This is strikingly similar to "The Haircut," part of the permanent collection over at the Museum of Bad Art

http://www.museumofbadart.org/collection/unseen-6.html

I lived in Dalian for a few years, and used to go grocery shopping at that very same Wal-Mart. It wasn't the place one went all the time, though, because all the groceries there were significantly more expensive than at the Chinese markets. Nevertheless, it was one of the only places in town to get imported alcohol and non-sweetened bread.

Anyone fooled by this shadowplay would be wise to look up earlier instances of Martian rocks hallucinated into anthropomorphic shapes.

I ran Wubi for awhile, and it was good for giving me an idea about what Ubuntu is like without having to partition my hard drive. I would argue that it's only really good for trying out Ubuntu, though, because it's pretty damn slow compared to a full install. It's fully functional, so you can access all your hardware though it. But still, it's a lot slower. Plus, as of a year ago at least, there wasn't any software in place to help you with the move from virtual machine to full HD install, so if you wanted to upgrade to a full install you'd basically have to start from scratch.

Is that the main branch in Zhongshan Square? That's a pretty nice building, for China. Their aquarium there is really impressive, too. I agree with you about the painting, but from a Chinese perspective this is probably one of the better paintings around. I lived in Dalian for years, and I remember thinking that Bank of China, as cheesy as it looks to us, is probably one of the best-designed places in the city. Sometimes I thought that the words "cheesy" and "tacky" are best translated into Chinese as "beautiful."