beijing, china: knee how from china!!!

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"Only if you have climbed the Great Wall, will you become a REAL man." - Mao Zedong
"True Chairman Mao, and therefore... Teresa is a man." - Andrew Lee

Yes, everyone, I must say - I married a man. I know y'all saw her at the wedding looking like a pretty and elegant woman...but you haven't seen Teresa when she's climbing hundreds of steps in 95 degree weather. She was scaling the Great Wall faster than a duck waddles away from a Chinese cook.

Well it's been 1 week since our wedding... woohoo! And we celebrated our 1 week anniversary today. Since 50 years is gold, 25 is silver, and 1 year is paper... I celebrated our 1 week by giving Teresa a pork bun. Awww, so sweet, eh? Actually, sweet and sour!!! Hardi har har...

The past week has been like our wedding day - a true whirlwind of excitement. It really has taken us a bit to gather ourselves and absorb what we have experienced thus far. What we can say is that we are so thankful for good health, good fun, and safe travels.

Here is what has happened so far (in a nutshell... or shall I say a fortune cookie):

7 6 42 8 39
(get it? you know how they put lotto numbers inside fortune cookies...man I crack myself up... ok, sorry - Teresa is getting annoyed. back to the story)

Out of all the sites we visited, we'd have to say that the Great Wall takes the pastry (I didn't use 'cake' since pastries are more popular here). Since the Wall is so long, and we only had one day to visit it, we had to pick one section and tackle it. Per my brother's recommendation, we avoided the popular Badaling portion since is it flooded with tourists. We opted for the more challenging section called "Simatai". Sounds like 'Summertime' in a Chinese accent. So, of course, I kept singing the following phrases over and over the whole way there.

"Simma, Simma, Simmatai~~ let's just sit back and unwind" (Fresh Prince version)
....or...
"Let me hear you say Wuuuuu~ Waaaaaaa~.... Simatai~~~ in the LBC" (Dove Shack version)
...or shall I say PRC as in 'People's Republic of China'... haha.. ok i need help 😞

Haha... I'm such a dork. But seriously - sing it out loud right now.... you have to admit, it's pretty amusing. Now imagine me singing it the entire 2.5 hours it took to get to the Wall. So the driver we hired to take us there kept talking about how dangerous and difficult the hike would be. In his broken English he said "It take maybe 3 hours for you to finish.... and maybe 5 hours for her ". Both he and I laughed heartily at the chauvenistic comment. But my last "Haha" drew out to silence when I saw Teresa looking at me in her Alameda gangster way. She's like "Alright dude, we'll see". Anyway, we hiked the Simatai portion of the wall - all 14 kilometers of it - and Teresa schooled me like one of her kindergartners. She was friggin scaling those steep steps like nothing. Holy crap ~ I was panting more than a fat kid with asthma. But hey - we made it through all 12 watchtowers along the wall to the end point, and we cannot tell you how amazing it was. Seriously, the movies don't do it justice. Even the scenes in Mulan don't do it justice - it just looks so much more realistic in person. The greatest part about this section of the Wall was that there were only a handful of other visitors hiking along with us. It was a such a moving experience - physical and spiritual.

The next couple days were spent at the Forbidden City (nice, but tons of temples start to look the same after a while), Tian'An'Men Square (its a wide-eyeing experience to see the huge picture of Mao above the square), and the Temple of Heaven (a huge temple park with more.... you guessed it -- temples). Finally, we spent nearly an entire day at the Summer Palace -- a vast area of ancient buildings, gardens, and cottages around a lake -- such a beautiful cluster of manmade creations. I won't bore you with descriptions of these sites - you really do have to see these for yourself one day (if you haven't already). Everything in ancient Beijing is just simply breathtaking. You can't help but wonder how these edifices were conceived and constructed.

Some overall observations:

- there a lot of little naked kids running around in the streets of Beijing. I guess its not a big deal to the people here but I always double-take. Hey ~ call me Michael Jackson... I wanted to see them and sing: "I wanna love you.... PYT... Pretty Young Ting" (sorry, bad joke.... I know I'm wrong)
- fat men have no shame here: they roll up their shirts and let their guts hang out in the heat
- staying at our bed&breakfast in the alleyways of Beijing was awesome. Away from tourist crowds, and among the locals. Truly a scene from the Chun Li stage in streetfighter.
- eating Roasted Peking Duck here is a true treat to the tastebuds and the stomach. we had to go back two nights in a row.... the word for roast duck is "Kaoya". we didn't learn much chinese out here, but we remembered this word. we kept shouting it at each other all day at random moments. Chinese people were looking at us strangely
- Teresa is a fierce bargain queen - she fought hard for deals at the local markets. She even yelled at some of the merchants. I think they gave us good deals out of sheer fright. Everyone in Beijing will avoid Alameda now if they ever visit the U.S.
- throngs of schoolchildren roam around in bright matching colors to make it easy to identify each other. Pretty amusing seeing all these little crips and bloods scurrying about
- we are nothing special here as tourists -- because we look Chinese. on the other hand, children swarm caucasian people... one white guy stood up and Chinese kids ooooh'd and ahhhh'd at how tall he was.. he was about 5'10". So then I stood up, and they all just shrugged and walked away. Damn Yao Ming screwed it up for me... I'm nothing special now 😞
- getting lost in a foreign city is always such a great experience. seeing the city from a 'local' experience is really moving... as long as we're safe. please keep us in your prayers.

Off to Bali tomorrow to chill out and get ready for our final stint in Thailand and Cambodia!

We love you guys,
Mr. and Mrs. Lee (a nice ring to it, eh? kind of like Mr. and Mrs. Smith except we're not going to hurt each other unless Teresa turns Alameda on me)

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