Traveling to China? The future seems to be arriving there in some pretty spectacular ways. I mean, more than just the kind of future you see in a child's eyes - I'm talking about the kind of future you used to see in movies with the number "2000" stuck at the end of the title.

No ordinary Olympic pool.

Like, for instance, you have to see the pool they've built in Beijing. It's like a mad hybrid of Roger Dean and R. Buckminster Fuller, only with swimmers inside it. It's built of transparent teflon and based on the geometry of soap bubbles and animal cells.

Yeah. If you're in Beijing in 2008, you've gotta see this thing.

Robocop

Meanwhile, in Wuhan they've unveiled the first electronic policeman, a robot-like device with 4 electronic eyes and a communications system for citizens to talk to "real" police. It's a little more sophisticated than the earlier prototypes of traffic-directing androids seen on Beijing's crowded roadways. (And we all know about China's glorious robot history, right?)

I'm not sure if you need to see this or not, especially since there's some real problems with "real" policemen in Wuhan right now. Problems like...

Former troops smashed classrooms, overturned cars and set fires to protest their poor living conditions, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy reported.

Le Rock Chinoise.

So maybe now's not the best time to get playful with police in Wuhan. Instead, you could just try to catch Rebuilding the Rights of Statues, which is not a lobbying group for electronic policeman rights but is an indie band. With a song in English called "Hang the Police" - which they admit they told Chinese censors meant "the police are laughing" in Mandarin.

There's audio at the link. I don't know if it's ironic or not, but they sound a *lot* like one specific band to me. Which band? Interpol, of course. Check 'em out.

And on the home front...

Two things worth short mentions:

* The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal has another story from the "Embracing China and Experiencing Beijing" camp recently hosted by the China Center for Adoption Affairs. This one follows 13-year-old Daniel Clark who is a boy adopted from China. As dad to another boy adopted from China, I say, "Cool!" I also like him talking about coming home from China with a feeling of pride. Rock on, young Master Clark.

* Denver columnist Jared Keller is getting ready to write his way through an adoption from China. He's already adopted domestically, so it should be interesting to see the comparison between the two systems as he goes. Probably worth a bookmark.

----

For information/instructions on how to subscribe FREE to your favorite AdoptionBlogs, please visit this link.