We weren't expecting to see more smiley faces in the sky until those special Olympic fireworks go on sale in late January. But anyone who was out and about last night might have seen a cute little astronomical phenomenon in the southwest of the city. A smiley face with the eyes of Venus and Jupiter and a friendly little smile care of the crescent moon. The heavenly bodies not only smiled down upon the Olympic city, but could also be seen throughout China and across the Eastern hemisphere. According to experts from the Beijing Planetarium the phenomenon of three celestial bodies being so close together only occurs about once a year. Most Beijing papers reported that you won't be able to see the smiley face tonight.

Austin Ramzy over at Time's China Blog has announced that Time has teamed up with Google images so that more than 10 million images from the LIFE Photo Archive are now available via a special page on Google's image search. The archive includes quite a few images from China and also of Beiping or Peiping as LIFE used to refer to it when it published reports from here in the late 1940s. The image above was taken in 1946 by Dmitri Kessel. The two buildings at the bottom of the picture are the archery tower (with the portrait of what we guess must be Chiang Kaishek) and Zhengyangmen that make up the Qianmen complex. Looking north beyond Qianmen, you can see the area that after 1949 became Tian'anmen Square. Further to the north you can make out the Forbidden City, Jingshan Park and off to the left the White Dagoba in Beihai Park. Aside from a lot of other great aerial shots of Beijing taken in the late 40's, the archive also includes images from Nixon's historical visit to the capital in 1972.

Head over to the Beijinger Gallery to view some of the great images that we've snapped at various events over the past week. We've just uploaded pics from last weekend's Halloween Parties as well as images from Kanye West's show at Workers' Gymnasium. If you've got any images that you want to share with us, send an e-mail to blog@thebeijinger.com.

The Water Cube gets it's first post Olympic scrub down.

Links and Sources
The Star Daily： 奥林匹克公园要建成5A级景点

Head over to the Beijinger Gallery to view some of the great images that we've snapped at various events over the past few weeks. We've just uploaded pics from the Beijing Kids 2008 Little Pirate Treasure Hunt, Pecha Kucha at the Orange, Plastered T-Shirt's Hutong Catwalk at the NLGX Street Festival, the House Nation Block Party at Block 8 and the The Tongli Bazaar Autumn Halloween Fair.

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Reform and Opening Up policy, 12,000 people gathered in Daxing’s stadium on Monday to take part in a freestyle talent competition involving local performance groups.

Links and Sources
The Beijing News: 大兴农民“舞动奇迹”(image)
Capital Civilization Office: 区举办庆祝改革开放30周年暨大兴乡风文明创新节目大赛

Head over to the Beijinger Gallery to view some of the great images that we've snapped at various events over the past few weeks. We've just uploaded pics from our 7th Anniversary Party, Midi 2008, Modern Sky, the Diesel XXX Party, the Grand Opening of Drei Kronen 1308 and Eric Abrahamsen's talk at the China Culture Center.

Head over to the Beijinger Gallery to view images from some of the best events that took place in Beijing over the October holidays. We've just uploaded pics from the NO+CH 2008 Festival, Air's performances at Yugong Yishan and Acupuncture's First Anniversary Party at Star Live.

The Fuwa might have won some over with their antics at the beach volleyball and other Olympic events, but seriously, how can they compare to Fu Niu Lele. Lele, the official mascot of the Paralympics, has proved a hit (and broken a few hearts) at terminal 3 with a robotic version of the mascot providing directions to visitors in 12 languages! Beat that Fuwa.

Update: NBC have also published a photo gallery of images from last Friday's Opening Ceremony.

Over at ESWN you can find some amazing images of the ceremony plus some translations of some responses from Chinese bloggers. Shanghaiist has collected some videos of the ceremony as captured by people on the street in various locations and also offer a handy compendium of news reports and initial reactions to the event from media around the world. Chinese blogger Wang Jianshuo has made some interesting observations and explanations about the finer details of the ceremony that you might have missed the first time round. Also, if you thought that really cool shot of the fireworks exploding along the central axis of Beijing was fake - you were right.