Day one in Beijing

Well, day one in Beijing has been pretty fascinating so far.

Managed to sleep in until 5 a.m, and Kohji until 6! Not bad considering that we went to bed at about 8 am Ottawa time. Woke to fog, grey skies and heavy rain.

The constrution site which is right out our window was one massive puddle. Interesting watching the goings on down there - few hard hats, no steel toe boots to be seen and much of the work seems to be done by hand. Amazing considering that it's a masive pit, the length of a city block at least. There also seem to be only a handful of men working on the site, so we're guessing progress is rather slow.

After an amazing Chinese and American breakfast here at the hotel buffet (we had our first taste of congee, the Chinese breakfast staple), we planned to check out the silk market with two of the other families who are traveling with us. It's about a 30 minute walk away. Luckily, the rain had stopped, but it was still overcast. This turned out to be a blessing because once the sun came out in the afternoon, we fully understood what the word "muggy" means.

En route to the market, we were side tracked by a young student, who is studying English and, according to him, transcultural relations and traditional painting. His English was excellent and he invited us to his teacher's studio which was just nearby so that he could write our daughters names for us in traditional calligraphy. Not exactly sure what we were getting ourselves into, we decided to follow him to the studio, figuring with 6 of us, it'd be ok, even though we did painfully look like your classic group of tourists.

The studio was located in a non-descript building off a main throroughfare. It was a small, and very warm, single room plastered with paintings floor to ceiling. Our student friend, who's name was Han Bing (although he said his English name was Jason), told us the meanings and stories behind some of the paintings. While we were there, Jason's teacher, Sang She, came it, and it was he who did the calligraphy of our girl's names, while Jason gave us a tour of the paintings. We were suitably charmed, and maybe to a certain extent suckered, as we all walked out of there with our calligraphy and other paintings. Kohji and I bought a lovely water colour of a rooster, as Kiyomi's birth year is the year of the rooster, and 4 landscapes showing 4 seasons. All of ours were painted by Jason (at right, is Sang She doing the calligraphy).

After that little adventure, we set off once again for the Silk Market, only to be side tracked yet again, by a rather well known department store called the Friendship Store. Originally, the Friendship store was the place where foreigners shopped - no locals were aloud to make purchases from the store. It carries a variety of traditional Chinese arts and crafts and souvernirs, and also houses a rather large grocery store of primarily western products. The prices are considerably higher than anything in the markets, so we were mainly window shopping.

So, in the end, we didn't make it near to the Silk Market. One of the families with us has a 4 year old girl, who had been amazingly good and patient while we dragged her to the studio, but she was ready for nap, so we decided to save the Silk Market for another day.

Instead, we went with Linda and Octavio to Wanfuiing Dajie, a pedestrian shopping street about a 20 minute walk from the hotel. The main part of the strip is a mixture of western and modern looking stores, but there is an off-shoot which has food stalls and vendor after vendor selling all sorts of souvenirs.

Down this little alleyway, we came across this little delicacy that would seem to be right at home on Fear Factor (at right). Yup, those are scorpions and seahorses on a stick. Needless to say, no one was brave enough to try any (although we did try, what we think was, squirrel at lunch).

The souvenir vendors are aggressive and call out to you, but it wasn't quite as bad as we feared it would be. Alas, we didn't try our hand at haggling, but expect we'll get a chance in future.

We also stopped in at the English Language Bookstore, where I went looking for a copy of the Little Red Book for Dad. When I pressed someone there for any ideas as to where I could get a copy, she replied "nowhere" and walked away from me. Seems you can get purses with Chairman Mao's face on them, but you can't get your hands on the writings.

Well, we're about the meet Linda and Octavio for dinner, so I must sign out. Tomorrow, hopefully, the Silk Market and a performance of Chinese acrobats!