Exploring China with Google Earth

     When we made our first trip to China in 2001, we were pretty much like most of the other families in our travel group....REALLY focused on the adoption that was going to happen soon / had just happened, and otherwise in a general "fog". We trusted our guides completely and would get on the bus when they told us, to go where they told us . And it worked pretty well. But when we got home and had a little time to think about it, I had some questions. Like...what parts of Beijing, Nanchang and Guangzhou had we actually been in? When we went from here to there, what direction had we actually been traveling? And what kind of places/things were we riding right by without even knowing about it?


     On our second trip in 2003 (Beijing, Changsha and Guangzhou), I tried to pay a little more attention to some of the touring details and that helped give us a little better sense of where we actually were. But what helped the even more was a program I found shortly after our return called Google Earth. By now, just about everyone online has heard about the program, and we're all used to seeing Google Earth maps used on the nightly news. Using it myself is a great way for me to see where we had been, how we got from place to place, and where places are in relation to other places. 


     Now, we've been home almost a year from our third trip (Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou) and I'm still "addicted" to exploring China using Google Earth. And this time, I even used the program (along with the Picasa photo organizing program - also from Google) to "geotag" the pictures we took on our trip. (A process I'll explain in a future posting.) 


     But what I still enjoy the most is finding a site in Google Earth's maps that I have taken a picture of. For example....here is a picture of the Hall for Good Harvests at the Temple of Heaven Park in Beijing that I took last September 

     and here is what that same Building looks like in Google Earth. 

    Here is a picture of the new Performing Arts Hall in Beijing (just west of Tiananmen Square)

     and here is the building photographed from "way up above". 

     Yes, I am a bit of a "geek" (in the best sense of the word :), but I REALLY get a kick out of making these connections. So...as we go along here in this blog, I'll be putting more pics like these up for all to see. I'll also be asking sometimes if anyone has the "coordinates" for a place I can't find or some other kind of help finding it. And if you have a place in China that you'd like to see in Google Earth, let me know and I'll see if I can help you, too!