Saturday 5 April 2008

Basic Beijing

Until I came out here, I didn't know that Beijing has some ancient celestial and terrestrial alignment going on its layout, which explains its destiny to rule the entire Universe and beyond for practically ever and ever or at least till the water runs out.

But you don't need to know all that because I'm going to give you a run down of basic Beijing layout. First off, that square in the middle is the forbidden city and as you can see the roads are laid out neat running north, south, east, west except for those ring roads which are like motorways carving through the metropolis (much bigger than the A40M for those inside the M25)



Then as we get closer you can the Forbidden city which has a heavier outline because of the moat that surrounds it, and below that is a star on Tiananmen Square. They say it holds a million people if you want to get some scale of the action that kicked off in 1989. Just a wee bit to the left (or West) is an egg shaped structure which is the National Theater for performing arts I took pictures of over here


Just an inch or so north of Tiananmen Square on the pic below is the famous Chairman Mao portrait.


Yes, I've been playing with Google maps this afternoon and I got bored of checking out the military installations and started sniffing around my neighbourhood. I'm going to have a housewarming party called 'Forbidden City/Naughty Nights' and I've got the invitation card semi thought out already....me being in advertising and all that.

2 comments:

  1. Great stuff, why couldn't you have been my geography teacher?

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  2. My geography teacher had an interesting incentive program Mark. He would slipper anyone below 40 marks in geography tests. I was OK but those less able to remember stuff were punished. He was fired eventually for taking it too far and I believe pressed with assaulting a schoolboy over the method.

    That's Roman Catholic schools for ya Mark! There, you got me thinking about old history!

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