Hello China

After work yesterday, I decided to hop on the train and visit Tiananmen Square.



I was met a huge crowds of people, and realized I arrived just in time to see the flag lowering ceremony.





The crowds were so thick, the picture above shows just about all I able to witnessed of the ceremony. There were much more interesting photo subjects around me.







The man above was distributing fliers advertising trips to the great wall, and the street below is the one parallel to the square.




The shot above is not in Tiananmen, but rather right by my hostel.

and here is the requisite point and shoot photo:


I love Beijing. It is east meets west, new meets old. The people are all friendly, no one has been rude (after I shot my first on the street portrait for the magazine, the girl gave me a hug. Yeah, that's right, a hug).
There are humongous lanes reserved for bikes, and exercise equipment free to use for free in the park. (mostly used by the elderly and the parents with small children, but I am going to go for it one of these days.)
The food is unbelievable, I have a cool job and cool coworkers (more on all of this later).
And everything is so cheap. My dinner tonight cost me $1, and the huge lunch I had earlier was about $4. A 1.5 liter bottle of water is 25 cents at the local 7-11. A trip on the subway will set you back 40 cents, and a bus ride 20. And there is so much to see and do, and photograph.

The only bizarre thing so far is "The Great Firewall of China". The government has taken it upon themselves to sensor any web site that gives the people freedom of speech. Most social networking sites are down, including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and any and all blogs. (I am currently accessing this site via a Proxy.) And while giant sites like Google and Wikipedia are available, you cannot view pages within that the Government doesn't like. (As an example, you cannot search the term "Great Firewall of China" or view the wiki page about the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989.)