Museum front. You see that blue sky? Been standard for the last week. Definitely strange.


So as many of you may know already, I, much like Kim Jong Ill, enjoy looking at things.
This past Sunday was spent at the National Art Museum of China, and it was really cool so I thought I’d share some pictures.
Note: Because I love you guys and because this is art, I left the pictures a little bit bigger than normal so if you click on them you should be able to zoom pretty far. That is, until Geoff’s auto-image-resizing script hits them tomorrow at midnight. But I’m posting this at 7AM Austin time so consider the bigger pictures a reward for checking daily (=

Giant cat's cradle out front. Lotsa string-themed exhibits inside


One of said string exhibits. People were weaving stuff behind the huge characters


It's always appealed to me how writing and art are pretty much interchangable here. That was one of the things the guy from sichuan was talking about, actually -- how the same artistic drive fuels both painting and calligraphy


Engraved panels displayed on opening cabinets so you can see both sides


Bahahahaha


This is included because the elevator didn’t have a “close door” button; anyone who has been to China immediately sees why this is problematic, namely because Chinese dudes in elevators are perhaps *the* most impatient people in the world, and will constantly — literally constantly — attempt to close the doors as frequently as possible. This might be a defense mechanism to prevent overcrowding of elevators, come to think of it. Anyway, I rode four elevators that afternoon and each time there were people who got in and immediately went for the ‘close’ button. Finding none, they were visibly frustrated and confused. Fun times.

Steps in making a traditional kite / paper decoration


I'm actually not a big fan of cubism -- the entire 5th floor -- but this was just too adorable


I didn't know you posed for a painting this summer, Anna


Big fan of the one painting, four parts style. Entire floor full of these. Really neat landscape art



After talking to the student of the guy who painted this, I was able to ascertain that the trees were not on fire, it was just autumn. Sorry for the bad quality! Hard to take good pictures when they had glass over them like this...


And thus concludes the first installment of ‘you tell kevin what to do, he goes and does it then blogs about it.’ Keep suggestions coming!

PS: Had lunch with a girl from work today; we were for whatever reason talking about 3D movies. In english, she said she couldn’t see the 3D-ness, and never could. when you’re young they can sometimes fix it, but once you’re older than six… and then she had no idea what the rest of that thought was in english. But I realized our random unit on female infant abandonment in china (no joke. most depressing textbook EVER) had me covered: 那样的毛病没有治 (that type of defect is incurable)? She was like ‘yeah, exactly.’ These are strange times

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