Nobel Prize

This afternoon in Beijing, so many of us foreigners were glued to television or our Internet feeds, waiting for the announcement and the inevitable black-out.  In some cases we got it, and in others we did not.  I was able to watch the entire videocast, uninterrupted, from the Nobel Committee website.

In the hours since there's already been so much written and said, and I don't have any unique thoughts of my own to add.  I will say that in my twitter feed, you can find a few special Follow Friday (tagged #ff) recommendations for thoughts and links about these events.  I also recommend today's blog post from the consistently awesome Evan Osnos at the New Yorker.

Just after the announcement was made, I went downstairs to buy some vegetables in the street.  The scene in the streets around our building were the same: people picking through not-yet-rotten vegetables, arguing with the farmers over the prices, a few migrant workers just being served their 2 kuai dinners at one of the noodle or chao bing stalls, grandmothers ushering school-aged children home. Nothing out of the ordinary down there at all.

What comes next, if anything at all, remains to be seen.