Awesome. More snow. Just what I was hoping for.There’s not too many shots of the Great Wall left, honest. Still, I’ve had to resort to the thesaurus for titling purposes.To the left? To the right? Step it up, step it up, it’s all right.It’s coming up for Chinese New Year in Beijing, which rather means everything looks like Christmas in Blighty. Vive la différence.Well, a street of it anyway. Taken around Chinese New Year, hence all the prettification, I guess.A look at the cityscape of Beijing by night. It was either this or sit in the hotel watching HBO.Beijing by day. Went off for a wander during a lunch break, if memory serves.There must have been a memo sent out to airport terminal designers. Big sweeping curved roofing is very much the order of the day. The above is the from Dubai Airport’s relatively new Terminal 3. It’s almost indistinguishable from the new terminal at Beijing, built I suppose in the main to handle the Olympics traffic. Right angles are so last century.C.R.E.A.M. get the money.There’s not too many shots of the Great Wall left, honest. Still, I’ve had to resort to the thesaurus for titling purposes.I’m all about the lens flare, me. This is the pond at Glasgow’s Queen’s Park, struggling to de-ice from the recent cold snap.A sixish mile roundtrip walk to Tiananmen. I didn’t particularly intend to go there, I just headed out of the hotel, turned right and started walking. Which, as it turns out, goes straight to Tiananmen. There wasn’t enough time to do the touristy thing, but hopefully I can carve out sometime for that later.It’s just like being in the heart of Las Vegas!
Well, maybe not.There’s not too many shots of the Great Wall left, honest. Still, I’ve had to resort to the thesaurus for titling purposes.I’m surely not the only one that thinks that skyscraper over younder was styled after two L-shaped tetris blocks?
I walked over to it to see what it was called, or who’s mainly occupying it, but I couldn’t immediately find any evidence of English language signage so I promptly gave up. I am so very tired. Anyway, I prefer my internalised version, where it is the Asian headquaters of the IHOP.Honestly, this is the last shot of the Great Wall I’ll post.
Well, unless I go back sometime down the line.Glasgow’s Mitchell Library, all lit up at night.There’s still plenty of Olympic paraphanelia cluttering up Badaling.In the middle(ish) of Tiananmen Square.Dinnertime at Pollok Park.Why those gloves there? Who can say? Only the denizen of Glasgow’s Queens Park that put them there.Is it just me, or does that look like Doctor Who has just landed in Renfrew?A statue of the peoples Army in Tiananmen Square.Olympus’ “Dramatic Tone” filter – guaranteed daftness, or your money back.I’m guessing something to do with the Chinese New Year celebrations.Here be dragons.The Great Wall at Badaling.This is some Wall thing they’ve got in China. It’s pretty great.
It’s also quite breathtakingly cold up there at this time of year, with a wind that scythes directly through you as though you were a collection of insubstantial mists, rather than a well swaddled organisation of meat and bones. It’s worth the discomfort for the views, and at if you look on the positive side it made for a substantially less sweaty pseudo-mountaineering session that doing it in the middle of Beijing’s thirty-odd degree summers, as it was the last time I was up there.Yes, I have been using eBay quite a bit lately. How could you tell?I think what I like most about China is the rampant enthusiasm, and the will to build things without anyone stopping to say, “Hang on, isn’t this a bit mental?”
I mean, look at this place. Well, first off it’s called The Place, which smacks either of extreme egotism or a failure of imagination. Given the rest of the buildings, I assume it’s the former.
It’s perhaps five years old as I write this, so obviously at that time the prevailing design trend was mid 18th century neoclassicalism. Fine. Okay. Let’s build it!
Hang on just a moment. There needs to be the other defining element of neoclassical architecture – a hundred metre covered walkway up the middle of it, where the roof is made of massive T.V’s!
In retrospect, I’m only surprised they didn’t use the other kind of TV.Coming soon to an eBay near you!From my work trip to Beijing at the start of the year.The engineering behind some of the new building being erected in China is pretty formidable.Some people want to make their mark on history, I suppose.There’s not too many shots of the Great Wall left, honest. Still, I’ve had to resort to the thesaurus for titling purposes.A section of the Great Wall at Badaling.From an aborted early attempt at picking up an E-5.Hehehe.
More Chinese New Year decorations, I believe,
