Parks in Beijing

Michael has been off looking for cool places to explore. He has found a few parks. You can check some of them out here.

Today Michael was in search of an unfortunate translation at Minzuyuan, Beijing's park honoring China's ethnic diversity. Minzu literally means "race," not ethnicity; for example, a Han person is still Han whether he grows up in Tibet or Beijing. Rumor had it that some fool translated "Minzuyuan" into English as "Racist Park."

Michael's comments from his brave new adventure:
The park was fairly impressive, even though nearly 50% was under construction. It's not a new park, but they're completely rebuilding it to get it ready for the Olympics. It will be fairly spectacular come 2008, I think. Wait 'till you see the photos I took. The place is huge. It's still fairly crude, but there are a lot of neat features to it: they've engineered the land to create simulacra of the terrain of each culture group, flowing from one to the next. Something like 56 different groups.