Gratuitous Photage

Never again will I promise a photo-a-day. I will, however, continue to promise an article-a-week. That said, I have to confess my stock of ideas gets smaller every week. If you've been reading my columns in the Daily regularly, I'd greatly appreciate your thoughts. Let me know what you've liked, what you haven't, and especially what you'd like to read more about. Now that I'm a few months removed from the category of "people who don't know that much about China," I've begun to forget what I didn't know, and what I was interested to learn. Anyway, send me an e-mail.

One of the nice things about posing as a photographer is that one has a nearly universal pass to wander aimlessly in sketchy locations at all hours. Shortly after taking the above, a group of my fellow Americans passed me standing by the side of the road, in the dark. "Oh. Hi!... I'm taking pictures." They were satisfied.

Not much to say, really. She was on her father's shoulders at Tiananmen Square for the daily flag-lowering ceremony. Feel free to ponder on the artist's meaning-- contrasting the youth of today, against the backdrop of Tiananmen. What, indeed, am I trying to tell you? And what, precisely, is the significance of the two flags? This is deep, I'm telling you. While you think, have a gander at the next photo, which I took at the Beijing Botanical Gardens a while back.