Soldier surveillance
(A soldier and family in the Summer Palace Gardens: Beijing, China)
There are masses of tourists in Beijing, in numbers I have never witnessed before. There are coaches offloading and loading thousands of them every minute, flags and umbrellas being waved, and squillions of snapping cameras and phones in every direction. In addition to the melee of visitors, street sellers, peddlers of varied knick knackery from postcards to miniature plastic Empress hairpieces, there are the military. They coordinate it all and they are everywhere.
We saw this family alighting from a boat on the lake in the Summer Palace; many military personnel appeared to be with family and friends during their time in Beijing. Perhaps they were in Beijing on holiday – we did see a group of soldiers posing for photographs at the gates of the Forbidden City with their officer. This soldier is more substantial than the rapier thin men overseeing Tiananmen Square; I get the distinct impression they should be lifting more weights.
Ying and I did some overtime last night and managed to leave the office quite ragged at 8pm. From the emails coming my way, the deadline is squeezing me ever tighter and I will try to keep on top of ‘china meets rosie’ as best I can over the coming week. I shall be back in the UK very soon (volcano permitting) as my flight leaves on the 18th, so it’s with a mixture of trepidation and nerves that I prepare to travel again (compounded by a sudden influx of work!).
And no, I don’t know what the lady in the background is doing.
