It has taken me this long to recover from the trip home. I always come home sick from a long trip. This time, it seemed worse than most - I have been hacking and wheezing for 10 days, and am barely starting to sound - and, more importantly, feel - human. I have, between bouts of coughing and sleeping, been working on the pictures, so I guess it is time to start passing them on to you.
So, without further ado, let's start at the beginning, with Beijing...
......starting with the much to be desired signs awaiting me at the airport and the hotel respectively....
...the excellent breakfast buffet at the hotel....
...and, of course, the infamous wall...
.....even the Chinese are becoming environmentally conscious....
.....indeed, Mr. Liu, our local guide, says the air quality is better than he has ever seen it, as you can tell by the blue sky in the pictures....
However, I can tell you for a fact that the Chinese food is better in Vancouver....
.....This is Helen (with yours truly - I'm the one with the hat, don't you know), my roommate in Beijing (we had our own compartments on the train and subsequent hotels...)
Our first cultural outing was - surprise, surprise - the Chinese opera....
.......it is really not so different from the Western kind, full of angst and melodrama and unhappy endings...
Another outing was to a park, where patriotic singing )pro-Mao, apparently)...
...and exercise were featured. Here are some of my fellow-travelers trying the equipment...
.....the card game (below) is called Fight the Landlord!
......and this is the exquisite Temple of Heaven...
We visited an old hutang, the neighborhoods rapidly being torn down in the name of urban development. Some people still prefer to live here, though, including middle class people of reasonable means...
.....Here is our local guide, Mr. Liu. He was a font of knowledge, and incredibly funny...
We had lunch with one family in the hutong..
It's one of those things that sounds incredibly hokey when you read about it in the brochure - Really? We're having lunch with a local family is a hutong? Really? But it turned out to be great fun, That afternoon, we went to the famous Bell Tower, and were treated to a tea ceremony/tasting. I don't seem to have memorialized it with any pictures, although I certainly spent a great deal of money buying tea....
As those of you who have visited China know, toilets are a big issue. So we all chuckled when we saw this sign....
...and it was, indeed, 5 star, meaning there were at least a few Western toilets, and, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, toilet paper.
Of course, no trip to Beijing is complete without a visit to the Forbidden City...
Tamara, our chief minder, never met a camera she didn't like. Here she is with her ubiquitous yellow umbrella.....
Our visit to Beijing ended with the obligatory Peking Duck dinner. That, I have to say, was delicious, and something one rarely indulges in in Vancouver.....
Well, that's all that I will bore you with tonight. But now that I am back in the land of the living, I will try to post pictures regularly until we get caught up....
So, without further ado, let's start at the beginning, with Beijing...
......starting with the much to be desired signs awaiting me at the airport and the hotel respectively....
...the excellent breakfast buffet at the hotel....
...and, of course, the infamous wall...
.....even the Chinese are becoming environmentally conscious....
.....indeed, Mr. Liu, our local guide, says the air quality is better than he has ever seen it, as you can tell by the blue sky in the pictures....
However, I can tell you for a fact that the Chinese food is better in Vancouver....
.....This is Helen (with yours truly - I'm the one with the hat, don't you know), my roommate in Beijing (we had our own compartments on the train and subsequent hotels...)
Our first cultural outing was - surprise, surprise - the Chinese opera....
.......it is really not so different from the Western kind, full of angst and melodrama and unhappy endings...
Another outing was to a park, where patriotic singing )pro-Mao, apparently)...
.....the card game (below) is called Fight the Landlord!
......and this is the exquisite Temple of Heaven...
We visited an old hutang, the neighborhoods rapidly being torn down in the name of urban development. Some people still prefer to live here, though, including middle class people of reasonable means...
.....Here is our local guide, Mr. Liu. He was a font of knowledge, and incredibly funny...
We had lunch with one family in the hutong..
It's one of those things that sounds incredibly hokey when you read about it in the brochure - Really? We're having lunch with a local family is a hutong? Really? But it turned out to be great fun, That afternoon, we went to the famous Bell Tower, and were treated to a tea ceremony/tasting. I don't seem to have memorialized it with any pictures, although I certainly spent a great deal of money buying tea....
As those of you who have visited China know, toilets are a big issue. So we all chuckled when we saw this sign....
...and it was, indeed, 5 star, meaning there were at least a few Western toilets, and, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, toilet paper.
Of course, no trip to Beijing is complete without a visit to the Forbidden City...
Tamara, our chief minder, never met a camera she didn't like. Here she is with her ubiquitous yellow umbrella.....
Our visit to Beijing ended with the obligatory Peking Duck dinner. That, I have to say, was delicious, and something one rarely indulges in in Vancouver.....
Well, that's all that I will bore you with tonight. But now that I am back in the land of the living, I will try to post pictures regularly until we get caught up....
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