Saturday, March 29

A busy day, Kathy and Bill went off to T’ianmenn Square and the Forbidden City while Carole and I went in another direction. We went to the old section of the city to see the hutongs. The hutongs are the old neighborhoods that are like rabbit warrens. The streets curve and are about 10 foot wide. Rickshaws are everywhere and the only mode of transport except walking. The area we were in was called Hou Hai and overlooking it was a drum tower. We climbed the tower where there was an ancient time keeping device that used water to calculate the time. Several times a day imperial drummers would beat on the 15 large kettle drums to note the time for the civil servants to ensure the got to work on time! We saw a demonstration of this activity.
Following this we got a taxi to the Llama temple. Taxis and almost everything else in this city have been cheap. We pay $2.50 to go almost everywhere and tipping is not thought well of here in the people’s paradise. Fine by me! The hotel has given us a little card with all of the usual destinations written in Chinese so we can circle where we want to go and give to the cab driver – none of whom speak any English
At the Llama temple we saw a walled city about as large as St. Peter’s Square that contained 10 temples to Buddha in many different incarnations. Much incense burning and chanting.
Next we went to a tea ceremony in one of the many tea houses in the city. We choose the 400 year old Phoenix tea (it came in a foil sealed bag, one of the many inconsistencies in today’s China). The ceremony was quite nice; we had an English speaking girl who instructed us in the ceremony. Pictures to follow when we get out of internet censorship. (We are only able to post words to the blog because I can backdoor into the blog through my google account)

We met up with the Lees for cocktails in their lovely suite and then had another great Chinese dinner at a restaurant Kathy picked. Back to the night market for one more frenetic round of bargaining for souvenirs. We now are fairly skilled at this. The sellers compete for our attention by pulling on our jackets and holding us so we can’t go anywhere else. There is no time to really look at their wares as there is a full blast assault for our attention. We had now determined what we wanted to buy so we got into full scale negotiations. Calculators are used to overcome language differences. They type in a number (always absurd to start with) and you type in a number. This goes on until an agreement is reached. Bill and I were using a tag team approach that seemed to work well but I am sure we overpaid in the end.

It’s now Sunday morning, and we have a 3:30 flight to the states so we are going attempt to see some Olympic venues this morning and then off to the airport. This will be our last post, thanks to all who read and special thanks to those who gave comments!

p.s. Carole says she may post more pics when we return to the states so perhaps not last post.