Remnants of the National Day Parade

2009-10-06

Since most people didn't get to see the National Day parade personally on October 1st this year, they put a lot of the floats and remnants of the parade in Tiananmen Square for a month so the locals could see things in person. It seemed like a good idea to make a nice long walk of it down to the city centre to check things out.

Local sentiment about the National Day parade remains nearly completely exuberant, and the locals are quite understandably proud of their country.

[Click on any photo for a larger view]

All around this part of town are old walls and expensive hutongs housing officials, gov't bureaus and richie riches.	There's now a huge TV in Tiananmen, which will apparently stay there full time.	As will the shiny columns.
It was really a madhouse. Tonnes of people.	But with the Chairman standing watch over us all, you just feel safe. Well, the chairman and 7 zillion underclothes cops.
There was one float in the parade for each of the provinces, semi-autonomous regions, municipalities, and special administrative regions, meaning: 34. Well, and one for foreign friends.	Beijing was all about the Olympics, of course.
There was a second huge TV with big panoramas of the country.
Nobody was really sure what to do, so everybody just wandered around taking photos.	I have no idea what this thing is.
Flags and facepaint were the order the day.


		I take photos of stuff like this to study.
More provincial floats. This is Ningxia (宁夏) province. Or maybe it's a semi-autonomous region. I'm never sure.	I like the imperial star destroyer on the top of this one.

Devil horns and kitty cat ears are huge with the locals.	That's the moon. You can pretend that this photo was taken with a real camera and turned out all beautiful and the like.	WORK IT BAY-BEE!!!
Everywhere you go are serious military guys and paramilitary police. Except for the flowers, which just get rent-a-cops.

	Lotsa military guys standing around so you could take pictures of them in formation. Wooo.