Happy Birthday China!

I had every intent to post this yesterday, but it's a long story. Here it is, though, in commemoration of a day well spent celebrating the 60th birthday of China.

Think 4th of July, communist (“socialism with Chinese characteristics”) style. As I write this, I am watching live on TV the military parade commemorating 60 years since the establishment of China. For me, it is mostly what I expected, but I am still amazed by what I see.

The celebrations began with Hu Jintao, chairman of the China Communist Party (along with a few other titles) reviewing the troops. If you watched the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, imagine something to a similar scale, except with representations of all of China’s armed forces regiments. Not a step was missed and not a gun misplaced as thousands of troops goose-step marched the streets of Beijing surrounding Tiananmen Square. Hu Jintao rode standing up in an open-top Chinese-made red flag limousine with four large microphones attached in front of him. With each new regiment passed, Chairman Hu stoically shouted, “同志们好！”，“同志们辛苦！””Greetings, Comrades,” “Comrades, hard working!” The reply, in tradition, was always the same: “Serve the people!”

Following the review of the troops, Hu Jintao presented a five-minute speech, celebrating the accomplishments of China over the past 60 years. It’s a speech I’d recommend anyone interested in Chinese way of thinking (if any of you exist) to go back and read. “The past 60 years have proven that only socialism could save China, and the past 30 years have proven that only economic reform could develop China, develop socialism, develop Marxism.”

To save your finger from scrolling past too much to finally get to the point, the rest of the parade I’ll just show in pictures with captions.

Hu Jintao riding past tanks as he reviews the troops.

People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers marching goose-step across Tiananmen Square.

An impressive display of China's air force.

An endless line of floats marking China's developments over the past 60 years.

Thousands of balloons released into the air at the end of the parade.

A colorful Tiananmen Square.

In the afternoon we ventured out to RT Mart (from what I’ve been able to find, this is a Taiwanese started Wal-Mart type store). We are sad to report that the U.S. is not the only place where holidays are big shopping days. National Day, combined with Mid-Autumn Festival, which is on October 3 this year, seemed to have drawn countless scores of people to the store. We did, however, enjoy the flowers and decorations adorning the main gate of Nanjing University in commemoration of the day.


To close off our evening of celebrations, we arranged with our friends Patrick and Maren to brave the crowds once more to view some fireworks. Besides being smashed like sardines between the thousands of other people who decided to turn up at the train station to watch the fireworks over Xuanwu Lake, the firework show was undoubtedly the best that any of us had ever seen. From 8:00pm to 8:45pm, a non-stop stream of fireworks blasted their way into the sky. Just imagine the grand finale of the last firework show you went to lasting forty-five minutes. We were quite impressed.

Unfortunately, due to the mass amounts of people who showed up, the usually convenient subway home turned out to be not so convenient, and we opted for the hour long walk home. To say the least, our feet were happy to be home at about 10:30pm last night.