Beijing the City and the People (we the people)

Wow what a day in Beijing.  It started for us at about 4:00 or 5:00 AM thanks to the time change.  We tried to sleep more and made it to about 6:00.  We just tried to relax in the hotel room until about 8:00 as we knew we had a full day ahead of us.  At 8:00 we all went down to breakfast.  Breakfast in the hotels in Beijing is an eating event.  Full on American breakfast fused with a traditional Chinese breakfast allows you to eat freshly prepared eggs, wonton soup, cereal, rice, juice, green tea or American coffee or espresso.  You name the combination it was probably there. 

We are about a 15 minute walk from Tiananmen Square.  So we walked the distance.  It was a Saturday morning for us Friday afternoon for you and the square was bustling with tourists, and locals.  It did not take long for the Avery family to become a popular distraction.  As we would stop and take pictures, the Chinese would stop and take pictures of us!! Several stopped Chase individually with his seriously blonde head of hair.  He took it in stride and allowed the occasional photo-op.  Ron was a spectacle as well with his pure white beard he was the center of attention from the old man smoking a pipe to the teen girls who would sneak a picture then walk away giggling.  It was quite funny.  Some would come up and just stand next to you and take a picture.  Others would casually pan the area stop on us briefly and take another picture “sneaking” a candid photo. 

The intersections here are massive typically 4 lanes going each way.  This means 16 lanes coming together in the middle.  Nobody has the right away.  There is a rhythm to the movement.  If you see you are running out of time to get across the street the last thing you want to do is run.  You just become a more valuable point target.  Instead you stand your ground; maybe moving backwards or sideways eventually moving forward and getting across.  Think 1985 “Frogger” with double decker busses and you are the frog.  Now you get the picture. Tiananmen Square is massive and Nolan enjoyed it.  Although it does not hold the same value to his generation as it does to ours he was still impressed with the size and monuments.  

From Tiananmen Square we moved east toward the Emperor’s Avenue shopping center, a version of time square without all the light.  It looks fairly new and we suspect it was put in during the 2008 Olympics as we do not remember seeing it in 2006 at our last visit.  We did get back to our Starbucks from 2006 and stopped to have a drink and rest.  We made the walk back to the hotel where we took a brief break before venturing out for Peking Duck around 5:30.  That gets us to a 12 hour day.  After dinner we made it back to the hotel where everyone essentially collapsed at 8:00.  Tomorrow we have another big day.  We leave Beijing and head to Anhui province where Chelsea is at.  We will have our driver take us to the train station where we will take a 3 hour bullet train ride.  If flying “in Country” in China was interesting last time loading 7 people and about 20 bags onto a bullet train for a 620 mle train ride should not disappoint.

It is very hard to blog from here.  At times we cannot access the internet.  Other times it is so slow activities time out.  Finally our failsafe (e-mail stories and photos home and have friends post is proving to be just as difficult.  In many cases we cannot access e-mail to send info.  We will keep trying Stay tuned.



Peking Duck Preperation

 

 

If you find this happy duck outside, you will find Peking Duck inside