Saturday, 14 April, 19.00: As I write, I’m sitting in my 4-person soft sleeper compartment in Beijing, having successfully negotiated bike, taxi, train and now another train today. As I wrote last night, my plan was to bike around West Lake today. In order to do that, I had to get up bright and early (not my favorite thing to do), have breakfast (also not my favorite thing to do) to provide fuel to pedal heaven knew how far around the lake. The hotel is pretty strictly a business hotel. The breakfast room on the 18th floor was filled to overflowing with Chinese businessmen . . . and I emphasize men. There were a couple of families, but I was the only Westerner there. I had heard of Chinese breakfast before, but this was my
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