After spending almost a week in Shanghai spending time with Ting's (our friend in Shanghai) we said good-bye to live in a comfortable home for the rigors of the road. We went to Beijing together with Ting and her parents and Sarah's parents. We spent two full days in Beijing on a package tour that took care of all of the details for us. This was convenient as we saw a lot in the two days without having to get too stressed out.

Beijing is the capital of the country and it kind of had a capital feel. In our opinion it seemed like a little more egalitarian place. In Shanghai there are huge disparities between parts of town but you didn't get that feeling as much in Beijing. Also the fact that Beijing had just won their bid to become the Olympic host city in 2008 was made known everywhere. There were mascots, posters, and souvenirs everywhere. Even a large percent of the bottles of water had the Olympic rings plastered on them.

Beijing is one of the most historical cities in China and we got a good sense of that as we toured. The first day we were there we toured The Temple of Heaven, Tiannamen Square, Mao's Mausoleum, and the Forbidden City. A lot to see in one day. Some of our impressions were: Mao sure is revered (judging by the large number of people lined up to see his body), the Forbidden city is huge and big enough to be called a city, and there are not any reminders of 89 in Tiannamen as people bustle around carrying shopping bags and looking decidedly modern and free. After a long day of touring we took a break and ate dinner at one of the best restaurants for Beijing Duck in Beijing. The walls leading to the place were covered with pictures of dignitaries and celebrities from Fidel Castro (is he considered a dignitary in the States??) to Tom Cruise eating delicious duck. It was a treat. The waiter carved the duck in front of us and then we made something like fajitas with pieces of duck, a doughy shell, pieces of green onion and a special sauce. Certainly an interesting experience.

The next day we first visited some of the Ming tombs outside of the city. Ming is a Chinese dynasty that dates back to the 1300s. The Ming emperors were extravagant and that included their tombs. They were huge underground structures that must have taken an incredible amount of time and money to construct. In the afternoon we saw something which must have even taken more effort. The Great Wall. The Wall stretches over 2000 km but these days parts of it have crumbled almost to nothing. We visited a section called Badaling which is the place most tourists have their Great Wall experience and can buy T-shirts that say, "I climbed the Great Wall". We had only an hour and a half here and we made the most of it by climbing a rather steep section of the wall. It was an amazing sight to see the Wall stretching out as far as the eye could see, although it was a misty day and the eye couldn't see that far. For the final stop of the day we visited the summer palace that was on the way back into Beijing. The Summer Palace was a get a way place for the emperors to retreat to in of course in summer. It had some impressive gardens a "Long Corridor" which apparently has been deemed by the Guiness folks as the longest in the world. We ended our Beijing experience in MacDonalds eating something a little less decadent than the Beijing duck of the night before.

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