Peaceful Rise

One World, One Dream, One-Piece Pajama Suit Usually when an area in Beijing is fenced off for destruction, the fencing is covered with huge canvas printed with repeating pictures of greenery: woods, lakes and parks with elderly people in wheelchairs happily being pushed along brick paths by healthy role-model youths, strolling one way down the right side of the picture and then the other way back in mirror image.  "No destruction here!" said the facades.  "Only beautiful greenery!" Now as of last week they have all been uniformly replaced by coverings printed with Beijing's Olympic slogan, brightly decorated in solid rainbow colors.  There are so many construction sites and all of the coverings were replaced so quickly that it's as though the whole city slipped into a new pair of pajamas.  It doesn't seem right that it should remind me so much of pajamas, seeing as Beijing is getting ready for either a party or an important formal occasion rather t...

This bus is parked in the alley outside my window. It's filled with fruit, and I don't think it can move. When I moved in, the wall behind it enclosed a field of rubble. Maybe there were houses there before. A couple of months ago work crews came and started drilling the ground and digging a pit, and shipping out truckful after truckful of dirt. There is now such a massive deep pit behind the wall that I can't see the bottom of it from my window. But the wall is still there and the bus is still parked beside the wall, as though there were no menacing gaping chasm behind it. I imagine some big yellow metal arm of a crane or digging machine reaching up out of the pit, chomping down on the bus and snatching it back over the wall.