Absurdity, Allegory and China

I’ve just arrived back in Tianjin from four days in Beijing, and there’s so much to talk about I hardly know where to begin. Photos of the CCTV Headquarters Building seems to be as good as place as any while I collect my thoughts.

There’s the bullet train from Tianjin to Beijing (and vice versa, though we only took it one way) to report on. And Ai Wei Wei and Norman Foster at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing 798 on the morning of August 8th, an odd encounter on Wangfujing, water polo, a retired Brazilian colonel in the rain, and George Bush, both of them: we shared the same basketball game, though they were on the far, other side and I am quite sure that we were seeing the entire experience from distinctly different angles.

And (surprise!) I took more photos of the CCTV Headquarters Building in Olympiadic repose. (Click on any of the photos below for a larger version.)

And there are a lot more here, which I will be adding to over the next few days.