Photos from China

[fivemack]

I've put them up as a Facebook album at

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=292059&id=783247428&l=e38c5d9e38

(thanks to LNR for the instructions for how to get a link to a Facebook album that works when you're not logged in) with another copy up at http://www.fivemack.org/china2010 if you like memorable addresses or if your employer dislikes Facebook. Ask here if you want the story behind any of them.

Questions I've been asked:

• This one is looking back from the Forbidden City towards the Photographer's Pavilion in Jingshan here
• I don't know what the characters mean
• I think the shiny metal is some sort of allusion to the Moon, with which the rabbit is associated
• They're auspicious bats
• The fee to beat the drum three times is 10元: a pound
• It is a Tang-dynasty interpretation of a burnous
• The material for the scenes from the life of the Buddha is inlaid polychrome jade
• The Macao pavilion is indeed in the shape of a giant rabbit
• The message is that the Silk Road trade was essentially between Persia and China; no territorial claim was explicitly made
• He symbolises peace through international trade
• A sweet, oaky Argentine white
• He is celebrating the Canadian creative spirit
• Unlike on Wall Street, there is no bear to go with the bull
• I was born in the year of the snake

Comments

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I arrived the day after a very violent rainstorm, so the sky was beautifully clear and the weather probably about as good as it gets; I'm not sure how much of the polishing was done for the Olympics and how much is the result of rain-washed buildings under an azure sky.