Not Your Grandma's China

Confucius said: "There's the China you expected to see then there's the China you’ll find when you get there." There is a lot goin

g on here in Beijing. Each day as we see more and m

ore, we realize what's going on here with the Beijingers. Did I mention that the city is immaculate, the people are happy, attractive, well dressed, fully employed and extremely friendly?

Today at Tiananmen Square, a Chinese lady grabbed me and Marc and motioned that she wanted her photograph taken with us like one might have a picture taken with Elmo or Big Bird at Sesame Place. I don't think she had ever seen a blonde woman or a Caucasia

n Gastroenterologist. Her husband took a bunch of pictures of us – probably to plaster all over the Internet. I’d include one in this blog but when I gave him my camera, he didn’t seem to be able to press the button. He was just too “far-klempt.”

We toured the Forbidden City, home to 22 Chinese Emperors. I’d tell you more about it but I am forbidden. You can google it.

After our ten course special Chinese lunch, we were off to tour the Hutongs – the old Chinese neighborhoods that Mao did not manage to tear down. The Hutongs are down windy alleyways so we got off the bus and onto Trishaws (3 wheeled bicycle carriages) for a road rally with wild cowboy drivers into the depths of old Beijing. You can see a photo of us seated in our Trishaw and one of the face of one of the more camera-shy wild cowboy drivers. (Think: NYC pedi-cycle drivers in a combination road rally/ bumper cars event.) We ended up deep in a Hutong at Mrs Yi’s kitchen table. (see photo)

She served us cookies, halavah and tea and through a translator told us how she was a retired teacher/school principal who lived in this little hidden courtyard house with her daughter, son in law and grandson. It was a dusty little hovel of a thing however inside was a HUGE plasma TV, at least 2 Dells with Windows 7 (yes….I told her Windows 7 was MY idea…through a translator, of course), a piano and a huge cage of champion pigeons (see photo).

It is still unclear to us what exactly the pigeons were champions of – since our Mongolian translator really didn’t speak English, either. There’s also a picture below of me with the Mongolian translator and Mrs Yi in her courtyard. As I said…. There’s the China you expect to see and then there’s the China you find when you get there.

We are officially sick of Chinese food. We have had three ten

course special Chinese meals (2 lunches, one dinner)

in the last two days. Marc and I have been

eyeing a Haagan Daaz store down the street and we are about to head there for an ice cream cone for dinner.