China 60th anniversary preparations
With only a week and a half left before the 60th anniversary of the PRC, it seems the whole country has caught National Day fever. Capturing the excitement, Boston.com has a wonderful collection of photos from various sources depicting many different preparations around China. We particularly like the military parade pictures: those outfits are fabulous! But amidst all the hoopla, it's a difficult time to be in Beijing.
With parade rehearsals and preparations, security has been taken to draconian heights, even surpassing the efforts made for the Olympics. Anti-explosive containers have been placed in subways, streets and subway lines around Tiananmen square have been cordoned off, and even pigeons have been grounded. All this commotion has caused so much disruption that the government was forced to cancel the final National Day parade rehearsal out of concern for the incredibly inconvenienced public. As if it wasn't hard enough to drive around Chang'an already.
And god forbid you want to buy any cutlery: in the wake of all those syringe stabbings in Xinjiang and the two major stabbing incidents in Beijing this past week, the government has decided to ban the sale of kitchen knives and other generally sharp objects that can be used as a shiv. We're not really sure whether banning the sale of knives in places like Wal-Mart will actually stop people from stabbing each other We wonder what restrictions have been placed on syringes?