Every morning at sunrise and every evening at sunset, the guards at Tiananmen Square perform the flag ceremony.  Hundreds of locals come everyday to this 2 minutes and 7 second ceremony.  Why 2 minutes and 7 seconds? That is the time is takes for the sun to completely rise over the horizon.

Yesterday evening I went to the flag lowering ceremony at 4:50pm.  Police officers stopped all traffic so the soldiers could walk across the street to the flag pole.

In complete silence, the flag was slowly lowered. 

As soon as the flag was folded, the street lights lit up the square.

I enjoyed seeing the ceremony and just how many people showed up to this daily event that I decided to return the next morning to see the flag raising!

I had to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to make it in time to see the ceremony at sunrise.  When we got there, it was still dark but beautiful.

In the morning, we were not allowed to stand near the flag pole like people were in the evening.  My guess is that with a crowd of 500 to 1000 people, this was the easiest form of crowd control.  However, it amazed me how many locals were partaking in the daily ceremony.

Although we could not get as close this time, the morning ceremony included a triumphant song blasting over all the loud speakers!