Day One through Three

With the able assistance of my new assistant, the Assistant to Mr. Albright, I have been able to restart my blog. Naturally, the First Amendment doesn't exactly apply in China, so I will need to be more cryptic than usual to avoid attracting unwanted attention. Of this, I am serious. But with that particular hurdle hurdled, let's move forward.

We have been in Beijing for three days now. It looks, for the most part, as though it were unwrapped about 25 years ago and allowed to slowly succumb to the humidity. There are a few exceptions - world-class architecture that looks shiny but a bit forced - but what is most notable is the multiplicity of it all. In the heart of the city is the largest collection of wooden buildings in the world - beautiful, vast, crowded and virtually indistinguishable. On the day we chose to walk the two miles from the south end of the world-famous square, across the bridges and moats, and through palace after palace, we brushed shoulders with most of the city's population, busily doing what we were doing - walking from one end to the other. At the far, we were disgorged into another street as if we had to get out of the way of the 2 million other people right behind us.

Amidst the buildings, the construction, the little parks, and the highways are a mass of people, going about their lives with purpose. Up early to exercise, they fill every nook stretching; no alley is left lonely of their presence; and shops whose items don't attract much attention always have a shopper browsing. Everyone is going someplace purposefully, or else strolling with their hands behind their backs seemingly content in their retirement.

We have seen so much in so little time, but nothing out of the ordinary on the usual itinerary of the city's many tourists. A redeeming feature of Beijing was the lively and packed lakeshores to the west of the city's heart - the Lotus Market, a boat dock, trees laced overhead, strip clubs, churro stands, and so many residents all taking a stroll in the brief breeze. We managed, all 17 of us, to clamber aboard pedicabs and tour through the city's alleys. It felt to some of us to be a brazenly obscene display of power, but then I noticed that almost all of the other pedicabs were filled by locals. The amazing little home we visited (whose owner, 97, and a colleague of He Whose Name will get this site shutdown the Fastest) will have to wait for a more enlightened Internet to tell about.

Finally, today we managed to visit an amazing collection of masonry, laid out in a linear fashion for over 3,000 miles, to which many have affixed the name as "Great." And, truly, this was a worthwhile and great place to visit. Since we took a cable car to the top it seemed a little disingenuous to say that I "climbed it," but we did walk across the top. My small group rode in the selfsame cable car that John ajor rode in on his way in 199something (missing letter being true to the name of this former British prime minister). I have some great shots of this place, and was please to feel that my skill at evading hawkers, vendors, salespeople, grifters and drifter remains intact so many years after leaving Mexico and Indonesia. The key is, of course, to NEVER look at the product, not even a glance. Trust me, they know.

Last night' s meal, done at a restaurant that specializes in matching a particular dynasty clothing item for clothing item, plate for plate, will join tonight's special duck restaurant in my next telling. Let me just say that having overly dressed people bow and scrape EVERY time they pass you makes one wish that one was emperor or empress. More on this as the story develops! I have hardly touched on the Tea Room, and the Silk Factory - so much to tell about what has transpired. But I look forward to tomorrow!