In the past few years that has been an enormous development in Beijing. In so many areas the nice traditional 1 story buildings like the beautiful courtyards have been torn down to give way for more glass high rises. The Financial Street (Jinrong Jie) in Beijing has become longer and longer with more and more office buildings. Most of them still empty. Like these ones next to my office.
Next to is are still towers of typical Chinese residential buildings. They are about 26 stories high and always look the same. Before the Olympics the city put huge efforts to repaint them all. So some look better from the outside – but only at a first glance. This building is what I see from my office.
It is amazing to see that the residents constantly throw things out of the window. And also empty bottles out of the window. So the best is to have a small roof above your window as well as keeping the windows closed at all times (except for when you have trash to throw out) to protect your apartment from falling garbage.
There is somebody who owns pigeons and has a pigeon house on the top of the building. He lets the pigeons out for some flying in the late afternoon every day. But actually I often wonder why there are no wild urban pigeons in Beijing. They are in almost all big cities, especially Western cities.
In case you did not pay attention to the pictures: We have been having gorgeous blue skies here in Beijing. 🙂