01:07 A very affectionate panda at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Sichuan silently demands a hug from her caretaker before she’ll come down from her tree.

03:59 The fierce urgency of China’s building obsession has rarely been clearer than in this time lapse video of a skyscraper going up right before our eyes. The video captures the tower, made of modular blocks, going up at a rate of three floors per day. For a little comparison: If One World Trade Center had risen at that speed, then it would have topped out in barely more than a month.

06:07 You’ll watch in disbelief. Imagine a 30-story tall, 183,000-square-foot hotel built in 360 hours. Just 15 days! It was erected near the Dongting lake in the Hunan Province, China by a company specializing in sustainable architecture. Wow. For more details on the energy efficiency and building process see this Gizmodo post.

03:42 Spectacular time lapse and slow motion video of the parade in Tienanmen Square marking the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.

08:21 Evocative music by Mark Isham complements a magnificent panorama of Tibet, a place where the heavens and the earth meet, and where centuries old rhythms continue. You’ll see the vast stretches of empty, high plains and snow-capped peaks, and monasteries and monks.