Nothing but pictures from China

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Anyone who has been around me long enough knows that I take a lot of pictures....most of which are bad and never see the light of day. An even smaller number of those eventually make it to the blog posts here. But I had so many good pictures from China I'm making this post as a sort of a filtered gallery. Enjoy.

Full disclosure, a few pictures will have a bit of writing and story behind them, otherwise this is what the title would suggest, nothing but pictures.

This was right next to our hotel, apparently it was some kind of talent show (Think "China's Got Talent"). To our surprise we found it on TV one night. 

Something you just get used to is that fireworks are always going off....everywhere. It's a fascinating part of their culture. (Taken from our hotel room)

We actually found a store that was nothing but puzzles. Somehow we made it out without getting one.

We just liked the smiley face

So many Ricksha's everywhere

These hats were for newly married couples

Our attempt at a heart, keyword

While Helen was taking our picture, this person tried to sell us postcards

It was unfortunate that we couldn't go into the Forbidden City that weekend, but getting this close and being able to overlook it all was nice

The Center of Beijing 

This tree looked artsy

Artsy filter for the artsy tree

Random fruit tree

I'm winning this staring contest

We kind of thought he had puffed out cheeks, so we joined him

More filters!

This was just between some stairs and I thought it looked cool

More Elephants

Replica of an Empress headress

Money pile for luck in the Ming Tomb

This was the exit from the tomb. They carved out the hill it was under so you wouldn't have to climb the full 13 floors back up the stairs

For the one freeze frame that worked, there were about a dozen like this

That reaction

Love apology elephants 

The rain stopped just as we got there

If you couldn't tell by now, Helen REALLY liked taking pictures of us 

The first picture taken on the wall.

So many pictures taken the gifs come easy

Better version of last photo

So strong

 

 We got Helen back tho, and she was more photogenic than us

Tiny canon of awesomeness 

 One of the trees by the wall had a live cicada on it that Katie snatched a photo of 

The customer invited us to a dinner on our last night in China. This was a great meal and we had a lot of fun.

Sometime years from now it'll be nice to just be able to load this page up and recall the memories. 

Our next assignment is still India, but no news on that front yet, but once we know more we'll make the phone calls and post it up everywhere for all to know.