Yesterday, I left work “early”, at 4pm, because I came into work at 6:30AM. Also, my folks were in town and I wanted to spend some decent time with them. Thirty minutes after I left, the announcement went out that we’d take a group photo the following day. So, with less than 24 hours notice, nearly the entire office was out in the middle of the grassy area of a highway exit ramp, posing for a group photo, while the photographer stood on the edge of the bridge above. In the US, getting a group of employees together for a photo like this would be next to impossible. It’s refreshing how open Chinese people are to these sorts of things and how much fun they have with it.

Here’s a shot of one of the poses. We’re spelling out words to stitch together with Photoshop:

Whenever I talk up the fantastic scenery around Guilin, I always express my disbelief that the Hollywood has never used this scenery for some of its fun fantastical films. At least I hadn’t seen any evidence. The karst towers around Guilin would have been a great setting for a movie like King Kong, for example. Well suh, after seeing a couple of scenes recently of the Chinese version of one of the great films of all time :-p, I suddenly realized, “It has been done!” Check it out: