Cooking Noodles
This is a very common sight all over China: people cooking noodles on little >gas flames hooked up right outside the shop where you sit and eat what they’ve cooked up. Walking the streets and alleys (and hutongs) of any Chinese city, you’ll also see people with woks set up over little gas burners cooking their own lunches and dinners right on their stoops. By American standards possibly an odd sight, but yet another of thing that you get really used to when you spend time here. Sorry it’s fuzzy…I was trying to be discrete.
Urban Renewal – Beijing
This shot shows a nice new office building that’s been built in the middle of the block (as in, there are four large streets and this is in the middle, away from all of them; it’s a big block) that’s the center of the “destruction zone.” After this you’ll see two shots that show the same building, from different angles and with different foregrounds.
Beijing: My Road to Work
This is literally the road I walk on to get to work, and it’s been changing every day for the past few weeks. Right now the road itself is mostly back — no more big trenches and boards spanning them, but still a few guys soldering and joining the water pipes and so on. But as you see here, it was quite the construction zone for a while, and yet we all still worked our way around the obstacles on our daily errands…as witness this intrepid man with bicycle. The next two shots are the same area, including one from the end with another new building — note the woman walking by with large sacks full of trash (or whatever it is).
Summer Palace – Ceiling Details
For the first several weeks here in Beijing, I was too busy exploring the city and getting used to my new environs to really take many photos. We also didn’t have a lot of days with very clear skies — pollution and cloud cover (though rarely/never any rain) combined to make the weather not too appealing for photos. But I did go on a couple of hikes in the regions north of Beijing with an expat hiking groups, through whom I’ve met some interesting folks. I also took my colleague Manuel, who’s now back in France, to the Summer Palace. This is one detail shot from the Palace, and after this you’ll see one shot I couldn’t resist: the plastic-potted plant in the window sill of this beautifully-mainained and restored palace complex…and if you look closely, you’ll see it’s a plastic container for San Francisco ice cream. The farther from home I get… 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 