Here's what I saw today at home in Beijing when I tried to access the Wikipedia article on internet censorship in China:

This October 1st will be the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China ("liberation" as it's affectionately known as here in China.) To celebrate, the government is having an old-school parade down Chang An Avenue (the big road that runs between Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City), complete with floats, tanks, soldiers, missiles, and aircraft flyovers. Nothing beats seeing tanks cruising the streets of Beijing.

The media here has been showing a lot of photos of the massive preparations for the event. I thought they were pretty cool and worth sharing.

They want nice straight lines and tall soldiers like this. (Actually, I think these are the armed police, not the army, but whatever.)

So, they use string to make sure everyone is lined up at the right height. (I'm sure this guy will be in trouble for smiling, but it's a great photo.)
 

A few pins in the right places to make sure everyone stands up straight.

They're marching so much, their battered boots are taking a beating.

The female soldiers get much cooler looking boots.

For more pictures, check out these galleries here and here.

My good friend from Stanford fraternity days, Ari Lehavi, was in Beijing this week, so Michelle and I met with him for dinner and drinks. Since Ari had expressed some interest in more "interesting" food, we took him for a stroll around Wangfujing Street and the Donghuamen Night Market where there food stalls with everything you can imagine on a stick.

Ari in front of scorpions (live!) and seahorses on sticks. (They're grilled and covered in spicy powder before you eat them.)

Ari chomping down on a scorpion. He considered these to be quite good.

Ari finishing off his seahorse.

Ari holding a stick of grilled silkworms and a stick of cicadas (I think). The cicadas were OK. The silkworms were a little more earthy, according to Ari. (I skipped the big silkworms.)

Mmm, love those silkworms...

Ari about to tuck into a grilled starfish. To eat these you break off an arm, peel back the tough outer skin, and eat the meaty inside. It looks a bit like cooked finely ground beef but tastes seafoody. Not terrible.
 

Yesterday, we were hanging out in the lovely Beihai Park (near the Forbidden City) when we saw a line of military aircraft making a pass along Chang An Avenue (this is the big road that passes between the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square - famous for a particular photo of a gentleman standing with some tanks). They were rehearsing for the upcoming celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the People's Republic of China where there will be a big military parade replete with tanks, missiles, high-stepping troops, and (apparently) military aircraft).

After we saw the fighters, helicopters, bombers, and an airborne warning plane go over, Andrew (12) asked, "Are those American fighters?" I replied, "No, if those were American fighters over Beijing, we'd be in big trouble."

(Separately, it was interesting that the planes flew over in a well-spaced single file line. I think American forces would have come by in tight formation. Just a difference in style or some concern over their ability to fly close together over government officials and population?)

One of the most unique and enjoyable features in Bing is the custom homepage image we have each day. The photos are usually beautiful and have hotspots that link to interesting web info. (You can check out some of the previous images on the Bing Image Archive.)

Recently, my team in Beijing and Tokyo started doing images and hotspots specific to the Chinese and Japanese markets. I'm especially proud of image we posted today. The school in this photo is in Sichuan province (home of spicy food); it was destroyed in the horrible earthquake last year and rebuilt with the help of MSN China's Rainbow Action effort. Over the next few days we'll use the Bing home page and a series of new photos to drive more attention the survivors of the Sichuan earthquake and encourage people to help them recover. (On a technical note, this is the first time we've commissioned a photo for the Bing homepage; we normally use stock photos.)

Anyway, I encourage you to check it out at cn.bing.com and to donate to this effort on the Rainbow Action site (available in English and donations can be made through PayPal.) I'm often proud of the work we do technically, but it makes me even more happy when I can be proud of what Microsoft does for the community.

[Update: 2009-09-01 Apparently the MSN/PayPal collections for this phase are closed for now. It's still worth donating via other means.]

[Update: 2009-09-06 Shrunk the image down to fit on more screens.]

Unlike US drivers licenses, Chinese drivers licenses don't list the holder's hair or eye color. This makes total sense since most Chinese (at least the majority Han Chinese) have black hair and dark brown eyes, but it still surprised me.

Hm, I didn't think even the Chinese gov't would want kids playing with nuclear beach balls. (Seen at the Beijing airport.)

I saw this awesome poster up at a cool bar/restaurant near our house. One of the cool things in China is that many restaurants have a kids' playroom. This one is just cooler than most. Everyone wins: parents, kids, and restaurant. Seems like a good idea for an XBox marketing campaign...

(taken with crappy camera phone)

I saw this poster up around the shops near our house in Beijing and felt it really spoke to me. I too "am crazy for drink tonight" and of course, who doesn't want "continuous excitements" and "non-stop gifts"?

Wahoo! The wind has been blowing all day, so the air is getting clearer pretty quickly. Look at the difference between this morning (182), early this afternoon (129), and late this afternoon (74). You can really see how these different AQI scores look.

Source: US Embassy AQI Twitter Feed.

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