past my apartment, and then I went on a long long walk around the city, seeing how people were celebrating the holiday.

The answer is basically that the city was dead: with much of the population already gone for the week-long holidays and with most local things being closed - either by city government decree or by simply choosing to avoid hassle and voluntarily closing - there wasn't much to do. There were good numbers of people out enjoying the spectacular (manufactured) weather, and otherwise, just wandering around the city.

My walk ended up being a bit longer than I had intended — some 22km or so, and by the time we went to try and watch the fireworks at Tiananmen in the evening, I was a complete hobbling wreck.

The Chinese are understandably proud of their country, and I keep hearing stories of people who themselves or whose parents grew up in extremely poor conditions all thrilled about the state of things today. While there is still a good way to go, it's still a massive step forward.
[Click on any photo for a larger view]
After the parade, I heard some rumbling all of a sudden from my apartment, so I rushed down to see what was up.
The tanks were all zooming past on their way back home.
Couldn't cross the street to get better lighting, but still got to see tonnes.
All the tanks have rubber tracks on them to minimize road destruction (still happened a bit).
I love how the cops were taking just as many photos as the locals.
Where in the world is traffic so bad that even a column of FULLY ARMED TANKS gets all bunched up?
Beijing, of course! We have the best traffic ev-ar here.
After the green things came the brown ones.
And then the blue ones (Blue ones? What do you hide in when wearing blue?)
Next, I started walking through hutongs, one of my favourite Beijing activities.
They're not exactly luxury living (shared public (smelly) bathrooms, leaky roofs, etc), but just have a great feeling about them.
Ugh. Kick-me dog.
Now THAT'S how wiring is done :)
Rawr!
This is some new huge Chinese hotel, which has the look of a Paris building, and then some ridiculous name and silly knock-off crap inside.
By now I'd made my way over to Beihei park, to the west of the forbidden city.
I have -never- seen this park empty. It's freaky.
Made for great picture taking though.
What's weird though, is when I crossed the road to snap a shot of Nanhai, a guy yelled at me. And the 30 other people doing the same thing.
I wandered through boring old business building neighbourhoods for a while until, some 5 hours later, ending up at Houhai.
I stopped for 10 minutes to rest my legs, and this is what the locals were doing.
The locals are all playing the equivalent of hackey-sack. Neat.
That's the drum and bell tower in the background.
Sadly, our journey to watch the fireworks down at Tiananmen was a huge failure. We arrived 15 minutes late, and they had already been turning people away for about 25 minutes. So, we just got to watch flashes from above the rooftops ... D'oh!
 
 
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