I happened to stumble across the CCTV tower

Yesterday I went searching for an electronics store to buy a new phone, or an electronic dictionary.  I'm looking for something small and portable that can run Pleco.  (This is the dictionary/translation program most of the students at school use.  It's super handy, you can draw a character and it will recognize it and give you the definition and some sample sentences.  Much more convenient than my little Oxford Pocket Dictionary.  I  run it on my tablet (and since it took so long for me to write this post I now run it on my new Android phone as well).  Here's what it looks like:

Having it on a phone is a heck of a lot more convenient than dragging around my tablet.  Anyways ... :-))

I walked around the corner and stumbled across the new CCTV tower:

The CCTV tower was designed by the famous architect Rem Hoolhaas, who also happened to design the Seattle Public Library (one of my favourite buildings).  Since China is a totalitarian regime and resistant to change, he designed the building so it would look different from every angle, to represent the forces of change in China (or something like that).

Architecture in Beijing is very interesting.  There isn't a building that is just a building.  Check out this collection I saw in my very limited stroll while looking for my new phone:

The last one has the sun peeking through the smog.  The day of my walk the pollution count hit 310 (the highest so far of my stay - it's since dropped below 200).

And here are a couple of shops I found.

Remember "Dolar Store" (that turned out to be a fancy restaurant)?  This is a real dollar store (everything under 9.9RMB, about $1.50).

Ever wonder why there are 1.5 billion Chinese?  There's one of these on pretty much every corner.  I haven't worked up the nerve to go inside yet.

Chinese slogans.  These are EVERYWHERE.