Happy New Year Picture

Beijing, February 2013.

Lantern Festival

Beijing, February 2013.

Stairs

Beijing, January 2013.

Rear zipper

...but how to open?

Harbin, Heilongjiang, Februray 2013.

Pearl of the Orient

Beijing, February 2013.

Downloaded this book

The book on China's Development Bank is worth reading and shows how Ministry of Finance in China lost out against Ministry of Commerce over the past 10 years. Chen Yuan, son of Mao's former economic planer Chen Yun, transformed China's inland economy and is now using the same techniques to transform other developing countries. His successful approach to development is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy by using big numbers. As history will teach us, this bubble will burst one day but on that day many people will be surprised to see how the World has changed. 

Secondly, it is important to compare China Development Bank with multilateral banks such as the World Bank or the Asian Development bank to put its impact into perseptive. 

Thirdly, this e-Book used paper from responsible sources which as admirable.

Beijing, January 2013.

Summer palace in the winter

Beijing, February 2013.

Happy family

Beijing, February 2013.

bigger bike

Beijing, February 2013.

Beijing gloves

Beijing, February 2013.

Space car

Beijing, February 2013.

Balancing on ice at 0°C

Beijing, February 2013.

suck blood

Beijing, December 2012.

Don't bomb our embassies

Beijing, February 2013.

Nice socks

Beijing, January 2013.

Nothing can distort a real beauty

Beijing fashion!

January 2013.

China's future

Beijing, February 2013.

Ritan Temple Fair

Beijing, February 2013.

恭喜发财，万事如意，主里蒙恩，身体健康!

Happy New Year! 
May the Snake be good to you.

The pictures above had been taken from our hutong place last night. We survived all night long fireworks and firecrackers with a kind of a break around 4am. The old year was bombed out. To me it felt like war or at least the extremely noisy soundtrack of it. For the superstitious Chinese it probably was inevitable cleansing the beginning of the New Year as previous years of the snake brought 9/11 (war on American soil that spead through selected countries), 六四 (Tiananmen Square 'incident' ending the flirt with more political freedom), the attack on Pearl Harbor (Japs over Hawaii and a couple hours later in the Philippines), and the Great Depression where the latter brought snakes into the pockets of everyone... 

Again, Happy New Year!

Beijing, February 2013.

Don't set your family on fire or Happy Chinese New Year

Beijing, February 2012.

Preparations for Chinese New Year: Don't set planes nor skyscapers on fire and don't burn the Temple of Heaven.

Beijing, February 2012.

Beijing's subway pushers

I stopped taking taxis due to the constant traffic jams. Am now commuting by subway and am never alone.   

Reminds you of Tokyo, right?

Beijing, January 2013.

Hutong scene

Beijing, January 2013.

Beautiful urbanized winter day

Beijing, February 2013.

Thank God it's Friday

Don't get me wrong, Beijing does have it's clear and beautiful days. Last Friday was one of those windy days. 

Since people in this land love technical solutions we may place thousands of giant wind machines onto Beijing's Western hills to blow all air pollution further eastward...

Guomao Sanqi, Beijing, February 2013.  

Not a fresh start into the new year for Beijing

The chart is self-explanatory. For the full story see Bloomberg article from 31 January 2013.

Beijing’s air, which has exceeded the World Health Organization’s “healthy” limit every day this year, is similar to that in an airport smoking lounge.

Source of "Beijing smokes": Bloomberg. 

Courtyard house

This is one of the non renovated courtyard houses in Beijing. It's also a site that is protected due to the fact that famous persons lived there. However, what happened was that due to population growth and bashing the affluent the courtyard house was "expanded" by building a new house into a formerly beautiful courtyard. I wonder how the four trees survided. 

Tianhan's former residence, Beijing, January 2013.

for the young and old

Beijing, January 2013.