Beijing

We arrived in Beijing, I stayed with my dad and step-mom, while Wei stayed with his sister and mom. While in Beijing my dad took me to see the Olympic stadiums that were still under construction, to be used for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Extremely gradiose, ultra modern architecture seemed to have swarmed all over Beijing. Some of the single buildings occupy miles of land, humongous and rather wasteful. The neighborhoods I grew up in have no resemblance to what they used to be. Smack in the middle of downtown Beijing next door to the communist party headquarters and the Great Hall of Congress, they razed a large city block to build an ultra modern opera house complete with grandiose underground entry underneath a reflecting pool. Haven't lived here for over 20 years I'm not one to judge, but shocked and not in a good way.