I think this was our first or second day in Beijing, we were walking from our hotel towards the Tian An Men square, already hot and sweaty. I had my camera on and was taking some random photos of everything around me. I saw this guy and another random shot was taken. The white sky you see is pretty normal for BeiJing, during our 4 days we didn’t see blue skies, not even once, it was cloaked with this white all absorbing air, keeping the heat and making everyone pretty miserable.
This could be taken anywhere where lotus can grow, which I guess many places on this planet. This photo was taken somewhere downtown Beijing, on one of the many lakes near the center of Chinese capital.
I’m starting a new project at work and this is for it to bloom into something awesome and nice (as IT projects can be awesome and nice, haha) as this lotus soon to be.
If you ever been to China and brought with you your teenage daughter or niece or granddaughter then you might relate to this post. Almost two years ago we had a very short trip through China on our way to Kazakhstan, with only about 3 days stay in Beijing. Guess the surprise for my daughter when many Chinese girls her own age would come over and ask to take a picture with her. Probably at least half a dozen times, all in short 3 days! I had my camera ready just in time on couple occasions to get her little ‘incidental celebrity’ status on tape, other went and gone before I could take the cap of my camera. I use to live in China in early 90th and saw similar requests, so it was not super foreign to me, but at the same time I was surprised that this would be happening now, after all, Beijing is packed with foreigners these days, but I guess not many of them are teenage girls. I wonder if it is the same in Japan and other south east Asian countries or it is totally unique to China only.
BTW, no one asked to take pictures with me or my wife 
, haha, we are not cool enough! What about you? Have you ever had situation when total strangers come to you and ask to take a photo with them?
After walking for a few hours around Beijing downtown we decided to give our feet some rest and do some people watching. I believe this is right off WangFuZing street, which is a one of those streets in the center of Chinese capital overloaded with bunch of supermarkets and restaurants, packed with people.
While getting our burned feet some rest I decided to take a snap of passersby’s.
Well, my friends, it is Chinese New Year (春節), I wish everyone happiness, peace, good health and prosperity. Have a drink and celebrate!
This photo is from Chinese New Year back from 20 year ago – 1992, nothing fancy, but a lot of good memories!
It was my first year in China and we went out to celebrate Chinese New Year to one of the local restaurants. As you know China invented gun powder and maybe for that reason or some other cultural reason they go really out of control with fireworks. Back then they were not fancy as far as color or flying abilities, but boy, they were so loud. When I first came to China, maybe on a second or third day after arrival I heard from far away what sounded like an automatic gun, AK47 or similar. I was puzzled to hear this sound, as I knew no one has guns there and definitely not going to shoot it in Beijing. A few days later I discovered that it was fireworks making those sounds. They made belts of them, by attaching each individual firecracker to each other, hanging it somewhere and then lighting it at the bottom. In a few seconds you have couple minutes of intense firepower. The kicker is that those belts came in different sizes – I mean, the power of individual firecrackers in them. I remember some of them being at least one inch thick, like little bombs. Tie them together and let fire one after another, that is some crazy fireworks!
So on Chinese New Year they went really nuts, those belts were hanging on the door handles, tree branches, air conditioners etc, and they lighted them up right around midnight, all at the same time. Talk about deafening damage to your ear drums – I felt like I was going to be deaf after that for sure.
So anyway, I found this photo in my archives from 1992 Chinese New Year. Fireworks at its best.
