China 2008: A Glimpse into Beijing

As I was in Beijing yesterday, in some areas it was the quietest I have ever heard the city. Seemingly unusual due to the massive events currently taking place there...and then I remembered the new rules about honking during the Olympics, and the even numbered license plates that were taken off the road that day...and it all made sense.

In my previous post, I forgot to mention that on Friday, everybody in Beijing (and maybe all of China, not sure) was off work. It was sort of a "holiday" since the Olympics were opening that day. During the 2 1/2 months that I have been here, the Chinese people have had more holidays from work than most people in the US have in an entire year. They work to live and it seems that we live to work. Most if not all other countries have months of vacation during a year compared to our 2 weeks. Why exactly do we work ourselves into the ground? Thoughts?

I tried to chase down the road cycling race to watch it, but it was pretty hard to maneuver through the city with traffic, and everytime I got to a place it was going through, they had already gone by. So I gave up and went to Olympic City instead.

Here are a few pictures of the stadium from yesterday...