Beijing

 

We got to Beijing about 5 PM their time on Thursday June 22 and found our way to the hotel. We ate in a restaurant in the hotel that had a Mongolian theme. The setting was inside a tent meant to emulate a traditional Mongolian dwelling. There was an amazing stringed instrument players and the waitresses doubled as dancers/singers. The food was good and we found ourselves able to go to bed without any serious jet lab effects.

 

The next morning a guide and driver met us at the hotel and drove us to see the Great Wall. This involved some seriously scary driving in very crowded streets and on expressways. The pollution can’t even be imagined. You could barely see a mile away and everything was hazy and brown. You can get a sense of this in some of the pictures below at the Great Wall site, though the camera made it appear less hazy than it really was. Though our guide didn’t know it (we learned a few days later from a newspaper), the site we visited is one of the key cultural sites for the upcoming 2008 Olympics and the day we were there they were having a special kick-off ceremony.

 

Some dancers connected with the ceremony:

 

        

 

The Olympics 2008 theme.

 

  

 

School kids lined along the wall with a banner.