Beijing 8:25pm (6:25am Alberta)

Today was a crazy busy day, so get comfortable....

Our story actually starts last night, when I was woken up by the sound of falling water. The annoying Chinese torture kind of "plink. plink. plink." At first I thought one of us hadn't tightened a tap all the way, so I got up to check. Nope, there was water falling from the ceiling in the bathroom - although most of it was landing in the tub, so I guess that was good. So, I called down to the front desk and had one a truly surreal conversation. Apparently 2am is not a good time to practice your 2nd or 3rd or whatever-th language. In the end, she sent up someone from housekeeping, who brought us 2 bottles of water. LOL I brought her into the bathroom and you could see the comprehension dawning. "oooooh" with big eyes.

So we threw all our stuff in our bags and moved into the room across the hall. Which turned out to be non-smoking, so yeah! Unfortunately, although she'd been fine 'til then, Mom started snoring at that point and after the move I couldn't locate my earplugs again. Soooo glad we'd passed out early!

6:30am wake-up call this morning and after climbing on the bus, we set off for the Great Wall. However, it's about a one and half hour drive, so there was a stop along the way at a Jade Factory. (Did I mention yesterday, that the Factories are Government sponsored and the product is guaranteed, so it might not be as cheap as on the street, but you can be sure it's not plastic!) I bought myself a cool piece that can be worn as a ring or a pendant and some gifts for people at home. Mom and I both got presents because she's the tour leader. Cool!

Beijing is HUGE and on the way to the Wall, you're basically driving through urban, urban, urban... bang! Mountains! The are totally the mountains you see in paintings too, down to the mist of the morning. However, the sun came out as we made our way through the traffic to the parking lot. We could see some sections of the wall and they were literally nose to neck with people. Yikes! Fortunately, lovely Marco took us to a slightly less famous section (no Presidents or Prime Ministers have done publicity shots there) and it was completely reasonable.

I always pictured the wall as just a single line, but there was a an outpost in the valley, from which you could climb either way up to the wall on the ridge line on either side. Most of the group went left to the flatter section, but I thought of Stuart and hung a right with two others to the steeper climb. They gave up after a bit and I kept climbing. I didn't quite make it to the very top, because I was starting to run out of time, but I got damn close and it was my turn to be a rock star in the process. Apparently white girls climbing the wall alone are a novelty - old men were giving me the thumbs up, a group of four girls climbed along with me and I got stopped by about 50 people to take photos with them. Aaaahh... my adoring public. LOL

I actually think I would have made the top if I hadn't have stopped so many times. Oh well - next time. I have to bring Stuart here, he would adore it. No two steps are the same height or depth, so it's a lot like climbing a mountain path. And with the sun out, but the time I reached my turning point, I was roasting and had drunk most of my water! When I got back to the bottom, I bought a lime ice pop that was so cold, I froze my inner upper lip to it and ripped some skin off. Nothing like a little blood with your lime!

From the Great Wall, it took us about 45 minutes just to get back to the edge of the city. That National Holiday again and everyone was coming to the Wall. We saw empty buses and cars abandoned in the left lane and people decided to just walk from where they were. Thank god they took us early.

It wasn't much farther into the city that we stopped at a Friendship Store. There are two in China and they were started by Chairman Mao when foreigners weren't really encourage to visit. There was only one hotel, one restaurant and one store they could be in, and he basically used them to rob visitors blind. Now, it's just a nice restaurant and a cloisonne factory. We had lunch and Mom and I both bought goodies for people at home.

The next thing on our itinerary was the Temple of Heaven. For the first time here I felt what I'd been expecting all along. There were a billion people (of course!) but it was peaceful and happy and just lovely. Due to the hundreds of trees, they call it the lungs of Beijing and you could finally get a breath of clean air. Aaaaahhhh.... The temple itself was huge, especially when you consider that they only used it twice a year! Now it's place where the retired folks hang out to play cards, play music, sing, dance and generally have a good time. I also bought myself some silk on a wand to swoosh around and got some applause from the locals. Apparently, white girls aren't expected to be able to DO anything!

That was our last scheduled stop of the day, but Marco had a surprise for us. He'd arranged tickets to Kunfu Legend, which is a famous live show about a Shao Lin monk. It combined martial arts, ballet, tai chi and Shao Lin tricks like breaking steel rods on their foreheads. It was surprisingly cool. Not everyone went, but those of us who did were glad we had. Plus, Marco bought us ice cream, so Stuart would have approved - dessert before dinner!

The bus with everyone else picked us up and we went for Thai food. As usual, very yummy! I have to say that foodwise, nothing has been particularly new or startling. If you think of Chinese food as what you get at the mall, it might be an education, but to me it's been like most of my diet anyway.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a ton of stuff I meant to tell you, but it's been a long day and I'm tired. Besides, I have to have something left to tell you when I get home! Tomorrow we leave Beijing in the early evening, so I don't know if I'll get in a post tomorrow night or not. Don't panic if you don't see one right away!

Cheers!

Beijing 7:04 pm (5:04 am Alberta)

It's been an interesting day. Breakfast was a buffet of both Chinese and Western foods, as well as stuff that was some weird (and not always successful) amalgam of both. Skip the so-called sausage is my suggestion. There were Danish, fruit, fried eggs, mini steam buns, all sorts of things. Just my kind of breakfast - a little bit of everything, rather than one big bowl of porridge to work through.

We got everyone down in the lobby and on the bus in good time. Today was the start of the one week National Holiday, so all the tourist places are chock full of not only foreign visitors, but all the folks in from the sticks. Everywhere we go, we are almost as interesting as the landmarks and people would be staring at us, pretending to be taking a picture of a building but really snapping pics of us... the little kids were fascinated and would follow us around. Mom in particular is a big hit - at the Summer Palace, one lady insisted on getting her picture taken with Mom! (According to Marco, Mom looks like a Hollywood star who is famous in China, but he can't remember the actress' name and we were all stumped.)

It's probably the lack of sleep, but I found a lot of what we saw today less impressive than I'd expected. The Summer Palace and the Winter Palace (or Forbidden City) are both huge, but awfully repetitive and you can't go in to most of the buildings, so it's just one exterior after another. And the buildings you do get to see inside of are usually quite short on furniture, so it's like looking at a really nicely painted warehouse. I do have to admit that I loved the garden at the Winter Palace - I guess that's more what I was hoping for; quiet, beautiful, serene. We kind of whipped through it and even with all the people, I could have hung out for a couple of hours.

Tian' Anmen square is just a big, flat paved space with buildings around it. In a sense, it's so big and it was so full of people that I think you don't get the true sense of it's scale. And it was unsurprisingly short of decorative tanks. However, because of the holiday, there was an abundance of police and military. The police service is national, so anywhere in the country they wear the same navy uniforms and they seemed a little more willing to interact with people. The military here are all boys between 18-20. It's a voluntary service and being young men with far too much testosterone, they take themselves pretty seriously. But they stand at attention really well!

Between Palaces, we stopped at a National shop for pearls. Mostly they sell cultivated fresh water pearls, although they also had some salt water pearl jewelery for sale. They had a big tank of oysters to demonstrate on and since no one else stepped up, I fished one out for the girl. It had enough small pearls in it for each lady in our group to be given one as a souvenir (I got the biggest for picking it out!) Then we went upstairs to let them try their darnedest to sell us goodies. The manager sent over a lovely necklace of black pearls for Mom, as she was the tour group leader. And the girl who'd given the demonstration attached herself to us to try and make a sale. Lucky for her, Mom was in a buying mood. She picked out a rope of pearls and crystals in purple and black colors and I found a silver lariat with two black pearls. They were marked at the same price, so you know who got the higher quality pearls! ;) As a tour, they offered us 20% off, but Mom got our necklaces two for one. I expect they still made a handsome profit, but we got three necklaces with pearls in the top of the mid-range for about $200. I think if we'd paid the price they'd been marked at, it would have been closer to $750.

We had lunch at the restaurant next door to the pearls and it was quite tasty. Lots of yummy Chinese food, with a plate of French fries tossed in for some reason. If nothing else, it made me laugh and the fries were actually pretty good. We never order in the restaurants, we just sit down and food starts appearing. I find the tour group frustrating in a lot of ways, they tend to zip passed what I want to linger at and spend forever in places I find completely boring; it's frustrating trying not to lose anyone, but there is a certain je ne sais quais in not having to think at all. :)

Dinner after the Forbidden City was Peking Duck. The restaurant had a giant roast duck on the roof, but unfortunately it was too dark to get a decent picture. For some reason, the meal started with a bunch of other dishes and then the duck came out. It was served with mu shu wrappers, sauce, julienned cucumbers and onions and diced garlic. The taste was absolutely fantastic. Marco told us how they raise the ducks specially to exercise and eat lots when they are young to develop big stomachs, then they are cooped up but still continue to eat a lot. This way, they develop about 1cm of subcutaneous fat, which is what makes them so moist and tasty when they are cooked. So it's not the nature, but the nurture which creates Peking duck. I don't really care, when the end product is smoky and sweet and melts on the tongue.

The only downer to the day is that I missed Stuart. I was right - I kept seeing things he'd like or wondering how he'd react to something or want to make a comment that only he would understand. Oh well - I'll just have to try and remember it all for when I get home!