My apartment is in 东直门 (dongzhimen), a highly commercialized, white-collar area. Raffles City is a new mall (built within the last couple of years) on the southwest corner*.
Starting last week, the otherwise quiet and low-trafficked mall is now filled with a looping playlist of Christmas carols. An impressive Christmas scene also went up in front of the mall last week (see full Flickr set). Behold:
Men working on the display last week
Poor reindeers
The completed scene
Raffles City, December 2009
Ahh, global commercialization.
*Locations in Beijing are usually referred to by their relative cardinal directions to other buildings/landmarks. Meeting a Chinese person yesterday for dinner, she gave me the following directions: “There is a XXX Center that is easy to spot on YYY Street. YYY Bank is west of XXX Center, and the restaurant is slightly west of YYY Bank.”
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