Friday, October 10, 2008

Being a tourist


Since I had a free day today, I decided to take advantage of the glorious weather and indulge in one of those touristy excursions that you somehow never get around to in your home city - a trip to the top of the CCTV Tower (the old one, that is; unfortunately, the new CCTV building - Ole Scheeren's distinctive skewed arch, which you can see in the distance way over on the other side of town in the shot below - seems to be lumbered with the same name; so I imagine that this one is going to have to be re-christened the CCTV Antenna, or somesuch). The viewing platform is 238 metres above ground (that's about 780 feet, I think). I do hope someone's been taking regular pictures of the changing city from up there over the past 5 or 10 years: a time-lapse film of that transformation would be stunning (one of my not so crazy 'art' ideas!).

More views of the urban sprawl......



Ah, Beijing traffic! And that's the relatively un-busy West 4th Ringroad at a non-peak time of day! (My mistake! I'm so unfamiliar with the west side of town, I think my mind tends to exaggerate how far away it is. This is, in fact, the 3rd Ringroad - which does get pretty busy..... though not at 2pm.)

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