One more view of Chinese soldiers

From reader Dan Hobby, a group of soldiers at the Summer Palace in Beijing last year. The soldiers are turning around to look at the little daughter (not visible in picture) accompanying Hobby's in-laws, who are wearing blue jeans and jackets and seen from the back. The girl, age four, had been adopted in China three years earlier. It's worth clicking on the photo to see the enlargement, which shows the expressions on the soldiers' faces.

Cultural notes: 1) Chinese-looking daughters with Western-looking parents are a common sight in a few parts of China. In many other parts, they attract universal stares -- and these soldiers could have been country people, who had not seen such a thing before. 2) The frequent encounters with very casual-looking representatives of the People's Liberation Army do not, again, settle any arguments about China's military ambitions, its "asymmetric war" abilities, etc etc etc. But they are frequent.