You can watch it here

or here

Click Here to See the Video of People’s Park Dancing

Did you guess which they are?

As the tags state — the images are from some of the famous sites like
* The Temple of Heaven
* The Forbidden City
* JingShan Park (located just behind the Forbidden City) — its history apparently is that the park hills were created with the dirt removed in the construction of the Forbidden City — given the size of the park, you can imagine the construction magnitude that had taken place centuries ago…
* Beijing Dongyue Miao (Taoist Temple)
* Beijing YongHeGong (Lama Temple) – located at the north eastern corner of the 2nd ring road in Beijing (You would be able to see the temple from the highway)
* The HongLuoSi (Red Snail Temple) — located north of the city (outside of Beijing)

I will keep adding photos — need to search my databases of images from all the photos I have taken in Beijing…

The show appears to be well visited — the day I was there, I heard later on, on the local news, there were close to 0.5M visitors…. All in all the Expo 2010 own web site claims over 50M visitors…

Then after doing some work I braved the howling wind and headed out in the town – the objective was TianHou Temple and the downtown pier at the bay.

Today was a sunny day, but the wind made it still freezing… After a cab ride, I reached the temple and was pleasantly surprised – not crowded and relatively colorful. Bought some Year of the Tiger charms from the monks, and came across a small shop of a paper cuts artist – bought a paper cut of the year of the tiger and she gave me a sheet of her biography – very nice lady.

Then I walked for a mile to the bay with a pier that reaches pretty far out in the sea. On the pier there were all sort of people trying to sell stuff – mostly it appeared illegally (as they hurriedly collected their wares a couple of times while I was there on what appeared the approach of police). I saw a guy display on the boardwalk sea stars (I think that is what they were called — I took pictures)
pulled fresh out of the bay. They were beautiful – yellow undersides and blue-purple tops… I heard one of the mulling people asking or concluding “yes, they are good eating…” — oh, well too bad for the creatures…

Given the freezing wind, it was amazing how many people were on the pier –

my guess many of them visitors from the country side – the local Qingdao crowd was probably staying warm at home as the rest of us visitors were trying to catch a view of the ocean and city…and I don’t blame them – after about 10minutes on the pier I was ready to head to a warmer place…
That turned out to be the local Parkson Dept. Store…after a quick walk through it – I headed out again and continued my walk along Zhongshan Lu and the near by streets. A detour brought me to an imposing church built on a hill of Zhongshan Lu…a remnant of the times the German residents occupied a large chunk of downtown Qingdao…(The story goes as such – Qingdao was surrendered to Germany in the late 18 hundreds after two German monks were killed in the city and German troops marched here)
Took a lot of pictures – the architecture along side Zhongshan Lu is very interesting – you would think you are in a European town…

By 4:30pm I was finally too cold, so I hailed a cab and headed back to the hotel. The cab was a VW Passat – admitedly a bit nicer than the VW Santana cabs which are prolific – but I had an interesting surprise – “luxury” comes at a price – the meter of that cab was quickly running up the tab… When I asked the driver “what gives…?” – his response was “well new model cab – new price…”. He sounded almost apologetic. By the time I got back to the hotel the meter was at RMB26 !!! While at noon the same trip cost me RMB17!!! What is that – over 50% markup…
Another interesting observation – the paper cut of the Chinese Zodiak Year of the Tiger in a frame done by a local artist cost me RMB25 …hm…?!?! Peculiar…!?!?
The difference between the local and global economy…

The last time I was in Qingdao was in the Summer of 2006. At the time, the beaches were full of tourists and the ocean was nice and warm. Now, as I was driving in a cab to the hotel I saw just a few people on the ocean side streets and all of them were bundled up and looking very, very cold.

Once I made it to the hotel I decided to head out and check out some of the neighbourhoods. What a better way to experience a city — just jump into the local scene — check out the local shopping areas. So I headed to JiMo Market area. Well, that was a major let down
I made it there by 5pm and most of the shops were closing (on a Saturday at 5pm ??!!!) – go figure. But then the shops looked pretty run down — even if they were open, they were not exactly exciting looking. I took a bunch of photos (will publish them later on once I get to a speedier VPN connection) and briskly headed back to the main street. Needless to say — I DO NOT recommend the JiMo Market.

View of the JiMo Shopping area in Qingdao

Another view of JiMo shopping area

I needed to get from the airport to southwest Beijing, so I knew that just taking the Airport Express would not get me to my destination–I would also need to get onto the regular subway line and transfer from line 2 to line 5. Alternatively, I could have taken the Airport Express to its final stop and taken a taxi to my hotel, but that seemed like cheating. So, after arriving at the new and glorious Terminal 3 in Beijing, my sister and I made our way to the Airport Express Train and purchased our tickets.

The fare of 25 yuan is much higher than the fare of any other subway journey in Beijing (a flat 2 yuan), but it was a new train and did go a considerable distance. Anyway, after buying our tickets, my sister and I waited about ten minutes for the train (I believe the maximum time between trains is fifteen minutes) and then boarded it. Although it was quite pleasant and clean, the Airport Express Train had remarkably little space for luggage. There was one tiny luggage rack at the end of our car, and a small amount of overhead space running along the length of the car on either side, but that appeared to be it. My sister’s one large bag and one small bag and my two large bags

(I justified my excessive amount of luggage by the fact that I was in Beijing to purchase inventory for my online store–www.chinafinds.com–and needed space to take stuff home in) nearly blocked the walkway at the end of our car.

I was able to fit one of my bags on the aforementioned end-of-the-car luggage rack, but that was it–the others spilled out into the aisle. Other than the luggage issue, the Airport Express Train was great. It seemed to travel very fast and the view from the train was interesting. Very soon, we were at the final terminus for the Airport Express–Dongzhimen Station. (It stops at the airport’s new Terminal 3, old Terminal 2, and the subway stops Sanyuanqiao and Dongzhimen.) At Dongzhimen, once we had purchased subway tickets (the 25 yuan tickets we had previously purchased were only good for the Airport Express Train), we began making our way to the Dongzhimen trains.

Getting through the turnstiles was truly tricky given all our luggage, but that was nothing compared with all the stairs we had to navigate. Some of the subway stations have escalators, but many do not, or not in all areas. Fortunately, this gave us an unparalleled opportunity to witness the kindness of strangers in China. On each and every stairway that we encountered, Chinese people helped us with our bags. Sometimes they asked if we needed help, but most of the time, they just smiled and took a hold of a bag. Given our advanced level of exhaustion, we were exceedingly grateful. At any rate, we did eventually make it to our hotel, but it took about two hours–far longer than a taxi ride would have taken.

If you are unencumbered by luggage or are staying in a hotel that is very close to one of the Airport Express stops (Sanyuanqiao or Dongzhimen), then the Airport Express is a fine method of transportation. Otherwise, I would recommend a taxi.