On the Beach (And in the City)

Some shots from my Thanksgiving holiday trip to Chicago. The first two are from the beach in Edgewater.

This is downtown. The tennis ball sort of ruins the severe look of the lettering. Nice touch, random ball-thrower.

Mizzou Homecoming Drums

Before each Mizzou home football game, the drum line performs in front of former Mizzou drummers. Halfway through the performance, the old guard takes control of the drums and puts on a performance of their own. Here is the drum line before the start of last week's homecoming game against Texas.

Birds in Beijing

The park near my hotel in Beijing was a nice place to sit and relax. It had a large bird cage, a canal, bridges and sculptures. A nice little oasis in the middle of the city.

The Great Wall

I challenge anyone to create a more impressive 3,900 mile-long structure on top of a mountain.

The wall was about an hour outside of Beijing, and it was crawling with people. The whole thing was built between the 5th century BC and the 16th century AD.

Look at it snake into the background. The wall changed direction so often that it appeared to be in multiple locations from some vantage points.

The Temple of Heaven

The Temple of Heaven is a series of buildings in a Beijing park used by ancient Chinese emperors for prayer.

This is the top of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests where emperors from the 15th century and onward prayed for – you guessed it – good harvests.

Here's a less abstract view of the same building. Apparently the wooden tower was built without any nails. I guess it's held together with a combination of luck and spit. There were other similar buildings throughout the complex also used for prayer and sacrifice. Best building name: "Animal-beating pavilion."

The park around the temple complex was full of people playing games, dancing, singing and exercising. This woman twirled a long cloth attached to a stick, making pretty, ribbon-like patterns. (Photographer's note: I was eating a delicious milk-flavored popsicle when I made this picture. The popsicle cost about 45 cents.)

Moon Festival

Today the Chinese celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival. The festival dates back to a tradition of moon worship in an ancient Chinese dynasty and takes place when the moon is said to be at its fullest and roundest. During the festival people traditionally eat mooncakes made of lotus seed paste, bean paste, or other ingredients.

Another tradition some practice during the Moon Festival involves lanterns and riddles. Today the China Open put up some of these lanterns.

Here China Open spectators read a riddle tied to a hanging lantern.

Try to guess the animal being described in this picture's riddle: "A crescent longbow with a tassel on top, when living they wear sackcloth, dead they wear scarlet."

I know the answer. It is not a flamingo. Post comments below with guesses.

If you think you know the answer, you take the paper down and present it to the question master. If you're right, you win a prize. Today the prizes were cell phone ornaments, which must have provided a big incentive for people to win. I'm pretty sure the Chinese collect phone ornaments like the Louvre collects paintings.

*Thanks to Matt for help with the Chinese translation above.*

Opening Ceremony - China Open

The China Open officially starts today, and they kicked it off with an opening ceremony. Unfortunately for the Chinese, any opening ceremony will forever be compared to the spectacle that was the Olympic opening performance. This was not an Olympic performance.

But it was still kind of cool. These girls were really good at hitting their drums lightly enough so that the prerecorded drum soundtrack could be heard clearly.

And these girls were occasionally able to wave their giant mutant balls in sync.

There was also some confetti.

Djokovic on center court

We get some good access at the China Open tennis tournament. Yesterday I watched Novak Djokovic, ranked fourth in the world, practice on the center court of the tennis center in Beijing. The court is impressive, especially when you have a private viewing of a practicing tennis star.

Djokovic is famous for his impressions of other tennis players, so when he was done practicing, a friend dared me to asked Djokovic to perform. Djokovic said he was too tired from jet lag. Bummer.

The Bird's Nest

Today we visited the 2008 Beijing Olympic venues. The track and field events were held at Beijing National Stadium, usually called the Bird's Nest. The stadium is the world's largest steel structure and is incredibly impressive in person. Here are some shots in and around it.

I love this building. Can my house look like this?

Many Chinese tourists visit the Olympic venues, and many seemed surprised to see Westerners. Here someone asked Matt to pose for a picture. This was not the only time people asked to take our picture. It was kind of weird being being a "celebrity."
This man seemed really impressed with the vastness of the inside.

And vast it was.

Tiananmen Square

On Tuesday a group of us wanted to visit the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. When we arrived at the entrance to the Forbidden City, we found out that it was closed for the upcoming holiday. With preparations being made for the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, security was high, and access to many landmarks was prohibited.

A guard stands in front of the gateway to the Forbidden City, which was unfortunately forbidden.

Tiananmen Square, however, was open and full of people observing its many monuments. But not long after we arrived, a police van began driving around the square announcing in Chinese and English that everyone had to leave the square immediately.

Guards march through Tiananmen Square forcing hundreds of visitors to leave the area.

It sounds like everyone got kicked out so the government could prepare the area for upcoming celebrations. But I was a bit nervous at the time, especially in light of past events that have happened in the square. Everything turned out all right, and now I can say I was removed from an area by a communist government.