Preparations for National Day
There's been a lot circulating on the Internet about the preparations being made in Beijing to celebrate this year's October 1 holiday. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. A military parade and mass pageant are planned for Beijing. As far back as April, preparations were being made for this giant display of military hardware. For the past few weekends, rehearsals have been held, often in the middle of the night, resulting in road and subway closures and re-routed traffic. China-based expat blogs have been posting video of some of the mass-pageant participants practicing or some of the tank maneuvers, while others have shown shock at the rumored display of missiles and other military hardware. The latter is best summed up by a tag that occasionally shows up in Shanghai blogger Micah Sittig's tweets: OMGCHINAHASTANKS. I mean, what do people think the PLA has, Mini-Coopers?
Anyway, all this excitement is happening down in the Beijing where locations are described as being inside this ring or that (Beijing has six ring-roads). Where we live, outside ALL of the rings, preparations of a different kind are happening. And suitably for a town called Changping (Everlasting Peace), we have no sign of tanks. We have flowers, flowers everywhere.
Columns of flowers at park entrances and street corners
Wire-frame creatures appear one-day
Only to be transformed into Rose-Bowl ready creations the next
I have no pictures of this area as it normally appears below because it is otherwise uninteresting. It is just a big flat round space where kids rollerblade. For the next few weeks, though, it is a peaceful paradise, complete with a lake!
They are building the hills and the banks of the lake with sandbags, then covering them with flowering plants.
Bamboo rafts, not tanks.
Anyway, all this excitement is happening down in the Beijing where locations are described as being inside this ring or that (Beijing has six ring-roads). Where we live, outside ALL of the rings, preparations of a different kind are happening. And suitably for a town called Changping (Everlasting Peace), we have no sign of tanks. We have flowers, flowers everywhere.
Columns of flowers at park entrances and street corners
Wire-frame creatures appear one-day
Only to be transformed into Rose-Bowl ready creations the next
I have no pictures of this area as it normally appears below because it is otherwise uninteresting. It is just a big flat round space where kids rollerblade. For the next few weeks, though, it is a peaceful paradise, complete with a lake!
They are building the hills and the banks of the lake with sandbags, then covering them with flowering plants.
Bamboo rafts, not tanks.
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