I've seen some pretty good walls in my day...

How is everyone doing today?  Me?  I'm doing great!  We had a fantastic day today with a visit to The Great Wall just one component of it.

We actually started the day with a brief stop at a Jade Museum.  There were some really neat display pieces including some really ancient jade artefacts.  Attached to that was, of course, a facility about 4 times the size of the museum that was dedicated to selling jade.  Still, it was pretty fun to go and look around, and they were doing some amazing work there.

I was also able to find a tribute to Michael Jackson in the form all great artists aspire to - a can of Pepsi.

After that we headed off to The Great Wall!  There were a few things that I was really looking forward to on this trip, and visiting The Great Wall topped that list for sure, so I was pretty excited.  What was especially amazing was that the weather today was fantastic.  Every day since we've arrived in Beijing it's been very, very hazy.  Even when we were in Chengde (look I spelled it correctly!) which is some two and half hours to the north you could barely make out anything more than a kilometre away.  I'm not sure if it was pollution, or purely a meteorological condition.  Either way we had a nice rain last night and awoke to the clearest skies I've seen this entire trip.  The hazy conditions have made photography difficult, so the sudden clarity on my most anticipated expedition was a real bonus.  It also made the drive up to the wall a lot more interesting as I was really able to admire the mountainous landscape with a lot more detail.

The Great Wall gets it's name for a reason... it's a pretty spectacular thing to behold.  At the gate we were visiting (Juyongguan) you can head in two different directions.  We were told that the left hand path was the more difficult, and hence the one that I wanted to tackle.  Euphy wasn't feeling very confident after looking at the path though, so we opted for the right hand path.

Euphy has never expressed any great concern over heights, but we discovered today that she has a pretty serious phobia regarding steep and uneven staircases.  Not sure if there's a word for that.  In the end it was probably a very good decision to take the easier path.  In the picture above you can actually see the end of the line for this brief stretch of the wall.  It's just to the left of that reddish watch tower, near the left hand side of the picture.  To compare, here's a picture I took from the easy path that shows the difficult path:

It really did look like a much steeper climb.  The path we took had a couple small watch towers along its length, and we were able to go in one.

That was my attempt at impersonating a soldier keeping a watchful eye out for invading Mongolians.  You'll notice however that I was looking at the stretch of wall that we still had left to climb, and therefore I appear to watching out for Flying Mongolians.  Far more dangerous those.

Despite the whole thing being a bit hard on Euphy's nerves we made it to the end of the path.

Please note the carvings on the wall.  Please also note that if I ever catch anyone carving their name into a Wonder of the World I will beat them more senseless than they already are.

So, a great visit to a great wall, with great weather.  I really couldn't have asked for much more than that today.  But wait, there's more!  We headed from The Great Wall to a site called the Ming Tombs.  Of the 16 Ming Dynasty emperors, 13 of them are buried at this one site.  We were able to visit the tomb of one emperor, 9 stories underground.  The site is a cavernous underground structure that really is amazing given the technology of the time.  The site is beautifully preserved, and while there are modern walls throughout the building that are obviously structural, they've done their best to make them as unobtrusive as possible to really reveal the original structure.  The whole thing is divided into several rooms, often with odd lighting, so I wasn't able to get any one picture that really captured the scale of that place.  Suffice it to say that those Ming folks really knew how to entomb a fellow.

We finished the day off with a visit to a tea shop where they taught us about all sorts of lovely teas.  It was pretty interesting, and we got to sample a great variety of them.  It finished with a high-pressure sales pitch that had Euphy mildly annoyed, but we brushed it off since we'd had such a good day up until that point.

It actually wasn't the tea shop that grabbed my attention the most during that part of the tour though.  Instead it was this structure just outside:

Pretty nice arch over the road.  Very Chinese.  Nice characters on the arch.  Euphy translated them for me.  Want to know what they say?  Chinatown.  No kidding.  It actually lists that area of Beijing as Chinatown.  I was under the impression that when in China you could simply refer to Chinatown as Town.  Both Euphy and I were utterly confused as to what it was that would differentiate this part of town from any other section of Beijing.  I'd have thought that if they wanted to a particularly ethnic section of the town they'd have dedicated a street to selling hamburgers and bluejeans and called it Whiteytown.  I'm still baffled.

We went from there to dinner.  I may have cursed myself yesterday by boasting about the quality of the food we've been given.  Today's dinner was hotpot, which can be quite good if the broth isn't completely bland.  I actually turned to Euphy at one point during the meal and said "You know, right across the road from our hotel there's a McDonalds..."  We didn't actually resort to that drastic measure, but it was a bummer to have even thought that given how lucky we'd been up until this point.

Well, I've had to be unfortunately brief this time out.  We had to spend a lot of time organizing our bags this evening.  Tomorrow is our last full day in Beijing, and we fly out early Thursday morning.  We didn't want to leave all the packing until last night just in case we get in late.  So here I am again feeling pressed for time.  I hope you're all doing well, but I'm heading to bed.

Quick Update

Euphy just informed me that I made a spelling mistake in the name of the city we were visiting yesterday.  What I called Chengdu, is actually Chengde.  My Chengdu is actually a city in Shichaun.  My apologies to the residents of Chengde for the confusion.  Now I have to go rename my photos...

Also, Euphy was able to work with the Chinese name of that bird I like so much and determine that it's a Eurasian Magpie.  According to Wikipedia they are considered not just the smartest of all birds, but apparently they rank amongst the most intelligent of all animals!  I just think they're pretty.  Also, Magpies are an incredibly famous species, and really very common, so the fact that I didn't recognize one on sight just underscores how little I know about birds.

Okay, time to moving this morning.  Off to the Great Wall!

Ancient Imperial Chillin'

Howdy everyone!  I hope you're all doing well today.

As I mentioned in yesterday today started a bit earlier than usual since we were kicking things off with a long drive.  It occurred to me this morning as I got up at 5:15 that it was almost two hours earlier than I get up to go to work on a typical day.  Ah well, had to be done.

We got on the road around 6:15 and headed North.  I was surprised at how quickly the terrain started to get mountainous given how flat Beijing is.  I think we were on the road for maybe an hour to and hour and a half before we were properly in the mountains.

 It was nice just for a change of scenery really.  I snapped a bunch of shots out the bus window, but only a handful were worth keeping.  I've been reading a book on photography and it's amazing how infrequently they recommend shooting through the window of a moving vehicle.  Can't imagine why.

After about 2.5 hours on the road we arrived in Chengdu, a lovely little city on the banks of a very wide river.  Actually, every river I've come across during my time in China have been huge.  At any rate, we were here to visit the Imperial summer resort.  I'd call it a massive palace, but it's more like a massive collection of massive palaces all linked via parkland and small lakes.  It was a really beautiful spot with tons of trees.  In a way it reminded me of Killarney:

But with palaces:

Apparently this idyllic spot was where the Emperor of China would head when summer just got a bit too sweaty in Beijing.  A few hours drive to the north cooled things down enough that he could keep... um... Emperor-ing?  Of course, this being the 1700s he couldn't exactly jump in the Benz and booked on the highway, so apparently he would get 32 (presumably very fit) guys to carry him in a mutli-room palanquin for about a month and a half to get up there.  Let that one settle in for a minute.  He spent a month and half to get up to some nicer weather.  Presumably he then spent the same amount of time getting back to Beijing when the temperature was more agreeable.  So out of a year he would spend three months in a palanquin being transported to and from his happy place, while I imagine the bulk to the country scrapped by day to day in their huts trying to farm up enough to eat.  You wonder why there aren't many Emperors around these days eh?  It was never specified, but I'm imagining that the rebellion that eventually overthrew the Empire was started by 32 dudes who got tired of spending three month with a HOUSE ON THEIR SHOULDERS!  Just guessing.

Anyway, enough of my musing on imperial politics.  The place itself was, as I'm sure you can imagine, pretty darn nice.  I particularly liked this building which had two stories, but no internal staircases:

That collection of rocks was actually the staircase to get up to the second floor.  Honestly I think that looks awesome, and I want to see more of this outside-the-box architectural thinking in our modern world.  We spent a couple hours wandering around and being ferried around in small boats, but according to the map we barely scratched the surface of this place.

Not a bad way to spend your summers.

I thought it was pretty appropriate that I was in such a beautiful place on Thanksgiving Monday since, if I were in Canada for the long weekend, I would have spent it in Killarney.

It wasn't all fun and games though!  I got some serious work done here folks.  Aside from soaking up the scenery and musing on why I wish I was an Emperor I also managed to accomplish a task that I'd been trying to get done for a few days.  You see, here in Beijing the wildlife is pretty scarce, but every time we venture out to limits of the city I keep seeing these really stunning birds, but usually through the window of a bus travelling at high speeds, so I was never able to get a picture.  Well, they may be pretty shy and hard to get your lens on, but they were plentiful up at the summer resort, so I managed to get a couple of shots of the wily little buggers.  I'm hoping that once I get home Dad can help me get a positive ID.

Not sure if you can tell there, but while they look almost completely black and white there are splashes of blue above the wings.  The brilliant white on their bellies is also reflected on the both sides of their wings, which makes them quite striking when in flight.

Also, their pretty easy to track once you get into an area that has them because they have an extremely raucous call.

Once we left the summer resort area we headed to another Chengdu hotspot: Kuixing Lou.  It's a small temple located on a high hill and it's dedicate to the worship of a god governing astronomy.

The temple itself is pretty neat, and they let me make a wish to the god.  I'd have taken a photo, but apparently taking photos in temples, particularly pictures of the depiction of the god above the alter is considered very impolite.  So I kept the camera away, and donated 10 RMB (approx $1.60) to the shrine, in return for which I got a lucky pen.  Not sure what distinguishes this from buying a lucky pen from some monks, but I wasn't there to argue semantics.

The trip up to the temple was worth it just for the great views is offered of the city below.

Unfortunately that only took about half the day, and the tour sort of spiralled downward from there.  It was a lengthy drive back to Beijing and then we went to a really run-down looking athletic centre when we could have a foot massage.  I opted out of that since I didn't fancy a massage from someone who I couldn't communicate with, so Euphy and I just wandered around for awhile.  A long while.  Apparently post-massage they got the sales pitch portion of today's program.  I think we spent an hour and a half sitting around while they tried to sell our travel mates... something.  We're both starting to get really, really tired of all the time that gets wasted on this tour.  I'm finding it particularly difficult because I'm so used to travelling on my own and not being held to anything even remotely resembling a schedule.  We're really itching to get out of here so that we can start operating on our own.

One plus side at the end of the day was that dinner wrapped up fairly quickly and we were able to get back to the hotel at a reasonable time, so I'm not feeling as rushed as I have been while writing tonight.  That's especially good because I really took a lot of photos at the summer resort and it took me forever to rename them.  For those of you who haven't travelled with me, I have a pretty meticulous naming convention for my vacation photos, and I like to do my renaming at the end of every day just to make sure it gets done, and to keep the task from getting too out of hand.  When I get back at the end of the day with 150 photos though it's still a pretty daunting task.  I was discussing the issue with Euphy yesterday and I think when I get home from this trip I'm going to write a piece of software that will do the bulk of the work for me.

Since I'm not as pressed for time as I usually am I should take a moment before signing off to get one of my more random observations down.  I've been wanting to talk about the food for awhile now since I know I've been writing as if the meals haven't existed.  On the contrary, I've been eating fairly well on this trip.  We start each day off with a fairly well equipped breakfast buffet here at the hotel and then get lunch and dinner at different restaurants each day.  There's clearly some kind of arrangement with the tour company though because there are always exactly four tables ready for us at each restaurant, we sit with the same group each day, and there's always a 1.6L bottle of Coke, and two 600mL bottles of beer (usually Yanjin) ready on the table.  My Canadian instincts kicked in on the first day and I wondered how they'd prevent fights from breaking out with only 1.2L of beer for 12 people, but apparently it's quite sufficient.  They only crack open the second bottle if I really jump in there and lend a hand.

The spread at each meal always consists of a huge container of steamed rice, often some soup, and a selection of dishes in the typical Chinese fashion.  We just spin the Lazy Susan around and grab whatever strikes our fancy at the time.  So far it's all been really good, lots of Northern Chinese style food with heavy sauces and always at least one dish with some heat to it.  I've been enjoying it quite a lot.  I'm a bit concerned for one member of our group though, since he's a vegetarian.  Seems like every meal they make a point of bringing out one veggie-only dish for him, and as far as I can see he's living on steamed rice and steamed greens.  I'm waiting for him to collapse from malnutrition at any moment.  I'm not really sure if that's indicative of China being a difficult place to travel for vegetarians, or this is more a situation of the tour having  a very regimented system in place that doesn't have a lot of flexibility for dietary considerations built into it.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if the dinner I had tonight was at The Monday Night restaurant where they serve up the Monday Night Meal the same as they do to every group that gets brought in by this company on every Monday night.

What's been interesting to me about the food is that while each meal consists of different dishes, it's all very typical Chinese.  I found it very odd at first because I'm so used to the huge range of cuisines available to Torontonians.  If I want to go out for dinner in Toronto the first decision to make is what kind of food I want to eat.  Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Indian, French... the list goes on and on.  In Beijing I've noticed a lot of KFC, Pizza Hut, and McDonalds, and I caught sight of a Korean BBQ, but I haven't noticed much else in the way of non-Chinese.  Of course that could just be a side-effect of not being able to read a majority of the signs.  It's left me wondering about our meals though.  The way I look at it, there are two possibilities: either we're eating strictly Chinese because the tour group is composed largely of Chinese expats and most people would adopt the attitude of "I didn't come to China to eat pizza."  The other possibility is that there's a real dearth of decent international cuisine in Beijing.  Maybe Toronto has just spoiled me and left me thinking that all big cities have the kind of selection that we do for ethnic foods.  I'm not really sure what the answer is, in the end I just like to muse on these things.

Well, that concludes today's ramblings.  I hope at least a few of you have managed to stay awake through all of that.  For me, I think it's time to call it a night.  Tomorrow, I believe, is the Great Wall, and I'm really, really looking forward to that.  I'm going to get rested up for the big day.  Talk to you all tomorrow.

Bloodsport: Shopping in Beijing

Howdy fellow travellers!  How are we all doing today?  It's a good thing I'm all caught up with my picture organizing and blogging because it was a long day today, and we're getting up early to start our tour tomorrow, so I should get to bed pronto.  It's a nasty side effect of the organized tours; I find waking up to an alarm while on vacation morally reprehensible.  Beijing has been awesome, but I'm already starting to get pumped for Shanghai, where if anyone gives me a wake up call I'll hit them.

We had a really great start to the day by heading up to Jingshan Park, just to the north of the Forbidden City.  Apparently Feng Shui dictates that Imperial Residences should be constructed to the south of a hill.  When the capital was moved to Beijing many hundreds of years ago they realized that following that particular edict would be difficult since Beijing is one flat pancake of a city.  Of course, being Imperial and what not they solved the problem the way true royalty does: they had a hit built.  The immediate result of that was a satisfaction of the demands of Feng Shui.  The benefit that we reap in the modern times is that there's a really nice hill in Beijing where a person can go for a great view.  The land surrounding the hill has been made into a really terrific park where it seems that locals come to just hang out.  There are several points along the main path where you can start heading up:

There are a few small temples along the way:

And it's not really a very long hike until you're up to the top.  Man-made hills tend not to make for terribly arduous climbing.

Once you reach they summit of this mighty peak you're treated to some spectacular views of Beijing... I think.  I've only been here a few days, but from what I've seen you're most likely going to be treated to a spectacular view of Beijing's smog:

Anyway, it was still pretty nice up there, even though this really is the haziest city I've ever been in.

After Jingshan we made what seems like an obligatory stop on any Chinese itinerary: a herbal medicine shop.  I've watched a few travel shows/documentaries on China, and they always feel the need to drop by one of these places, so I guess it's just expected.  The place, like any good hospital, had lots of classrooms for group tours.  We went into one and a lady in a lab coat came out and described how to diagnose pulmonary pneumonia by examining your own tongue... or something.  Then a bunch of Witch Doctors descended upon the crowd and, using their powerful magic years of learning and experience, were able to diagnose all of a patient's problems by placing three fingers upon their wrist.  At this point, having clearly determined that their spleen was out of alignment with their earth chakra or some such thing they would write a prescription for eye of newt and wing of bat and send them down to the pharmacy.  Apparently one guy in our group was given a recommendation that would have run him around $250 for a six month supply of voodoo juice.  Fascinatingly the place was beautifully decorated, and the most prominent sign I saw was this one:

After satisfying everyone's curiosity about how to cure the common cold with tree bark we proceeded to something that seemed more to everyone's taste: actual shopping.  I wasn't in any great hurry to hit a mall, but I imagine I'm a rarity amongst the tour group in that I get to continue my vacation after the tour is over.  Our days are jam packed, and I strongly suspect that aside from Euphy and I everyone will be going home once this is over, so they're probably quite happy to get some time to shop for souvenirs.  We were taken to a mall and turned lose for a few hours to go where we pleased.  The tour guide was very clear about the fact that he was taking us to place where we could buy knock-off goods at ridiculous prices.  I love the honesty. I also loved this sign as soon as we walked into what was touted as a bastion of piracy:

Not.  Fooling.  Anyone.

I actually tried my hand at a bit of haggling, but that was going nowhere for two reasons:

a)  I really was trying to bring the price down obnoxiously low
b)  I was with Euphy, and no Chinese salesperson, no matter how used to dealing with foreigners they are, is going to willing sit there and banter in English with me when they can get down to business with a professional haggler in Mandarin

Given that situation I just got frustrated and pulled the plug.

Later in the evening we headed to a theatre to catch some more Chinese performance art.  This act was a bit more ballet and a little less pure circus acrobatics than the last show we saw.  It was magnificently done with a complex stage full of moving platforms that even turned into a full-blown waterfall at one point.  We had great seats too, which was really nice.  The sets and costumes were fantastic; I wish I could have got some pictures, but that was another one-way ticket to a non-surgical laser beam to the cornea.  I'm curious about Lasik, but I don't think I'll have it done by a theatre usher with a laser pointer.

Once that was all wrapped up we headed for dinner.  The food situation on this tour has been really good so far, which has beat my expectations.  It's something I intend to discuss further when I'm able to blog without the the constant feeling that every word is depriving me of sleep.  I did have a really fun experience this evening though.  I was eating a dish with chicken and peanuts that very clearly had some peppers in it because it was good and hot.  I didn't realize as I was eating it, but apparently there were Sichuan (Szechuan) peppers in it as well.  I'd seen Sichuan pepper on TV, and read a few things about it; it's quite famous for having a numbing effect on the tongue, but I'd never experienced this first hand.  It wasn't until after I'd had a few bites and was just chatting with Euphy that I realized what I'd eaten because one side of my tongue suddenly felt like I'd just been at the dentist.  The effect lasted for maybe 10 second and then was gone, but I thought it was pretty cool all the same.

Anyway, like I mentioned earlier, I'm really feeling the pressure to get to bed tonight, so I'd better wrap this up.  With any luck I'll get an evening in the near future when I have a bit more time to write so that I can expand on a few random topics that have been on my mind before they escape me completely.  Until then, I hope everyone is well and I'll talk to you all again soon.

Beijing: Day 2 of Touring, and Catching Up

Hello everyone!  How are you all today?  I'm just wrapping up my second day of touring in Beijing, but the combination of internet challenges and the fact that we got in quite late last night mean that I have some catching up to do.

I'll go right back to the 4th, our fist day in Beijing.  We got into town and checked in by mid-afternoon.  After we'd got settled in we took a cab to meet up with some friends of Euphy's mom, and they treated us to dinner.  We had a terrific meal at a place that is famous for its Beijing Duck (or as we'd call it back home, Peking Duck.)  The kitchen was glassed in, so you could see right through to the giant oven they use to roast the duck.  It was a great first meal to have in Beijing.

After we finished up dinner we headed to Wang Fu Jin, a large shopping street that has lots of food stalls flanking it.  There were tons of different edible assortments up for grabs, including these goodies:

Mmmmm... who wouldn't jump at the chance to eat a centipede...

Yeah, the centipede thing was grossing me out a bit, but I was all over the scorpions.  I've actually been saying for awhile now that I wanted to try a scorpion when we got to Beijing, so I was pretty excited when I saw those little guys skewered up for my dinning pleasure.  It was at the point that Euphy told me in no uncertain terms that eating those bugs would be a very bad idea.  Actually, she strongly discouraged me from eating anything up for grabs there as the cleanliness of the food was questionable.  I was pretty bummed about that, but I didn't feel like risking intestinal distress on my very first day in town.  I still want to find some tasty scorpions to eat though...

After being taunted with delicious insects we headed to Tian An Men Square since it was easy walking distance from where we were.  We actually knew that we'd be going there the next morning with the tour group, but it was fun to just do something on our own, and the place looked awesome at night.  We've actually dropped ourselves in town in the middle of a week-long holiday in celebration of National Day here, so the area was decorated and lit up beautifully, and very lively!

After a bit of wandering around there we just grabbed a cab back to our hotel and called it a night.  We were up early the next day for our first day of touring.  We're part of a group of around 50 people, travelling in a large coach bus with a tour guide.  Our guide Xu Zhi Yong is a really nice guy whom is apparently quite amusing to the people here who speak Cantonese... I just take the pictures.

We headed to Tian An Men, and in the daylight I was able to get a proper sense of the scale.  That really is a truly massive open space, and the size of it was just accented by the fact that I was there with one or two billion other people.  Yeah, national week off, crowds.

Unlike the previous day where we were just taking pictures of that famous photo of Mao, this day we walked through those gates that he's guarding and had a wander around the Forbidden City.  Oh what a wander!  As with the Square outside, this place seemed to have half the population of our fair world wandering around in it, but it really didn't seem to have a a lot of problems containing the crowd.  It was hard to tell from inside since the City is very segmented, but I'd have to estimate the size of the place as being about the size of downtown Toronto... and that used to be one guy's house.  Not a bad way to live.  Unless you've got bad knees.

I went a little bit bananas with the photos within the Forbidden City.  I've got over 100 photos just from that portion of the day.  I'm on vacation, so there's the need to capture everything I see for posterity, but I still can't help myself when I've got my camera, and I'll try to get some artistic shots here and there too.  So for anyone who I subject to the full gallery of my photos after this vacation, I apologize in advance for the Forbidden City section.  Building with orange roof, another building with orange roof, brick wall I felt a deep spiritual connection with, Euphy in front of a building with an orange roof... you get the idea.  Here's a sampling of what I got:

I also came across one of the greatest sign images ever:

I feel relaxed just looking at that.

After we left the Forbidden City we headed to the Temple of Heaven.  This is where the Emperor used to go to worship.  There's a lovely park surrounding the facility, and a collection of interesting buildings forming a courtyard around it, but the main temple itself is the modest little thing here:

Once again, pretty crowded.  The courtyard surrounding the main temple is largely just wide open swaths of paving stones, all walled in, so the crowd was generally funnelled along fixed paths.  This left most of the courtyard free of people, and I actually stopped at one point and snapped a photo of an empty stretch of courtyard just so that I could say that I got a picture without any strangers in it.

After the Temple we headed off to a small auditorium for an acrobatics display, which was quite entertaining.  I've got no photos of that since they specifically requested that you not take photos during the show.  I'm glad I didn't make an attempt either, since I noticed during the show that they had ushers wandering around with green laser pointers shinning them into the lenses of people trying to illegally capture a photo.  For those of you who are unfamiliar, a green laser is substantially more powerful than your run-of-the-mill red ones.  Powerful enough in fact that in a dark room you can clearly see the beam, which is how I noticed what was going on in the first place.  I can imagine that anyone trying to take a photo with a green laser directed at their lens would probably just end up with a nasty green photo.  I can also imagine that anyone who was hit in the face with that laser while the usher was trying to get it trained on their lens would probably have the charming side effect of permanent vision damage.  So yeah, if you're in China and they tell you not to take photos, you should probably just tuck the camera away for awhile.

Today we started our tour off with a visit to silk factory.  They took us through the process of harvesting silk from silk worms, and they gave a lengthy sales pitch for the quality of their silk bedding.  In Cantonese of course.  I just practised my smiling and nodding.  It's the inevitable practice of holding a tour group hostage in a store for an obscene amount of time in the hopes that they'll eventually just get bored and buy something.  Annoying to be sure, but I was actually pretty impressed with the honesty of our tour guide who freely admitted that his company was being paid to bring us to this shop and asked for our patience since that's part of what helps keep the cost down.  Not how I wanted to spend my morning, but I appreciate the honesty either way.

We spent the afternoon in a city outside of Beijing called Tian Jin.  It's a huge metropolis with a little core in the centre of town that contains a cluster of very, very old buildings.  They've kept the traditional setup of shops on the ground floor and apartments up top, so it's a very cool old shopping district.

Oh yeah, and TWO of the shops looked like this:

I'll let you hazard a guess as to how difficult it was for Euphy to get me out of the empty handed.  I was considering just giving up clothes for the rest of the trip so I could fit this blue one into my luggage:

So that's a wrap for today.  Actually, in catching up with renaming my photos and getting this post put together I've really stayed up far too late.  I'm just hoping now that I'm caught up that I can keep some regular blogging going without it having a major impact on my evenings.

Before I call it a night though, this one's for Jay.  I couldn't find any supercars, but how about this sexy ride?

Have a good night everyone.

Live From Beijing, It's Friday Night

Good evening everyone!  Look who's back online!  I ended up breaking down and paying for a proxy service just to get access to Blogspot again.  I tried a few free options, but nothing was yielding any positive results, so I opted to just throw money at this situation.  The internet connection here at the hotel is pretty slow to begin with, and routing through a proxy really isn't helping anything, but at least I'm able to get something written.

I actually made an attempt last night to use an old tool I'd set up ages ago.  Blogspot generated a secret e-mail address, and any e-mail sent there would be turned into a blog and posted here.  Pretty handy sometimes when access to the website was difficult.  You may recall that I made use of that a few times when I didn't have a computer handy, but I had my phone.  Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be functioning anymore.  I may have to go in and reset something.

Time to catch everyone up since my last post.

We got in to Beijing on time yesterday and made our way to the hotel.  First impression of Beijing was how surprisingly green the city is.  Euphy told me that at one point they'd cut down nearly every tree for miles to fuel their growing industrialization but that it had the unintended side-effect of nearly turning the city into a desert due to topsoil erosion.  Learning that lesson the hard way they went to work trying to get some plantlife back in place to anchor down the soil.  Apparently when China corrects a mistake the correct it with gusto because I've never seen such a well forested city.  It's really quite lovely.

The next thing to hit me was a sense of familiarity.  I attributed it to the fact that we were on a bus into the heart of the city, and the freeways of Beijing feel a bit like home due to the fact that they drive on the right here, and the bulk of the cars are familiar makes and models.  Lots of Audis, Hyundais, and Volkswagens, with smatterings of Hondas, Chevys, and Buicks.  It seems like the vast majority of taxis in Beijing are Hyundai Elantras.

Now, once we were off the main highways I was sharply reminded of where we were... especially in the evening when we were out of a bus and into a taxi.  I'd heard of the legendary driving over here, but it really is something to experience it first hand.  I'm still not entirely convinced that there are rules of the road... and yet somehow it works.  In a way it almost seems cooperative since each person just does exactly what they feel like at any given moment, and all the other vehicles around them adapt the the sudden change of situation.  I saw the cab I was in slow down a few times to let a guy in front of him merge, or stop suddenly when someone making a poor excuse of a U-turn put their car completely broadside to oncoming traffic.  I'm pretty sure the only rule here is to just merge when you need to merge and hope everyone around you lets it happen... and they always seem to.  I don't think it's quite the altruistic desire to make other people's lives easier though.  I imagine that any illusion of cooperation is entirely caused by the desire of other drivers not to die in a fiery crash.

So yeah, there's my first impressions of Beijing: beauty, familiarity, terror.  In that order.

At any rate, we've had a very busy day, and it took more time than I would have liked to get myself onto Blogspot, so I really need to wrap this up.  I'll try to catch up with the events of the last few days when I get on tomorrow night.  For now I'll just leave you with a photo to prove that I'm still alive and well.  Have a good night everyone.

Finally, a hat that reflects my left-leaning politics.

Touchdown: Hong Kong

Good morning... errr... afternoon?  Evening?  Let me try this again.

Hi everyone!  Local time in Hong Kong is 4:40 a.m. and I just did what any proper Canadian does at four in the morning: had a tuna sandwich and a beer.  Neglect the fact that it's 4:40 p.m. in Toronto right now, it seems much more Rock 'n' Roll if we leave out that fact.

We touched down in Hong Kong over an hour ahead of schedule this morning.  At first I was feeling like that wasn't particularly beneficial since we've just got to wait until our 9:00 flight to Beijing anyway, but now that I'm settled into the lounge I'm pretty happy to be on the ground early.  The plane we flew in on was lovely, but it's still a plane, and flying cattle class can only be so comfortable.  I got pretty lucky though and was able to sleep for around 8-9 hours, effectively eating up around 2/3 of the flight, so it didn't really seem that long.  A couple movies and a bit of Top Gear later and I was here.

We're actually pretty comfortable at the moment.  Euphy's job at BMO gives here a lot of insight into the various flavours of MasterCard that they offer, and so many months ago she started to get very excited about this World Elite card.  Various interesting benefits on the card, but the one that's applicable at the moment is free enrolment in the Priority Pass club.  These guys run a huge number of VIP lounges in airports around the world.  If I understand correctly the lounges are usually accessible to first-class passengers, but if you have a Priority Pass card then you can pay $27 to come use the facilities.  Well this World Elite MasterCard comes with free membership and three free visits to any lounge, so we thought we'd give it a shot.  We're now relaxing in a very nicely appointed lounge which is extraordinarily more comfortable than  your average boarding gate waiting lounge.  It's dimly lit with comfy chairs, and I'm feeling like a nap is in my very near future.  Also the above mentioned sandwich and beer were on the house... something I can see myself taking advantage of again before our next flight.  All told it's been a nice little touch of extra comfort on the long voyage.

I think it's about time I wrapped this up.  I may have got a good night's sleep on the plane in terms of time spent sleeping, but we all know that sleeping on a plane doesn't equate to sleeping in a bed... something I won't get to do for another 18 or so hours.  I've still got a pretty long haul ahead of me to get to Beijing and get settled in, so I'm going to make the most of this time and try to get a bit of rest.  I hope everyone back home is doing well and with any luck I'll be posting again soon.