My Field Trip

Hey all, Daddy here. Pawpaw and I took a couple hours the afternoon of the pearl market trip (which, as Sherry said, was a joke) and took a cab down to the CCTV tower.

The CCTV tower is not a joke. It's a single building composed of two tower "legs" roughly the same size and vposition as the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Except that these two towers lean toward each other, on both the x and y axis, and at the top (at about half the height of the WTC I'm guessing) each one makes a right turn and cantelevers out over the open courtyard below, until they meet at the corner. And, I'm assuming, the president's office.








In this image you can just see several window-washer platforms. There is so much glass downtown in Beijing that I bet there is a small army of these guys. And it must take forever for them to finish a building like the CCTV tower.

I have not idea what the circular holes are under the "president's office" But they're each about twenty feet across. maybe some kind of ventilation fans?





Also of note, and right next to the tower, is the old CCTV building, which burned to the ground (so to speak) in February when someone decided to use it for a fireworks platform during the Spring Festival. Without a permit of course. The building was a comlete loss. it's also the reason there are no photos of the base of the CCTV tower, as they've erected their own little Great Wall around the site, about ten stories tall.