Since we didn't get to Beijing until later than we had initially planned, we shuffled around our trip a little bit. So after waking up FAR earlier than I want to anytime I'm on leave, we had some breakfast at the hotel. It was about 20% American food, 50% rice in various forms, and 30% completely unidentifiable substances. Either way, it wasn't that bad. Lilah was ok with the rice, and Hailey had fried eggs. All was right with the world.
NOTE: I blog a bit differently than Karen does, so the pictures are going to be interspersed with the prose. It's like a multimedia event!
The essential difference between Communism and Capitalism is this:
The communist, seeing the rich man and his fine home, says: 'No man should have so much.'
The capitalist, seeing the same thing, says: 'All men should have so much.'
The architecture here was so different and cool. There were almost no buildings that were just rectangular.
We had to take a picture of this guy. He was spinning a wooden top the size of a football by hitting it with a rope on a stick. At 10 am on a Tuesday. Maybe this was his job?
So many cool things to see!
This guy was riding a Hello Kitty moped!
Speaking of riding things, there were about twice as many bikes on the road as there were cars. And there were a lot of cars.
And a double-decker bus!
Lilah was tired, even though it was still early.
Even in the middle of the capital of China, there is a Chinatown. Who knew?
Brittany was very excited about the IBM building. Yeah, it was cool, but I have no idea why she had a religious experience.
Turns out the Jetsons actually live in Beijing.
Hailey was being very very inquisitive. Yay for learning!
Brittany and David being awesome.
Karen and David did this about 70000 times throughout the trip. I'll just give you this one.
Our tour guide gave Hailey a pile of stuffed animals that his daughter doesn't play with anymore. She was, of course, thrilled. This is the newest member of our family, Pan the Panda.
The first place we went was a factory where artisans carve Jade. it was amazing.
The men carve the Jade...
...and the women polish it. This is because men don't have the attention span to properly polish a Jade figurine. The guide's words, not mine.
All three of the things above were hand carved from single pieces of Jade. Absolutely mind-blowing.
Look at the pretties!
And remember, he's happy because he's fat.
All in all, this was an amazing morning. We spent most of the time going "Ooh, look at that! Hey, look at that! Gee whillikers!" and generally being tourists. I was definitely impressed by pretty much everything.
One thing that particularly impressed us was that the city didn't smell bad. It smelled like Industry and roasted meat. Maybe that's just because we're used to Seoul, which has a bouquet somewhere between fetid swamp water and raw sewage.
Another side note, Spellchecker wants the word "whillikers" to be changed to "erstwhile". What is this I dont even.
to be continued...
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