Forbidden City | Beijing
MTDateHeader>January 2, 2006
Olympus OM-10 | Fuji Superia 400
I arrived in China less than a week after the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. My plane was almost empty. Americans canceled their tickets in droves. The only Americans I met in the tourist mecca of Badaling (the closest section of the Great Wall to Beijing) were cameramen from "The Today Show."
I can't imagine China was free of anti-American sentiment before. However, the fact that this "vandalism" was not a permanent defacing of a priceless historical landmark but a hasty scribbling in the dust made me wonder if this was a very recent display of understandable resentment.