The Box we live in

A store front... Have you seen this image on CNN? No where to hang your laundry? No problem, put in the window of your shop.


An outside haircut!


The flower market I like best. OK, so the sky is Blue-ish on this day.

A local woman I know describes Beijing as like a cat litter box. It seems great on the surface, but lurking below is a load of S*@t. These are her words, not mine, but I think the times we are living in now make the metaphor fit very well.

For the Olympics, the city has been dressed to impress the waiguoren (foreigners). Exterior construction has been completed, leaving the insides of buildings a tangled mess. Buildings that couldn't be completed on the outside have massive banners of beautiful athletes covering them. Structures that were deemed too old and run-down for visitors to see were hidden behind a high wall or even covered with a fake, Hollywood-like exterior! There are countless extreme examples but you have to dig beneath the clean surface to see the real China.

Take the opening ceremonies, for instance...

Martial arts students who were performers in the opening ceremonies lived in and couldn't leave army barracks while preparing for 8-8-08... that is if they were lucky. Many were wounded, rendered unconscious from heatstroke and were forced to wear adult diapers so the show could go on!

The ceremony's director insists that the wretched conditions were necessary to the success of the theatrical display of the opening ceremonies. Nearly 15,000 cast and crew came together to pull off a display so well coordinated and grandiose that, "Only North Korea could have done it better," he said. A telling statement.

The performers worked for an average of 16 hours per day for three months under strict supervision, not able to leave the military camp. It was recently revealed that a woman in her twenties was injured during a rehearsal and may be permanently paralyzed.

Think about other examples that have made headlines: the digital enhancement of the already spectacular opening ceremonies, the lip syncing in order to put on a more beautiful face of China, the gymnasts' faked passports.

Beijing Olympic organizers have revealed that the nearly 900 performers, in the spectacular part of the show with the movable boxes, spent up to 6 hours crouched in the 40 pound boxes.

Yet, despite the deplorable conditions, the 2008 performers appeared beyond happy at the opening ceremony, and according to one performer, they were. "All the tears, the sweat, and sometimes even blood that we shed, I now think it was quite worth it," said Ren Yang, 17, of the Tagou school. "When we performed that night, all that I could feel in my heart was joy. Pure joy."

I cannot imagine such a thing occurring in America or any other western nation, for that matter. The conditions would not be approved by OSHA and lawsuits would be plentiful. Would the result be as magnificent? Which way is better?

I took these pictures on my way from my house to a local market, far from the Olympic green and international media. You can see it's not as clean, not as modern and the true character of the true China hides back here. Real people, with real smiles are on the streets and in the markets. You can see a man getting his hair cut at a road side barber! Inside the market, I bought fresh flowers, had some framing done and bought a lovely statue of a woman and a baby. No hard bargaining necessary. If you stop to chat with a local resident, no matter who it is, he or she can quote the up to the minute medal count for China (and America). They are proud and happy to have the Olympics here but most of them are living their lives, as normal, making their living, 1 kuai at a time, going home to their hutongs or small apartments, far from the international eye. This is not the China you see on NBC.