Tag: Beijing

Russian Embassy, Beijing, China

Looking for something else, I happened to run across this image of the huge Russian embassy compound in Beijing. Beyond the fact that China’s relationship with Russia is in the news these days, there is no particular reason for posting this photo. It was taken in February of 2012, several months before I departed from Beijing and China for good.

For more than 200 years the site was home to the Russian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Mission, which acted as a sort of unofficial representative of the Russian government. After the Russian revolution in 2017, people fleeing Russia found refuge at the mission. In the 1950s after the establishment of the PRC, the Mission was closed and the property and buildings were turned over to the USSR. An embassy housing the USSR’s and later Russia’s diplomatic mission to China was built and opened for use in 1959.

Rock & Roll, Beijing, May 2007

This boy was attending a rock music festival – cannot recall the name of the event – for a number of years an annual music show in Beijing during the May Day holiday. Local and foreign bands, though no big name acts. I went for the photos, the music was mostly noisy and beyond an old timer like me. This festival is long gone. Too many bad elements and bad ideas, and definitely too much fun for the humorless old gangsters that run the country to tolerate.