Beijing in Color

It’s 11:30 PM on Friday, December 05, 2008 and we don’t have an internet connection in our hotel room. We did go to an internet hole (I mean bar, but with no drinks but plenty of smokers) located in the basement of a building. The cashier is a young girl that broke into song with the radio while giving us access to their network. Quite strange. I tried I really did to get access to our Google account to post a blog entry, without success as all the directions were in Chinese and I can only go thru Google to get to my account. Anyway it turns out we are still having trouble with our paperwork and so had to dedicate our time to sending another email to officials at the National Visa Center in New Hampshire and to writing our Congressperson Jim Moran to ask for assistance regarding our paperwork and asking for his intervention on our behalf.





Today we went to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, Drum Tower and a local haitong (or neighborhood and I’m spelling it incorrectly) for lunch after a tour via to a Silk Factory (consider it an opportunity to buy something after a 10 minute explanation of the silk making process with salesperson following you throughout the store) Temple of Heaven and then a hot-pot dinner at a packed Friday night place clearly very popular with Beijingers. You may think you’ve had a hot-pot dinner but was it a traditional hot-pot meal versus the less superior electric hot-pot meal.



First thing that it is important to know – it is FUH REEEEEEZING here. Emphasis on the FUH! So we were walking around the Forbidden City and our guide Christina would be explaining an important fact about the Forbidden City such as the difference between the two large lions outside one of the main gateways and I would be thinking, “Oh, so the male lion has his paw on the world, while the female has her paw on the baby….Oh God I am sooooooo cold, I’m so very cold! I wish I was in the sun. Wow this is really colorful. So yellow is the color of the imperial court and this is where the concubines slept. Wow, it is very cold. I am so very cold” Etc. Multiply this times my entire day.



We have a whole team dedicated to helping us maneuver Beijing. Our driver’s name is Kou, the logistics director is Jack (he is NOT familiar with the nursery rhyme) and our tour guide Christina. The driver drops us off, Jack goes with us to get the tickets and Christina is our information resource, except for in the haitong when our guide was a young fellow by the name of Golf. She is very young and energetic and completely dedicated to giving us a wealth of information about each site we visit in Beijing. We understand most of what she is saying but are still lost some of the time this being dependent on the amount of recent coffee consumption. So since we only drank coffee this AM we were able to follow less and less as the day wore on. And we’re still very much adjusting to the 360 degree time change. There’s only so many times you can say, “what did you say, I don’t understand” before you adopt a frozen smile and nod and just go with the gist of it.


The Beijing of the post Olympics so far just seems as a very large modern city with the exception being the toilet situation. I’m not a squeamish person but for some reason I am unable to use the public toilets (or holes in the floor – very smelly and very wet). It has not gotten to crisis levels yet and have only held it for the most today at two hours until returning to our Western style hotel bathroom.

Quick impressions of all we have seen – Chairman Mao’s portrait is very very large and repainted each year. Forbidden City is quite crowded given the chilly weather. Although we are generally the only Americans no one gives us a second glance even at the local non-tourist haunts. There seem to be many Russians. Everyone in Beijing is freezing, not just us, as the weather just turned frigid. The Temple of Heaven is beautiful as well as surrounded by a community park where the local retirees play cards, majong and dance. That was pretty cool as in amazing as well as very cold. Did I mention it is FUH reezing here.
Must go to sleep. Take care all. Much love to you from the east coast of China.



We have many pictures which we hoped to include but are having some trouble getting them up -- sooo sorry but we'll have them up soon. Were in a bit of a culture shock and getting used to how to do things. Not quite up to speed.

Also - today the Great Wall and perhaps the Ming tomb if we feel up to it.