Jiao tong le!

I see butt cheeks!

This dad looks like he's going to kill me. Get your baby to a real bathroom dude!

Scooter outside the temple.

Tai Ji Quan!

So many people...

Pretty roof tiles.

Peking duck! Greasy greasy...

Tiananmen Square. Mao is watching!

New performance hall glibly called "the egg." A bit spacey and out there. Characteristic of the dissonant look of Beijing.

Skewer of cicadas.

Skewer of scorpions and seahorse.

Outside of Forbidden Palace. March on young soldiers!

Palace in the center of Forbidden Palace.

Spiffed up new paint job.

Beihai Park. Look, the White Dagoba!

Sponge-brush calligraphy. He dude wrote my name for me, though he got one of the words wrong and also wrote that I was a Korean. Only way to explain how I can look Asian and have such miserable Mandarin.

The Great Wall rising in the mist.

The steepness and stairs would be enough to scare me off if I were a Mongol.

My feet hurt! So let's see... I don't think this post will be too detailed but I should mention some highlights.

- Butt pants. It seems like most kids up to the age of 2 wear crotchless pants sans underpants so that they can conveniently squat where they are to do their business. Seen way too many little kid butt cracks hanging out in Tiananmen Square and in and around temples. I know it saves on diapers but don't little kids sit in stuff?
- Man beaters. So the Chinese version of those unsightly wife beaters is a translucent white number where the neck and arm holes slope down a little too much, sometimes exposing man boob nipples. This is often tucked into shorts or pants that are pulled up very high on the waist.
- Demolition/construction. Beijing right now is mad about getting things ready for the Olympics. Everywhere there is the sound of jackhammers and cranes. Old historic neighborhoods, albeit all concrete and decrepit, are being razed and replaced with a cacophony of very slick but entirely mismatched condos, shopping malls, and hotels.
- People. Tai duo ren! I guess you could say that Beijing people have that New York kind of rudeness. Why? Because there are just too many damn people in the city. It is downright overwhelming. And it rubs off in the way ppl interact. With one restaurant hostess, she greeted every new customer with, "Kuai dianr!" Hurry up! To get anywhere you simply have to push. No pauses for niceness b/c if you stop you will lose your place or get smashed. Ppl have no qualms about getting up too close to you if it means they will get a space on the bus or get past you in line. Ah, so as if the city's heat and humidity doesn't make everyone smelly enough, you get to rub up against everyone else's bodies too. Nice!

So, mini observations aside, let's see about what sightseeing has already taken place.

- Temple of Heaven. Kinda turned into a local park with ppl doing taiqi, badminton, kicking a shuttlecock. Very calm and filled with trees.
- Forbidden City. Huge! There is no way to capture the size of this place. It is just enormous the area that is encompassed by the walls of the Forbidden City. It has a really gorgeous garden too. Overrun with Chinese tourist. One of those bodies pressing up against bodies experience at the entrance.
- Mao. The guy himself is kept in a glass enclosure that you can go see him at in the middle of Tiananmen Square. He is looking like he is now made of orange wax. Seeing him is free to the public but you do have to pay for packets of plastic flowers that you can lay at his statue. Which they simply sell over and over to people.
- Beihai. A lake park with an island in the center topped with a temple called the White Dagoba. Calm and lovely with paddle boats floating within.
- Wanfujing. A big shopping street with a street lined with regional food stalls. There are skewer shops that sell scorpions and sea horses on skewers!
- The Great Wall. We went to a less visited portion, apparently there are a few you can choose from. We had to take a bus and then hire a driver, who was our bus driver trying to make a few extra bucks. In any case, it was nice that we didn't hit the most tourist developed area of the wall so there weren't as many people there. Even so it had a road lined with souvenir stalls. "Hello, t-shirt. Many colors!" And then of course we took a cable car up to the wall. Which was amazing! What a sight to see! Battlements and wall snaking on the ridge of the mountains. Lots of steep climbing up steps. Lots of the battlements smelled like poop b/c that is probably what ppl do way up there. But really absolutely amazing. And than, which actually rivals the wall itself in coolness, we tobogganed down. Woohoo, zipping down a snaking toboggan slide was so so fun. At one point one of my friends got stuck and we had bottlenecking, but it all worked out and we didn't have to cash in our 1 Yuan insurance ticket. Nice!

In conclusion, my feet hurt. A lot. One more day of Beijing and then on the Xian where we will see the tombs of the terra cota warriors. Wee, vacations are excellent things. Hard on the feet, but good for the spirit.