revisiting China

I am down with the double whammy of my illness and some bad cramps today, and Mike is taking the brunt of Flynn's entertainment time, so I thought (in my feeble state) that I'd play around with some of my China photos in Photoshop. Come to find out, however, that even the CDs that we bought in China don't want to function properly on my computer here. This is one in a long line of mysterious electronic malfunctions we've experienced since flying to China. Anyone know of a "Bermuda triangle" that lies between here and there? When we arrived in Beijing, we discovered that not only had my automatic (read unstoppable) watch stopped dead, but Mike's brand new Flip video camera and his regular camcorder had also ceased to work. Very, very peculiar.
So I am frustrated but not particularly surprised that our photo CDs aren't working today. Mike was able to download all 4000 photos that we took from the laptop (which, fortunately, did not stop working) onto his Mac, so we have them safe in any case.
The photos below were the only ones I was able to bring down before the CDs started crashing my computer. Sigh.
Thought I'd give you a little break from the inevitable surfeit of Flynn photos. Some of these were on my other blog, but they show up a lot better on blogger, so I'm subjecting you to them again.


This photo reminds me of a funny thing about dragons in China. Our Beijing guide, Leo, was showing us around the Forbidden City, and explaining to us about the parade of critters that line the corner of every roof eve (you can see some on the crest of the roof above). He told me that there were nine animals, because the Chinese believe that nine is the only "perfect" number.
"But," he qualified, raising a finger, "They're not real animals, you understand. These are all imaginary animals. Well...except for the dragon."