May 21, 2005 - Pea Soup in Beijing
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(click to enlarge)
 | | This was in the garden of the Forbidden City. |
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We made it to Beijing! The air is thick and hot like pea soup. Today we saw Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City thru intermittent rain. We then hired a bikeshaw (that's my own term for bicycle rickshaw) to take us thru the Hutong which is a classic neighborhood here with narrow winding alleys. People in the Hutong appeared to be going about daily life slaughtering live chickens, selling plastic basins and other wares and men were sitting around playing a board game that looks like checkers with Chinese characters on the pieces - could this be Chinese checkers?.
The city is otherwise much more modernized than I expected. There are wide boulevards with many high rises and crossing the street is like Frogger. Thankfully in some spots there are underground passages to the other side of the street. Doesn't matter if the traffic light is green for a pedestrian or even if the crossing guard waves you to go...these indicators could still prove fatal as we quickly learned.
I thought we beat it but unfortunately jet lag has set in after falling asleep at 5pm tonight and it is now 1a.m. I feel ALIVE here in the internet cafe.
Tomorrow we are off to the Great Wall... |
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