False. The past two days we have been in Beijing, it looks like a normal Westernized city with lots and lots of people. Oh yeah, and Chinese characters all over the place. WARNING: NEVER DRIVE IN CHINA, you will die. The Chinese use their car horns more than any place else I’ve ever heard. They use them to pass, to say watch out for me biker, to say don’t cross the road or I’ll eat you with my grill, all sorts of things. Beijing is pretty normal from what I can tell other than the constant smog. It’s trying to get prettied up for the Olympics in August, but I think they’re not going to be able to do anything about the smog. (Unless they take a giant vacuum cleaner to it, but I don’t think they’re going to do that.) Yesterday we didn’t really go into Beijing we arrived at the Institute of Petrochemical Technology and had lunch (all the meals by the way have been wonderful, full of vegetables and meats and breads, most really good.) Then we collapsed in our rooms for a while, took a short tour of campus, ate dinner, and then the English majors from BIPT threw us a party where they practiced their spoken English and let us know about their culture a little bit. Today, we went to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We saw the giant picture of Chairman Mao and the outside of his mausoleum. Inside the City was gigantic with lots of Ornamentation and pagodas and buildings everywhere. It was built over 4 centuries I think they said and only stopped in about 1900. We didn’t have a tour guide and I wish that there had been more writing so that I could understand exactly what I was seeing but it was still very impressive. Hopefully some of the pictures will load. Interesting side notes about the day: Chinese people will take random pictures of Americans just because. It’s really quite funny and the little Chinese children look at you like you’re a strange wild being (especially if you have a beard.) After the Forbidden City was dinner (also good) and the concert. It went as well as it could I suppose due to the deadness of the space we were in. And then their choir performed for us…. Let’s just say I’m glad they only had 3 songs, but they were lovely people. Ok, I need sleep because tomorrow is the Great Wall, and then an overnight train ride to our next destination. So yeah… that’s it. Over and out.
