The Far West: nineteen days in China by Carrie King

This morning we met in a special dining room for breakfast and for our welcome briefing, which had been postponed from last night since we'd been so tired. I can't now remember much of it, except a bit about money and shopping. I was giving a lot of attention to the food.

We boarded the bus and met our local guide, Jim. Is today when he sold us the chops? check journal.

To Tinananmen square. my lord, the smog. how discouraging. photos attempted in spite of. wandering the square. father asks to take picture of me with his 3 ish year old daughter, who is rather shy. no one gets to approach the monument. we wander across the square and meet up across the street from the gate, and take our group photo (scan this!). underground movement to elude the swarming taxis.

mao's gate to the city. scaffolding, phoo. long dark hallway into first courtyard. people selling things. museum of the last emperor over there (no visit). second gate. memory getting a bit blurry, hope getting next batch of pictures back will help. clock museum at some point. so are these or are these not the real clocks??

mazelike passages in which we cleverly manage to elude half our group. large empty bronze cauldrons once water-filled for fire fighting. former living quarters and reception rooms of the emperor ... and the empress dowager: pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain.

find our way out the back gate. lunch at "temple of earth" but seemed to be mostly park, and small complex that is now restaurant. lots of people selling things. fans and the clapper pandas.

on to the temple of heaven, more obviously a temple. even MORE people selling things. david's ten silk ties, and lu's attempt to buy stamps.

first the stone on the hill from which prayers fly high properly. too many chinese tourists for me to test this. on, down a long walk, only the emperor got to walk on the center part. walk walk walk. the splendiferous blue round roofed temple and assorted tourists. only managed to get through the left-hand museum building; missed the musical instruments. establishing my pattern of being the last in the group. or toward the end, if not.

i believe it was this evening that we went to peking opera after dinner. atonal singing not thrilling to my non-jade ear; livened up a bit when we got to the monkey god's acrobatic story.