Oct. 15 - Saturday in Beijing
First, thanks to all who have written to let us know they are following our travels! Everyone here says HI!
First stop - Tiananmen Square - along with about half a million other tourists! Our guide Richard (note what he's using to lead us around the city!) told us that the number of Chinese tourists has drastically increased over the past 5-10 years, and there were mostly Chinese tour groups at the square today. The queue for Mao's tomb was nearly a kilometer long. Lovely weather, though, so we spent about an hour there. The group photos prove it! Large numbers of street vendors bugged us to buy all kinds of souvenirs, but we didn't buy much. We'd already walked quite a ways by 10 am, so had to sit along the sidewalk while our bus caught up to us.
Around 11 we got to the 5-year-old Beijing Capital Museum, a fabulous space with endless displays of cultural relics, models of old city life, porcelains, etc. When we were near the entry Dawn caught sight of an older couple wearing flowers and a red ribbon in their lapels. Turns out he and his wife were a calligrapher and painter and there was an exhibition of their work in the basement. We had a photo taken of them with our group, and later Wendy discovered the exhibition, and got us all a souvenir of the show. It is a huge museum, and by 1 pm we'd had enough, so set out for lunch at MacDonald's and the afternoon at the Silk Market. MacDonald's fare tasted pretty good. However, nothing could prepare people for the chaos, noise, and volume of goods at the Silk Market, especially on a busy Saturday afternoon. Once we'd gathered in our bus at the end of the afternoon we had a grand "show and tell" of everyone's purchases. Ce showed amazing restraint, but the same could not be said for Adele! I won't tell tales out of school, though.
Dinner tonight was at AFUNTI, a Uighur minority restaurant which is very touristy, but had an amusing floor show when we were last here 4-5 years ago. Tonight the food service was less than satisfactory. The dancing girls were good, but the sound was much too loud for most of these old ears. Just goes to show you that nothing stays the same for very long here.
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| Richard leads the way with Swallowtail |
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| Classic Group photo at Tiananmen Square, in front of Forbidden City |
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| Street vendors selling tourist stuff |
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| Time for a sidewalk rest |
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| Busy Beijing Street |
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| Beijing Capital Museum gawkers |
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| Museum displays |
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