Beijing, China

It's a strange feeling to go somewhere for nine days, then come back feeling like you knew less about the country that you did before ever visiting it. That's China. An amazing amalgamation of elderly women with bound feet, children with slits in their pants that make diapers unnecessary, wealthy entrepreneurs profiting from raging capitalism and communist scholars. There's a huge amount of optimism about the future and a lot of excitement about the upcoming Olympic games.

We ended up staying in Beijing the whole time, and saw a bit of everything: the Great Wall in Mutianyu, Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the weekend antique market, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven and even the Pearl Market, where Jack got excited and threw up all over a toy stand.

Anyway, here are some pix


This is the Temple of Heaven, basically the Buddhist worship place for emperors.

Some seafood at Wangfujing Market. Almost good enough to eat!

By order of the Communist Party of China, the uniformed children of this elementary school all lined up and raised the flag of China. It was about a 15-minute ceremony that I could see from our hotel room.

Jack playing around at the Beijing Aquarium, inside the Beijing Zoo.

Patty at the weekend antique market. We bought several handpainted originals, most costing less than $10. We later went to an art biennal, and found that many of the paintings were ripoffs of top Chinese artists, such as Liu Ye, who are commanding $500,000 a painting or more.

This guy was selling feathered hackey-sack type balls for about 15 cents each. I guess that's why there was no bargaining. He let me take pix of him on the condition that I send some photos back to him, which I will.

Here's the Forbidden City, on the only rainy day of our trip.

At the Great Wall on Mutianyu, though, we had perfect weather and an amazing three hours on the wall.

The next two pix are from the The Summer Palace. Not a bad summer retreat. The most amazing feature to me was the walkway for the emperor. It was entirely handpainted, with 8,000 paintings. The walkway went on for a long way, maybe half a mile.

The whole crew at the summer palace. Jack is flashing the peace sign, which is all the rage for kids in Korea when they take a picture.

Take a look at this menu. The English translations are quite funny. The first one is "Husband and wife lung movie."

And finally, scorps on a stick. Tasty.