Beijing is the size of Belgium

Really, no kidding. We're pretty sure that this gigantic figure includes a lot of surrounding countryside, but the point is, it's a huge city.

Joanna writes:

March is not Beijing's most becoming month, but we had relatively good luck with the weather, and managed to enjoy ourselves despite the chill. Our first three days there were sunny, or as sunny as it gets when the wind isn't blowing in the right direction. The pollution there is really quite extreme, and makes the sky seem permanently grey and heavy. It also makes for some neat sunsets.

Our hostel was in one of Beijing's old neighborhoods, called hutongs. They have narrow streets and old, often rundown buildings, and are becoming more rare as they are demolished to make way for modern apartment buildings. It was a cool area to be in, and we spent a lot of time just wandering around. It was also pretty convenient to the central sights, like Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, where we visted our first day. Unfortunately, Mao's mausoleum is closed for some time (a lot of things are being renovated for the 2008 Olympics), so we didn't get to gawk at the waxy remains of the Chairman. We did get to see the huge portrait of him that hangs on the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the entrance to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is a pretty cool place to visit, with lots of beautiful architecture and a huge lovely garden, though it probably would've been cooler when it was still forbidden.

We also took a trip to the Great Wall. It was Great! No, seriously, that thing is amazing, and we also learned some important lessons about tours in China in a relatively painless way. We were initially surprised and delighted by how cheap the tour was, as it included transportation to a faraway part of the wall, a guide for the four-hour hike along the wall to another access point, and lunch. What they didn't tell us was that there were three additional charges for entrance to different parts of the wall. The whole thing was still inexpensive, but it seemed pretty sketchy when they pulled over at a gas station a couple hours out of town and demanded 40Y from each of us for our entrance tickets. So, we now know to always ask if there are additional fees! Our other lesson was that we need to tell people that we're not going to buy anything from them before they waste their time being nice to us. At the beginning of the hike, our little group was joined by about as many Chinese "guides" (we naively thought) as there were of us. Soon a tiny old woman was holding my hand and keeping me from slipping as we climbed up the steep and still icy slope to the wall. I thought, "oh, how nice.“ Well, kind of. Then she got really mad an hour later when I didn't want to buy a book. Anyway,the hike was wonderful, and so was the lunch, so it was a lovely day all told.

Another good experience we had in Beijing was renting bikes for a day. The traffic in Beijing (and Shanghai and Kunming) is pretty crazy and the rules are loose; it's pretty much a might-makes-right situation, with a general hierarchy of buses, then cars, then bikes, then pedestrians, though a sufficiently large herd of the latter two can sometimes overwhelm even the buses. Tons of people still bike in China, and we've seen people carrying all manner of ridiculously huge loads. Most of the bikes are really old, too--it's strange to see immaculately dressed women with high-heeled boots pedalling along on bikes that look like they were built for a nine-year-old boy twenty years ago. There are usually large bike lanes on the main streets, but they're often full of pedestrians, carts, scooters, and sometimes even cars, so you need to keep your wits about you all the time. Luckily everyone goes pretty slowly. So, off we went on our rented bikes into the fray. About five minutes after we set off, my back tire exploded. Ben says it looked pretty cool. Luckily my replacement bike survived the journey, and we had a fun ride.

I think one more sight that deserves note is the Taoist Temple we visited. I think the general impression Americans have of Taoism is that it's basically about chilling out and finding the Way. We do not understand exactly how this idea relates to what we saw, but there is definitely a lot more to Taoism. The temple courtyard was lined with about 50 small rooms, sort of like stalls, that were all labelled as different "departments." Each contained about ten nearly life-sized painted figures illustrating the purpose of the particular department and a judge figure at the back. Some notable deparments were "The Department for Implementing 15 kinds of Violent Death," "The Deparment for Mammal Births," "The Department for River Gods," "The Deparment of Jaundice," "The Department of Petty Officials," and "The Department for the Accumulation of Justifiable Wealth." We don't really get it, but it was a rather surreal experience.

On Saturday night we decided to try to find the local rock scene, and set off for the What? Bar, a destination gleaned from a google search. It was awesome. A tiny little hole in the wall (quite literally, as its door opened into the wall surrounding the Forbidden City）where we saw two Beijing bands rock the house and ran into an acquaintance of Ben's from school (Azalea, for those of you who might know her). We inhaled a lifetime's worth of smoke and partook of the birthday cake served to one of the band members, and had a generally fun time seeing that rock and roll is alive and well here.

So now, after our brief flirtation with our native climate, we've flown down south to Kunming in the Yunnan Province, where it is sunny and 70 degrees and the trees are covered with leaves and flowers are blooming everywhere. It's wonderful！ Tomorrow we meet up with Ben's friend Ian, who speaks Mandarin and is awesome. Hooray!

PS After days of intensive study, we have determined, without a doubt, that the babies here are So F-ing Cute. Especially up north, where they are bundled into 15 layers of adorable clothes and go tottering around with only their faces and bums sticking out (Chinese baby clothes have open bums so they don't have to remove all those layers when the kid needs to wee.) Here in Kunming they have sun hats instead, so the cuteness factor (CF) remains almost as high.