We celebrated China’s 60th birthday by wearing the t-shirts we bought when the Olympic flame came through Yichang. The front says “Go China!” and the back says, “I love China.”
Schäfer wore his “Made in China” t-shirt which our local friends love.
Since the weather was almost cool (read: in the low 80′s) we decided a family bike ride was in order. Schäfer barely fits in his iBert seat now. Guess we’ll have to start looking for a larger seat.
Hubs sporting his patriotic (if a little shrunk) shirt.
At 10am, the “parade” started. From where the soldiers started to the flag pole were 169 steps representing the 169 years of modern Chinese history. (Counted from the Opium War on.)
The first part of the parade was the review of troops and armament.
When President Hu drove past all the troops, he said, “Greetings, Comrades!”
Troops: “Greetings President.”
President: “Comrades, you are hard-working!”
Troops: “We serve the people!”
Our friend shared that is what they practice doing during the Freshman year month-long required military training. Hearing President Hu say these same two phrases over and over took him back to his college days.
That was China’s 13th military parade since the founding of the People’s Republic.
It was surprising to our friends to discover that we have nothing like this in America. The closest Hubs could think of were the airshows at the nearby Air Force base.
The parade itself wasn’t that interesting. It proceeded pretty slowly. For your viewing pleasure, we’ve found a quick 4 minute version of the parade, which is much more fascinating. Our favorite part of the parade was noticing how everyone marching in every unit was the exact same height.
China’s 60th Anniversary national day – timelapse and slow motion – 7D and 5DmkII from Dan Chung on Vimeo.
After lunch, I received some adoption news via phone which sent me into problem solving mode. We left and rode our bikes home. Unfortunately, Schäfer fell asleep for a 5 minute nap and refused to take a real nap once we were home. He barely made it to 7:30pm.
I wanted Schäfer to stay awake so we could watch the Beijing fireworks on our neighbor’s TV at 8pm. It turned out to be fine that Schäfer was asleep because her son was also not able to stay awake.
This evening, we called 5 different adoption agencies from 10pm – 1am.
