60 yrs of the People's Republic

I am off to Mongolia for October Holiday tomorrow, but before departing I wanted to share a little bit about the recent festivities for the 60th year anniversary of "New China" !

Mao Zedong of the Communist Party founded the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949 at Tian'an Men Square in Beijing. This year the celebration was particularly large and encompassing because the number 60 is of particular importance to the Chinese people. The lunar calendar is based in intervals of 12 years, each marked by a different animal in the Chinese zodiac. 60 is often thought to be the "golden" year because it marks an end to five cycles of the zodiac.

Preparation for the parade in Beijing was pretty intense. From about mid September, there have been thousands of volunteers mobilized around the city to "maintain order." The majority of the volunteers are senior citizens or older folks, and I'm not really quite sure what they do. Oftentimes the volunteers sit in groups of two about every 10 meters from each other, and just chat to each other while wearing the red armband that says things like "harmonious society" and "speak civilly". In the subway stations there are also volunteers, telling people to stand behind the line, wait for passengers to get off the train first, etc.

My office is on one of the major streets that was used for the parade, so we had to close down early several times prior to Oct 1st for "practice sessions"--which no one was allowed to watch. All apartments and buildings on the major roads of the parade routes were ordered from September 25 - Oct 3rd to keep windows shut at all times, and one of my friends told me that some residents in these apartments were warned not to stand too close to their windows to look out/take pictures of the parades, otherwise they would be shot!! Not sure if that's completely true... but I do know all the windows were closed on the major routes, whereas before they were often open and some even hanged laundry outside their windows.

A very odd incident occurred three Fridays ago on September 18. I was at a friend's birthday party at one of our favorite bars in the Sanli Tun embassy area, a very crowded couple of small streets that have lots of bars and stores. It was about 11:45pm and I was just leaving to go to a different bar on the other side of the street, but I noticed that the street had been taped off and there were police officers holding riffles every 3 meters. The pedestrian walkway crossing the street was also closed off, and a group of people was gathering on the caution tape, anxious to get to the other side. A little after 12 am we stopped scratching our heads as a procession of heavy artillery tanks rolled down the street. Our jaws dropped as over 50 different vehicles continued to proceed down this major bar avenue at 12am on a Friday evening. We waited for an hour-- the tape wasn't taken down until 1am-- and of course I cursed myself for forgetting to bring a camera-- I should know by now that life in China is unpredictably exciting!

Other odd things that were done in preparation for the parade: all supermarkets were banned from selling knives, subway stations would periodically close without advance warning, and I even heard that all taxis were bugged with listening devices from the evening of September 30 - morning of October 2 (again that may not be true...). Certainly felt very nervous around Beijing, from the large amount of guards/police officers with huge guns to the huge influx of Chinese people waving flags and taking pictures (the city has been even more crowded than usual, if you can believe it). NY Times has an interesting photo collection discussing the preparation / training of guards and parade participants-- some pretty brutal training that has been going on for almost 8 months!

I biked to Tian'an Men square the evening before the parade, just to check out what was going on and see the stage-- especially since I was warned by many to not even try to get near to central Beijing/Tian'an men on the actual day of the 1st. There were guards standing every 3 meters again, standing in complete stillness and watching for any type of "trouble". My friend told me that guards were standing on the entire length of the parade route from 10pm - 10am, the start of the actual parade on the 1st. We passed hundreds of cops on the way to Tian'an men, some standing at make-shift "emergency booths" with wired telephones and medical supplies.

When we arrived to the square, we again saw hundreds of police officers marching around the stage and between the massive columns that had been erected for celebrating 60 years of communist rule. There were also about 50 or so onlookers, like me and my friend, who had came to the Square at 12am just to take a peak at the magnificence prepared for the next day. These people were all snapping pictures and just gazing on at the huge columns, standing pressed up against the newly erected white fence separating the road (in between Forbidden Palace and Tian'an Men square, where the columns were) and the pedestrian area. About once every couple minutes, a police officer would come over with a megaphone and say, "OK, keep moving," and they would move another few meters down the pedestrian walk in front of the Forbidden Palace, and then stop and gaze-- only for the same cop to come by again and say, "Let's go people, keep moving." It was like it was an obvious chore for the cop to push people along, but he recognized that they just wanted to soak up the excitement for the next day...

That night the weather was reallllly nasty. Beijing smog x28303-- really hazy and unclear. An article in the Guardian mentioned China's massive cloud-seeding plans for the parade-- the Chinese government has organized eighteen cloud-seeding aircraft and 48 fog-dispersal vehicles to intercept rainclouds that might “interfere” with the festivities. Relying on the same “cloudbusting” techniques implemented last year during the Olympic Games, rain-dispersal rockets that pump clouds with silver iodide or liquid nitrogen will be used to clear the skies. And wow it worked--! Yesterday, and even today, the skies were an uncommon blue, really pretty amazing.

I watched the actual parade on TV with three of my friends. Malkom and Molly kindly offered their apartment for watching the parade live, which was a lucky choice because they live on the North side of the city, so the subway was still running to their apartment. I attached some pictures here that I took of the television. It was a really amazing 2 hour show-- actually completely held my attention, hahaha... I'm a sucker for mass calisthenics; the parade often reminded me of the Mass Games of North Korea, but smaller in scale and content (sorry that video is kinda lame, but still some great footage). Also, funny to note that every single channel available on the television was playing the parade, no matter what type of channel (e.g., cooking channel) it was. Oh, the power of state-owned television/everything.

But don't just stop with these photos, take a look at this link-- by far the best footage I've seen of the parade: http://www.dslrnewsshooter.com/2009/10/01/shooting-chinas-60th-anniversary-parade-with-the-7d-5dmkii-and-nikon-d700/


Really amazing stuff. Unfortunately the internet is not working and I can't seem to attach any pictures :( Perhaps I'll try again when I'm back from my trip. Enjoy the above links though!