I normally don’t appreciate dance, but the footwork is so graceful, it’s amazing.
Category Archives: Lightbox
798 Art District
On my last day in Beijing, Driver Liu picked me early and stopped off at the 798 Art District on the way to the airport so I could do a walkabout and get some pictures. It used to be an industrial area, and it somehow turned into a little bohemian art village. Very very cool.
Lots of amazing sculptures, installation pieces, cool art galleries and chill out cafes. You could spend an entire day here and not get bored. If I come back to Beijing, I’ll definitely come back here.
Tilt Shift Experiment
tiltshift experiment, originally uploaded by photokalia.
Pretty nifty faux tilt-shift effect. I downloaded this Adobe Air app from http://artandmobile.com/tiltshift/ and applied it to this photo.
Songbird
We chanced upon this jazz performance while at Paragon last Sunday. For some reason, this lady’s voice attracted a fair number of kids who decided to plonked themselves onto the floor in front of her. Believe it or not, Clare insisted on sitting through the entire performance and made me sit down on the floor next to her. Not that I minded of course, although I was fairly sheepish at being the only adult with a front row seat 
Clare getting her dose of Sunday afternoon jazz.
Clare deciding that her doggy stuffed toy wanted to listen to music too.
More Great Wall Photos
This set of photos illustrates my point about the steps being steep and icy. I was soooo thankful I didn’t fall and smash my precious camera :p
By the way, the white spots are not dust spots but the bits of snow being blown around by the wind.
This last one… slippery on the way up, even scarier on the way down. Maybe I’m just getting wussy with age :p
The Great Wall
View from one of the fortifications on the Great Wall. If you look closely, you can see the Wall snaking through the mountains in the middle of the picture, leading up a really steep incline to the fortification on the top of the middle mountain range.
Looking at the Wall snaking up and down the mountains and valleys, I was left with a sense of awe as I imagined the effort it took to build the wall hundreds of years ago, and then have soldiers patrolling along the length of the wall every day and night.
It was the tail end of a cold snap, and even though workers had shovelled much of the snow to the sides and chipped as much of the ice away as they could, the floor was still icy in many places. At the steeper bits, I often I found myself fighting gravity and ice, terrified of slipping and banging my camera on the stone floor. Going downhill was much scarier than going uphill.
Singing Senior Citizens
Group of senior citizens singing at the Summer Palace. Again, this isn’t a special performance for the tourists. You can find groups like this on any morning at any of the parks around Beijing. I really love how the old folks there have so much to see and do.
Water Calligraphy
Old man practising his calligraphy using a huge brush and a bucket of water at the Summer Palace. This is a common sight in the mornings in the parks around Beijing. Nice to look at, but I realised that it’s a much better idea in the summer when the sun can evaporate the water. The letters turned icy, and I nearly slipped on a spot he drew on earlier. I wonder why no one does this in Singapore? Probably get chased off for making a mess on the ground…
Wandering around the Hutongs – Part 2
Innovative solution to cold steering wheels. It was common to see pairs of gloves permanently stuck onto steering wheels.
I was most amused to find that each circuit breaker had a family’s name on it.
Flock of birds circling the hutong at dusk. Poetry in motion
Typical entrance to a hutong.