Traders Upper East Beijing

... skeptical at my abilities to navigate through the subway, buses, and country taxis to get to my destination and back in one piece, let alone one day. The Chef kindly suggested he put the U.S. embassy on speed-dial, while Lynn announced that if I rang the hostel they would only call my embassy to find me and pick me up. At the time, there was an Italian guest staying in the hostel, who was teaching our Chef "the Italian way" of cooking pasta. My friend, (Jean Paulo, I think ...

... 2 star in the UK, but ignoring the cloud of plaster dust we walked into when we stepped out of the lift and the noisy builders it was pretty good, especially when compared to the prison cell in Fukuoka! <br><br> At 6pm we have to meet our group and we are a little nervous but they all seem really nice and get chatting easily over dinner at a local restaurant. There are two 20 year old Danish girls, two English women, an Irish couple on their ...

... that you associate with one environment is completely adapted to another environment. Then again, Josh pointed out that the Chinese language has a lot of rhymes and is actually very well suited for rapping. I asked Jamel if the show was typical and he said no. Hip hop, though it's been around for about 10 yewars now in Beijing, is still really in its infancy, and still hasn't quite taken off. I wonder if the NBA's wide reach may ultimately ...

... overtale. I et af de største gallerier, Galleri Ullens, finder man denne udstilling "Christian Dior and Chinese Artists". Det er en sindsygt flot udstilling. Over 100 couture kreationer udstilles sammen med værker af 20 kineiske kunstnere, som har ladet sig inspirere af Dior-"koderne". Det er en meget vellykket dialog mellem samtidskunst og mode, og nok den mest storslåede udstilling, jeg nogensinde har set. Ud over tøjet, som naturligvis er fantastisk, og fuldst ...

... religions. Public opinion polling reported in Chinese-government controlled media, and validated by the respected Pew Forum in the U.S., suggests 16 per cent of Chinese nationals adhere to state-sanctioned Buddhist institutions; almost two per cent go to approved "Protestant Christian" churches; another one per cent attend official Catholic churches; more than one per cent go to sanctioned Muslim mosques, and another one per cent are Taoist. Since religious polling is ...

... One of the explanations I've heard for my subway stop's closure is that it might not have the cards yet.) I finally made it to Tsinghua around 11:30 and met Yang Liu and Huang Yuxuan.  They just finished masters degrees in architecture at Tsinghua and will be joining me at MIT in the fall.  They gave me a very quick campus tour.  It's a little like Stanford, too big and impossible to walk anywhere so the tour consisted of a ...

... some to spend.  I ended up getting a few things... it was hard to stop the urge to get more than I could carry, haha.  I like that place.  Group meeting at 9:00, so I was up way past my bedtime... but that was okay. WEDNESDAY Tai chi at 7:00 before class and lunch.  Caligraphy class from 2:00 to 4:00.  Tough stuff... but a lot of fun.  My brother would enjoy that I think.  Hopefully I get better (and I'll know not to wear a white shirt next time).  Free until English Corner ...

... drive you out to a part of the Great Wall that has not been restored and that tour busses do not visit. We were accompanied by about 18 other travel hungry globetrotters like ourselves. Half of the fun of the trip was sharing adventures with some of these people who have been traveling from 1 week to 11 months. There talk about China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Trans ...

... to 4 PM for people to pick up approved visas. We wait around past closing time and at about 5 PM someone finds our passports inside the embassy. Some of the other passports still weren't found when left. We take this as a sign of what India will be like. Whew! What a relief. Now that we have our passports back we can go ahead with our plan to take the train to Mongolia tomorrow morning. We know there is much more to see here in Beijing but we must be moving on.

... on about 2 hours sleep from the train the night before. Up for a 7.30am start to the Great Wall today. We went to the Simatai section which is supposed to be the most 'architecturally interesting' and it was pretty gorgeous. The cable car was shut for the winter, so we walked up a steep path for hal an hour, a frozen resevoir, and reached the wall. Fortunately I bought a 'great wall' wooly hat from a bloke in the carpark, so as well as ...