Mista Barista sends us a digital postcard of his first journey out into the city.
Still struggling with jet lag, I finally got out today. A brief visit to Tiananmen Square for stories on a brief protest and ordinary folks looking forward to the Olympics. Your first sense of the place is how massive it is, a wide open space capable, it is said, of holding a million people packed in tightly enough. And the Chinese do believe in getting in close. As soon as Mark Carlson, the video journalist, and I set up to start work, we had people almost thisclose looking at us with interest. I also attracted the attention of one “student” who “interviewed” me for a “homework assignment.” We are of uncertain opinion whether he was an undercover cop, although the questions (news agency, home city and What do you think of the Olympic slogan (One world one dream)?) were pretty innocuous.
More likely to be an undercover was the gawker who got up close enough to stare at the underside of my press credential, where you find the passport number.
We got an Angeleno born in Beijing to cry on camera, so proud she was that the Games had come to the city of her birth.
Sounded almost too good to be true. Maybe that’s the undercover, providing perfect sound bites once the cameras are on.
Here’s a too-cute-for-words kid we found at Tiananmen. A crowd quickly gathered to coo at him and photograph. He was very cool with it.
More later.
Warren Levinson, third from right, is New York correspondent for AP broadcast services.
That is one cute kid.
The little Chinese boy ain’t bad, either.
Did anyone see my bubblegum?
Tianamen Square may be able to hold a million people, but the photograph of one young man and one Chinese tank defines the place for me.
very cool…safe trip to Mista Barista…looking forward to his reports and photos.
Glad to see he wasn’t wearing one of these things. You wouldn’t want to hurt the feelings of the Chinese now, would you?
As a former journalist, I can imagine how exciting it must be to be there.
The people really DO get close. Not shy at all. I was writing something one time and people were inches from me looking at what I was writing.(I was writing characters and they corrected me!!!) Take a look at the numbers on those squares on Tian’An Men Square. They have numbers which they use, I guess, to organize where people stand during ceremonies
Is that the ghost of Kurt Vonnegut behind Mista Barista?
Just wondering…..I wanted to watch the opening ceremonies on ch. 4 tonight, and the station was coming in with very poor quality…ghost like, with double images.
All the other stations were just fine…ONLY ch. 4 was poor.
Did anyone else have this problem…I was thinking, that maybe there was someone who was trying to kill the broadcast as some kind of protest…silly I know…but why would just ch. 4 be like that, during the opening?
hmmmmmm