Last day in Beijing

Beijing main train station

So today I was pretty much on my own the whole time... I didn't have anything specific planned. So this morning I just took one of the buses to the end of the line to see if I could get lost and still bring myself back to the center of town. I was successful in both attempts.

Along the way I wandered into this shop that was probably about the size of a media markt, but it was only for cell phones and for cell phone accessories. I think it was like the supply area for all the cell phone vendors or something. There was so much action going on in that place; I have never seen anything like that before. Just thousands and thousands of cell phones, cell phone batteries, headsets, cards, all that stuff. It was pretty unreal. And all the people shouting and unpackaging phones, repacking phones; it was amazing.

I ate some really interesting meat at lunch time. Not sure what it was; looked kind of like chicken, kind of like pork, kind of like duck. Had the texture of menudo. I also ate some jiaozi... 21 kuai for the whole meal. Tummy still okay.

In the afternoon, I went to a Buddhist temple on the north side of town where they have an 18-meter high sandlewood buddha statue. Also pretty amazing. Unfortunately not easy to photograph though due to poor lighting conditions.

I like the part of town that we're staying in, but I feel like we get ripped off here a little bit. The prices at the restaurants are not that much lower than those in Europe... for dinner tonight we paid 151 kuai for 4 bottle of beer, two bowls of rice, a pork dish, a tofu dish and a chicken dish. That's about 17-18 Euros for a decent sized but not huge meal. I guess it would have been more like 35 euros in Germany, but the quality of the restaurant might have been better too.

hm... yummy :)

Or would you rather have Kentucky Fried Chicken? :)

Mao's Place

Nathan at Tiananmen Square

We saw Mao this morning. He's looking pretty waxy, actually. Compared to Lenin I would say a little less waxy, but he's had 50 years less of the formaldehyde bath. Now I just have to see Ho Chi Mihn and I'll have completed the embalmed socialist demagogue trifecta. Hopefully they won't give Fidel this treatment... I might not be able to get in there for awhile.

Gate of Heavenly Peace

In the afternoon I went to the Bell Tower, a old Ming Dynasty tower north of the Forbidden City. I climbed to the top (not that high) but there wasn't much to see... too much smog and that sort of thing. It's a good bit colder today, unfortunately.

Gero approves of the food, but worries that he eats too much of it. We didn't try anything too exotic at the street vendors... at least not on purpose. At one point we got some sort of meat product that we though would be barbecue pork but it was some kind of weird fish. That was rather disappointing. Breakfast buffet this morning was a bit steep (36 RMB) but rather tasty. They have these seasoned strips of bean curd that I am a big fan of.

men playing ping pong in a park

first picture from Beijing

This is a long stretch of street vendors here where you can get everything under the sun grilled on a stick. Yesterday we saw starfish, snake, earthworms, grubs, seahorses, and who knows what else. For dinner we ate baozi.

data detour from China

Hi, this is Conny, Nathan's wife. He sent me an email from Beijing, where has arrived last Wednesday, letting me know that access to both facebook and blogger has been blocked. So we decided that he would send me updates from his trip and I would post them, including some pictures. So, from now on, the posts you will find here are the result of that co-operation.