There are 9 million bicycles in Beijing.......

Once again I was wide awake this morning at 4am local time before eventually going back to sleep at 7am, to then find my 9am start an almost impossible feat.   Ces has made the transition fairly smoothly and has managed to snore her way through the whole night.

I feel I should point out that due to some Internet issues, I cannot access my blogsite directly from Beijing (what a surprise!), so instead my text is emailed to a friend in Switzerland who is posting the comments on my behalf.   So a big thank you to Peter Horan.   Consequently I get to make comments about Ces' snoring now and then and by the time she gets to read them, I can blame Peter for inserting some additional unapproved text!  (Clive doesn't realise that censorship by an Irisman, albeit living in rule-bound Switzerland, is far more unpredictable than censorship by Chinese Internet police ... Peter)

Yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon, we booked a car and guide from the hotel and visited Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City ... everything we needed to know was explained by our local guide 'Alice'.

Tian'anmen Square is an impressive area in the centre of Beijing used for parades, government days, etc and it appears to have mass coach tours. The numbers of tourists, mostly Chinese, are closely matched by the security present to ensure our safety. We asked Alice who all the plain clothed people alongside the soldiers were, but she said she didn't know ... she'd asked them on previous visits and they wouldn't tell her.

2 scary characters

2 other scary characters

The Forbidden City was significantly rebuilt/restored prior to the 2008 Olympics and is a very impressive range of buildings spread over an enormous area, which is 'amazing' as Alice repeatedly exclaimed.  There is an 'amazing' collection of historic articles on display from the time of the last emporer and at times it really did feel like a filmset.  As special guests we were taken to a quiet area, which by coincidence led into an art-gallery where we met the last decendant of the last emporer, who for a fee could write our name in local calligraphy.  It was such a shame that Ces and I had limited space in our car and had to decline, because my love for craft is well known ..... .

taking tea in the garden

After the walking tour of 3 hours, we returned to the comfort of our air-conditioned hotel car and started our journey back to Shangri-La (the hotel, not the heavenly place of old).   On the way Alice asked if we'd like to take part in a very special tea tasting.   I had a special drink on my mind alright but it wasn't tea.   Anyway Ces said we'd love to and a few moments later we were slurping tea like professionals. I did have a WAV sound file of this but to protect you the reader/listener I've decided not to upload it.   We purchased some Black Dragon tea (I found room in the car) and this should keep us going over the next 6 weeks.

Now that we were all getting on like a house on fire, Alice dropped some devasting news on me.

"You know English singer with song about 9 million bicycles in Beijing?" she asked.
"Yes" I replied "Katie Melua"
"She's wrong, there are 10 million", Alice exclaimed, and added "also Beijing is registering 2000 news cars on the road each week and sometimes it peaks at 18,000 new cars each quarter"
I made all the right noises but actually was wondering how the hell Katie is going to update her lyrics?

Today (Wednesday) we're about to go and collect the car and I am going to start writing my blogs in the evenings here, so there may be another update later depending on how many issues we have with Fugly.

Seeing you soon.


Xie Xie

CD


PS by Swiss-Irish Hacker (oops, I meant Bureau Chief): 
Now that everybody is in a relaxed tea-drinking mood, those of you outside China can sit back and listen to the original 9 million bicycles by Katie Melua .... Clive won't get to enjoy this until he's in Mongolia ...