Tian'anmen Square

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First stop- Tian'anmen Square. It makes a memorable impression which can only be described as massive. It's 40 hectares!! Pity Mao's mausoleum is slapped in the middle as it ruins the continuity of the square; Tian'anmen Gate even has a huge portrait of Mao hung over the front and he also graces the banknotes. Outside the museum which flanks the eastern side of the square is a huge countdown clock for the Olympics (712 days when we were there). The mascots are all on sale and apparently there was huge embarrassment over one of them - a female goat but they gave her horns which the females don't have. It was too late to change tho as was only picked up after lots of mercxhandise already went on sale!! Kite flying is the big thing in the square at the mo so there's not 1 kite seller but 100. T.S is the place to go if you want to meet a chinese person. You have all these young chinese who want to practice their english, be your guide or pretend to be an arts student and scam you into buying some over-priced painting. We met all three and that's how we met Han.

He wanted to be our guide so we threw him a few yuan and he made travelling around the city much easier and more interesting. He had a funny turn of phrase e.g. 'it's hot as blazes' & 'I need to spend a penny' and threw words like calumny into conversation. The funniest was trying to communicate 'duck' to him. We asked if they had it in a certain restaurant and he said no. Then we saw some other people with it and when questioned he said 'Oh you said dack'.....he thought we were asking for dog! So subsequently duck became dack.

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