Trip Report: Beijing gave me a rash

Impressions of Beijing:

Four year old kids being led around by parents and grandparents. They weren’t playing with other children. They seemed like little adults.

Hundreds of kites in the sky over Tiennamen square in the evenings

Being hassled on the streets like I’ve never been hassled before. I felt like I was fighting off people’s offers of maps, rides, desires to practice English (“hello. hello. Where are you from?”), beggars whose deformities made my silver spoon fed head swim.

Walking through the Hutongs and stumbling across a yarn shop. Armed with Wei’s writing, I picked up a half kilo of red and gray wool. Its 100% wool yarn and 10% something that Aaron translated as "public set rehydration rate."
yarn

In the morning, I went to the Dirt Market, only to find that I had misread the guidebook—its only open on the weekends. So I ended up in a vegetable and clothing market.

ducklings!
Somehow, as a foreigner, I didn't feel warmly welcomed in Beijing. The people at the market gave me lots of funny looks.

I then walked through a park and ended up at the Temple of Heaven.
It was hot.
The air was thick.
And there were tourists everywhere.
Plus you can’t actually enter any of the buildings. You have to just look in the windows.
It was so bright outside that it was difficult to see anything.
The buildings seemed mostly large.
Big cylindrical buildings painted red, purple, and green, plopped right in the middle of a big park.






I then made my way through the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is completely strange.


Each building houses only three rooms

You can’t enter any of the buildings. You can only look through the windows

Half of the city is being renovated and is under construction


It seemed exactly like the movie “The Last Emperor”


There was something sad about seeing an empty city—it seemed dead.


There are marvelous statues of mythological beasties all over the Forbidden City.








some neat doors




Since Mike lost his camera and I was on my own, I don’t have a lot of photos of myself. I wanted to remedy that by taking some shots. I kept blinking when it flashed.





There is a little park behind the city with a hill that you can climb. From this hill you’re supposed to get a great view of Beijing. The pollution was so thick that I couldn’t even see the other side of the Forbidden City.