Flickr Picks: My favourite China related finds from Flickr, the photo sharing website. Click on the image to visit the photo's home page on Flickr.

Mario Carvajal posted several photos of Tiananmen under clear blue skies:

Just to offset my last post about smog In southern China, here are some photos of Tiananmen and the Forbidden City in Beijing under clear, blue skies.

I’ve told this to people again and again: In Beijing, the pollution can be horrible (though not as bad as Guangzhou), but you’ll also get some lovely days of perfect wheather as well. These photos prove it!

Disclaimer: This photo was not taken by me. It was shared by a third-party on Flickr, under a Creative Commons license. For details on the license, see the photo's home page on the Flickr website.

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Sepperer Markus | www.weltraumsepp.blogspot.com posted a photo:

The bad side of living in China: the pollution. It’s often, but not always, bad throughout most of China. However, in the southern areas (ie Guangdong) the pollution is terrible. The whole of Guangdong is often covered in smog.

The reason? The huge number of factories in Guangdong. Guangdong is wall to wall industrial from one side to the other. Of course there are problems with environmental controls in these factories too, which makes it even worse.

This picture matches the worst smog I’ve personally experienced, which was in Guangzhou. Shenzhen, where this was taken, is only about an hour away from Guangzhou, so it’s no surprise that conditions are similar.

Smog is the one thing I don’t like about living in China.

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Recently, egorick posted a picture of a cyclist wearing a full face sun visor:

Co-incidentally, I just came across an old post on Sinosplice called China’s Solar Visor Craze which discusses the sun visor craze starting in 2004. I’m pretty sure that I saw these way back in 2002 in Guangdong, so it may have taken a while for them to spread to the rest of the country.

The popularity of these sun visors is in large part due to an obsession with protecting themselves from the sun. This is especially prevalent in Chinese women, who want to have milky white skin – traditionally peasant women had dark skin from working in the fields, wheras high class ladies spent most of their time indoors and had pale skin as a result.

Anyway, these sun visors are a very clever invention and they seem to be spreading – I recently saw a lady wearing one of these full face sun visors in the middle of Brisbane! Not really surprising given the large number of Chinese people in Brisbane, but it took me rather aback.

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Magnifique, lizixiang, 璀璨！ posted a couple of superb photos of the Beijing Railway Station at night:

I recently wrote briefly about the Beijing Railway Station, after seeing another photo of it, so it’s timely to come across these photos now.

It looks very impressive at night time and quite different from the previous daytime shot. The building is lit superbly, but that’s not a surprise – the Chinese are excellent at lighting buildings at night.

Full marks to Magnifique, lizixiang, 璀璨！ for some excellent shots.

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cogdogblog posted a photo:

Yes, they have Diet Coke in China. These days it’s fairly easy to get, especially in the big cities. However, when I first went to China in 2002, to a smallish city in Guangdong, it was almost impossible to get.

Having searched the city, with no luck, I tried asking for it in the Dynasty Hotel, which was to become our favourite watering hole. The waitress just couldn’t understand me, even with the help of my phrasebook and my miming.

After about 15 minutes of this, on and off, something went click in her mind and she brought me an ice cold can (yes it was cold!), just like the one in the picture and I was a very happy man!

Actually it was called Coke Light, not Diet Coke, which is the name which was used in Hong Kong for some reason. I’m not sure what it’s called in China these days. Obviously, it has a Chinese name, which you can see in the picture, but if you turn the can around, the other side will be in English.

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shizhao posted a photo of Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp Beijing 2008:

Of course Matt is the creator of WordPress, the blogging software used to run JobsInChina.

When I started this site (and my other site as well), I was living an hour or two outside of Beijing. I would have jumped at the chance to have attended WordCamp Beijing, but I don’t think they had one while I was there. Now I’m back in Brisbane of course, so I guess I’ll have to wait for a Brisbane version.

I hope anyone who attends WordCamp Beijing 2008 has a great time!

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cogdogblog posted a photo showing the inside of a lift, with the fourth floor missing from the controls:

As you can see in the photo, floor 4 is missing from the elevator controls. This is due to superstition – in Chinese, the word for 4 sounds like the word for death.

From what I’ve seen, the way the number 4 is treated in China is a little like the way the number 13 is treated in the West.

Most buildings I’ve been into do have the fourth floor. Most people I’ve met don’t pay too much attention to the fact that the number is supposed to be unlucky.

Of course there are always some people who treat it more seriously and in general Chinese people are more superstitious than those in the West.

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tmesis posted a couple of really great photos of Hong Kong:

I really like these photos, partly because they are different from the standard Hong Kong photo, partly because I love Hong Kong, and partly because they’re just great photos!

The first one is a delayed exposure shot showing the stream of headlights on the Hong Kong traffic. This is truly one of the greatest photos I’ve seen on Flickr. Click on the link, go to Flickr and view the original in full size!

The second photo captures the real Hong Kong. It’s not all fashion outlets and modern buildings – there are plenty of building that look rundown and, lets face it, a bit of a mess. If you’re staying in a hotel in Hong Kong, the view out the window is often very similar to this. I’m not sure why, but I actually like this sort of view!

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cogdogblog posted a photo:

What can you say about this! An absolute classic, although the subjects of the photo probably don’t realise just how symbolic it is:

The old generation (loyal comrades holding up Chairman Mao’s little red book), replaced by the younger generation (dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt and holding up a mobile phone).

In a way, that sums up just what modern China is like: racing to become a modern super power, but becoming a little Westernised in the process.

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cogdogblog posted a photo:

Yep, those are computer books covering topics that are close to my heart: PHP and AJAX. You’ll find many more books like this in any bookstore in China. If you can find a book on any computer topic in the West, you’ll find a Chinese version of it in China.

Maybe surprisingly, many of these seem to be the genuine article. Of course a good number will be knock-offs (I’ve seen some fakes that my students had bought), but most of the ones in the bookstores appear to be genuine. I’ve also read stories about official translations.

I used to wander into bookstores and look at all these books I wanted to read, pick them up, look at the Chinese for a while, then put them down again and walk away in frustration. It wasn’t so easy to get English copies (although you’ll get them in places like Beijing).

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