[August 4, 2009]I am back in the country, we came back on the 30th.
Twenty-seventh: In the morning, my mum and I went out to hunt down a music and video shop. There was a tiny one in a comparatively loud and smelly section of the city - oh well, it was good enough. I was hoping to snag a copy of Regina Spektor's Far for cheaper than in the States, but nope, they were all over Britney Spears and Michael Jackson. Oh, well. I did debate over whether or not to buy a copy of Abbey Road but decided not to, because I always feel kind of embarassed asking for stuff. At least my mom knocked herself out buying a pound and a half of old, weird Asian movies.
In the afternoon we went to the Bird's Nest and Water Cube. It was a pretty long bus ride there, probably 45 minutes there and over an hour back since everyone was getting off work by then. The latter wasn't open to the public, but the former was. I really didn't think much of the Bird's Nest when I saw it on TV, but it was different actually seeing it up close. It was huge when you stood next to it, imposing but in a good way. The architecture I liked a lot, the design was really interesting, and I thought all the interior workings were really well-organized. The inside was crowded with tourists, but I'd gotten used to that by then. Oddly, it was actually kind of small, or smaller than you'd expect, for an Olympic stadium. Still, though, it felt so surreal that I was there, that I was walking on the same ground Olympians had walked on not a year ago (although they'd put this sort of latticing over the ground to preserve the turf). It was lovely, everything was so clean and bright, even the sky, especially the sky.
Twenty-eighth: Me and a bunch of assorted relatives spent the majority of the day at the Great Wall. The region is pretty mountainous, so we had to take a half-mile cable car ride up to the starting point - I loved it, there's just something, well...endearing about being in a little box hung by a single skinny metal arm from a wire, going a mile an hour. Plus, the cars themselves are just so cute.
It felt like we went a long way on the Wall, but sadly, we could still see where we started from when we decided to turn back. It's not easy, though - you're almost constantly going either up or down, and lot of the stairs were crumbling from age. Plus, there's nowhere to go to the bathroom. I don't know about you, but I could never pee on a national treasure. Guess everyone's different, though.
Twenty-ninth: Went to the National Museum of Art. They didn't have as much stuff as I thought they would, but what they did have was pretty cool. One of my favorites was this series of photographic panels called the Moment series showing people caught in ordinary moments, like squirting hand sanitizer into their hand, picking up their cat, or lying under the covers, except with heavy chiaroscuro so the light areas looked like a spotlight and the dark areas like the darkness of a stage. The photographer also modified the colors so they were a lot more saturated and grittier somehow, so the overall effect was pretty much stunning.
Another exhibit called The Women's River featured lines of washboards hanging from the ceiling in an ascending line over a swath of silk similarly hung. Rippling lights and water noises completed the work. It was lovely.
Oh, and they had these awesome buttons in the gift shop - they had details from old paintings printed onto them!
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