Beijing

---

Hello

Fully recovered for the stomach bug episode, we've been busy! Beijing is absoultely jam packed with things to see and do - forbidden city, great wall, summer palace, tiananmen square, olympics site etc...... one of the few cities where you could spend at least a week and not run out of things to do. The only reason you might not want to is the air pollution. Apparently just breathing in the air for the day is the equivalent of smoking quite a few cigarettes!

The Great Wall is absolutely stunning. We've attached some pics but they really don't do it any justice. We walked about 8 miles along it which was a bit of a slog because it's so steep but it made us realise what must have been involved in actually building it. Then we felt it was appropriate to polish off a bottle of the Great Wall wine though that was probably an equal challenge to the wall itself.

The Olympics site was mighty impressive, particularly the water cube. It's made of all these ETFE bubbles that have specific qualities to them which were described in detail at the site. Chinese tourist signs are very funny, they tell you how high above sea level, dense, wide etc but not a lot about the actual history. You really got the feeling of how something special had happened at the venue. The Bird's nest seemed so familiar to us when we finally saw it that it was quite strange. Architecturally the site was incredible, but then when you spend 90,000,000,000 that's what you'd expect!

We also went to the forbidden city and the summer palace, both residences of the mighty Emperors. They certainly lived a very different life to the commoners, one of them had over 20 concubines, something that couldn't happen now with the shortage of ladies here (it is estimated that there could be 30 million extra males over females here by 2020 due to the one child policy).

Tiananmen square was the best people watching we've seen so far, however, there were quite a lot of folk watching us and photographing us. We didn't expect that to continue here, but people are friendly about it so it just makes us giggle. When you look at the picture of Stuart and a random Chinese bloke, it's maybe a bit clearer why they want to take photos of the giants! We didn't know what this guy was saying to us, but we suspect it was along the lines of 'look at your big white heads!!'

We watched the changing of the guard and the lowering of the flag after that we thought we'd potter around some more, but the army had different ideas. As soon as the show was over, they promtly emptied the massive square in minutes. Probably not an idea to argue based on past history!

We've also started to build up a collection of 'Chinglish' signs. Some of them are hilarious.

Off next to Tsing Tao to drink lots of the local beer!

---

Photos

Tiananmen Square
The square at night, just after it was cleared by the army!

Chinglish
Eng: Keep off the grass!
Chinglish: Tender fragrant grass, how hardhearted to trample them.

Comments

[Janis]

loving the photos! sounds like you guys are having a great time! xxxx

[rachel]

better than travel guide
really enjoyed this one, will be in beijing in 5 weeks myself for a conf as part of epic china trip! will take advice on what to do when not researching metals on my little holiday sorry work conferance! your tips are ace! 8)