Visiting the Egg

The National Center for Performing Arts in its glittering glory

One of our stops in Beijing was the National Center for Performing Arts, otherwise known as "The Egg", more specifically the duck egg because of its oval shape.

On the day we went it seemed to have a cloud directly above it and a blue sky.

Four men were cleaning the back of the building

We first walked all the way around it, and it seems to be rising from a giant pond. At the back we were surprised to see four men, two on the roof -- with no visible harnesses -- cleaning the windows, while two others below were in harnesses and power washing the metal shell.

Then we tried to get inside from the back, but a security guard told us to go to the front. Turns out for 30 kuai (US$4.37) you can go into the NPCA and take a closer look, though not go into the actual venues, the concert hall, opera house or theatre.

Nevertheless it was still nice to roam around to see what was in there. And inside there were basically several strange sculptures with not much artistic value, along with a series of escalators that kept going higher and higher. They even had signs instructing people to stand on the right of the escalator!

We saw some mannequins wearing costumes, and pictures documenting the construction of the NPCA, a giant list of names of every guest artist who had performed here, and of course all the senior officials who have visited, with Chinese President Xi Jinping getting the biggest exposure.

The interiors are too cool not to photograph!

It was relatively quiet in there, and there was even a press conference going on that we were tempted to sneak into, but our T-shirts and shorts would have given us away.

The coffee shop looked sad -- two young men quickly stood to attention when they saw us approach, but we were tempted by the pastries or coffee on offer. It's so surprising that such a massive place would have such a small refreshments area.

Oh but there were many washrooms (but not many stalls), though they were very clean. 

In fact our report overall of the state of washrooms in Beijing has improved significantly again; however we did not venture into the public washrooms!

Picture of the Day: Spidermen on The Egg

Can you spot the four men on the roof of The Egg?!

We walked a lot today -- even before lunchtime we had walked from Xidan to Chang'an Avenue to get to Tiananmen Square and then Wangfujing. On the way we made a detour to the National Centre for Performing Arts, known as The Egg.

Before we wandered inside, we walked around the whole building and at the back of the building we were shocked to see four men up on the roof.

Two were near the top -- with no safety ropes -- and cleaning the windows in the middle of the building -- while two others were suspended by ropes and using a hose to power wash the metallic shell. Presumably they were trying to wash off the accumulated dust.

It was quite a sight to watch these men cleaning the performing arts centre and I wondered if perhaps they were ex-military with experience repelling down buildings...