BEIJING

It is the Forbidden City!
Though it was a rush 3-day trip, we still striked for a chance to visit the palace and had a distant viewing of the Bird's Nest, water cube and CCTV tower (which is still under construction).



We have made quite a number of photos.
Need "some" time to arrange!

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I may be wrong.
Iza is not particularly interested in visual perception of things.
She is far more interested in what the Earth looks like.
On our way to Beijing, on the plane she asked me,

"Mama, is the sky of Hong Kong the ground of Beijing?"

Before this,
she has asked several times whether there are people living beneath the ground.
And,
more than a year ago,
iza woke up one morning,
still lying on bed looking into the ceiling and said,

"The ceiling of 2nd floor is the ground of the roof.
The ceiling of 1st floor is the ground of second floor"

At that time,
I was impressed by her interpretation of duality of things.
And, now I have a much clear picture relating her questions.
Her conception of the Earth is like a building.
The sky is a slab.
Therefore, it really bothers her why we always see the sky but not the other slabs of the upper floors.
Every time when I read about ancient people’s hypothetic model of a flat Earth or portraying the world as a flat disk afloat in an ocean,
I’m fascinated by what made them think so.
They must be very curious and hooked onto their observations.
There were a lot of imaginations and hypothesis.
But as modern people,
with technological development of the latter half of the 20th century,
the image of Earth as blue green sphere is so popular,
we need not to imagine.
There is no need for us to dream about what the Earth looks like.
We are “deprived” from the opportunity in creating our own concept of the Earth as the ancients,
I think.

But,
Iza is just like going back in time,
like ancients,
she has vivid imaginations and associations in forming the image of the Earth!
She keeps her precious chance in a thin line.
If Beijing was on the top of Hong Kong’s sky,
then the plane flying from HK to Beijing was the elevator!
How interesting it is.