Our China Trip (Part III)...Odds & Ends...

This will be the final installment of our China Trip blog entries...these pics weren't from one particular day, but rather a mix.



Here we are in front of the Temple of Heaven - it's pretty cool because it's entirely made of wood, and with no nails at all; that kind of engineering always marvels me.













For those of you that have been watching your Discovery Channel lately, you may have seen the 'Bird's Nest' design of this year's Olympic Stadium - pretty neat, huh?








Also purpose built for the Olympics, is the Aquatics building (far left). If it weren't for that awesome Beijing smog, you might be able to see it better.





Cicely and I definitely got used to being chauffered around town - but being in the Navy, I'll never make enough money to have that happen again!







Here's Cicely with our driver - we couldn't pronounce his name, but apparently it was Chinese for 'Gold', so we just called him Mr. Gold!




Adding to the previously mentioned theme of Discovery Channel worthy construction projects, is the new CCTV building.










CCTV stands for China Central Television - it's a state run TV Channel (like the Arabic Al Jazeera that is often referred to during Middle East stories) that is about the best example of propaganda you'll ever see. Now, for those of you that know me, I'm not the biggest fan of the whole 1st Ammendment/Freedom of the Press concept (I'm more of a 2nd Ammendment fan), but CCTV is absolutely ridiculous. First, I thought CCTV was only one channel - it's actually ALL the channels in China. They even have an English channel to inundate international travelers with Communist propaganda - it was almost to the point of entertaining. It really gave me an appreciation for the basic freedoms that we sometimes take for granted in the U.S. It also made me really miss BBC/Sky News from Britain - those guys say WHATEVER is on their mind!



Ok, so back to the building itself - notice it's unique look/design; it kinda looks like one of those optical illusions your teacher in grade school used to show you! Hard to believe it actually stands on its own!











Here's a cool thing we found at one of the Temples. It's a huge porridge bowl that actually gets used once every year - on the Chinese new year, they fill these with soup and feed everyone who's visiting the Temple that day. What day is it? December 8th - coincidentally, Cicely's birthday!





Here's another interesting concept we kept seeing in their children (in addition to the 'one child only' rule in effect from 1978 and on) - notice this kid has a hole in his pants and has no diaper/underwear....well, that's how they teach them to use the bathroom. If they need to go, they just stop, squat, and go! This applied to boys and girls both.






Finally, we saw an acrobat show that was amazing - these guys used absolutely every toned muscle in their bodies to do some crazy stuff - sorry the only pic is at the end of the show; Cicely got in trouble by one of the guards for trying to take pics during the show!





One more thing Cicely told me to add - can you see the mispelling of 'prone'?