Baizhifang Hostel Beijing

... sat for about 30 minutes listening to mando-pop on my ipod, then was asked to leave by the bank manager (the only English-speaking person in the building). So I told him (in Chinese) that my translator had to take a phone call, and I was waiting for her to come back. He left me alone. I felt accomplished. :D

... You can see mountains for miles and miles. The Chinese also constructed a "Hollywood type" sign for the Beijing Olympics next to the wall. It is a unique sight to see the old right next to the new. It seems in a lot of ways Beijing was changed for the Olympics.

The walk back down, took less than half the time of the walk up. When we got down, I went with Richard to buy a shirt that said "I climbed the great wall" Well they wanted 130 yuan for the ...

... Then, with a parting of curtains, we were all funnelled into a jade market or jade emporium, or whatever you might choose to call it. It looked as if twenty jewellery stores had been smashed together and they all sold jade. I especially liked the stumpy jade toads with coins jammed into their mouths and the jade monsters (I'm not really sure what they're called; they just looked like monsters, so that's what I'm opting to call them for ...

... they had sufficient space to roam. many big animals such as tigers and even lions were cooped up in cages and continuously paced back and forth, seemingly discontent and imprisoned. This made me kind of sad. But I guess in a city of 16 million where there is little room even for the people, this may be unavoidable. I will put up pictures tonight after class.

First it was the story that some of the fireworks for the opening ceremony were just special effects - pre-recorded or digitally created. Now there is the story that the girl singing at the opening ceremony was lip-synching, because the real singer had . . . crooked teeth. That's right, Lin Miaoke was just lip-synching one of China's revolutionary anthems, because the real singer - Yang Pei yi - while she had the voice ...

... out some bucks. Well, that might be the case, but it wasn't all that much money and I couldn't help but think that Lucas would want me to help an art student whether it was a scam or not. At least I have two pieces that I like and there you go. I never got all the way in to The Forbidden City - it was around 5pm and I knew that there would not be enough time to see everything. I think I will have another opportunity to get over there and see ...

... stations were cancelling all their buses, and thousands of passengers were getting stranded. All we wanted was a ticket to Xi'an. The last resort seemed to be a trip to the actual train station. Reports of terrible queues and chaos did not sound promising. But then we heard of a couple people at the hostel who had bought tickets to Xi'an at the train station that very day. One night we took the metro down to the train station. We went ...

... of Mongolia. I wish I had had more time and could have explored Mongolia further. When I awoke on the morning of the last day I knew right away that I was back in China. Looking out the cabin window I noticed lack of sunlight and familiar haze of China's heavily polluted north. Still, it felt great to be back in a familiar place and I was anxious to meet up with many of my friends that I had not seen in over a year. There is little exciting I can offer the reader about ...

... to gather and relay as much information with her broken english. We think she must have dug taht fact that we immediately pass around email addresses so she went along with us. Grudgingly 5 PM had rolled around and we had to make haste to our show. The Chinese Acrobat Show was amazing. It was like Cirque de Soleil but on a smaller scale. Death-defy feats of strenght and grace....a real good show for only 90 RBM ...

... with the stars above our head after a well-earned picnic. We got up at 5.30 am to see the sun rise on the great wall and the nearby mountains, and walked all the way to simatai, without meeting a tourist. Such a good experience... Around 10am, we exit the great wall with a paragiding cable above a lake, met some friendly chinese guys whom invite us over the guesthouse where we fished and ate two delicious fishes before going back to beijing.