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Wednesday, January 02, 2008

The Forbidden City, then and now 

By TigerHawk at 1/02/2008 10:02:00 PM


As previously reported, I'm scanning some of my old slides -- those that we have not sent to off-site storage -- with the Canon CS8800F Color Image Scanner. In 1984, I and a couple of friends traveled through China for a couple of weeks. The country was very poor, had no facilities for tourists (we stayed with the people for pennies a day), and had not at that point rehabilitated its great buildings. That did not matter, though, because only tiny numbers of foreigners and a few senior Communist "cadres" were there to see the attractions. Here, for example, is a picture of part of Beijing's "Forbidden City" in May 1984, when it was, well, shabby and almost completely deserted.


The Forbidden City, Beijing, 1984


By June 2006, the buildings had been beautifully restored, and there were huge numbers of tourists, both foreign and Chinese.


Forbidden City, 2006


What a difference money makes.


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1 Comments:

By Blogger GreenmanTim, at Thu Jan 03, 08:48:00 PM:

Look at the difference in air quality, though.  

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