After a week in Beijing, we’re ready to hit the road.  We’ve stayed in a nice hotel (Mark got a great deal on Expedia) and it’s been relaxing.  Tomorrow morning, though, we’ll be on a train to Mongolia.  That will definitely feel like we’re on an adventure; Mongolia is not the kind of place you go on a two week vacation.  It’s a 30-hour train ride, and then we’re planning on spending five days there – three in Ulan Bator, the capital, and two nights out in a gur, the Mongolian equivalent of a yurt.

Before leaving, though, some random thoughts on Beijing:

• The traffic!  It’s not just that there are so many cars, but this is one city that is really not friendly to pedestrians.  You can be in the crosswalk with a walk sign, and cars will cut you off without a second thought.  I’ve seen little old ladies struggling to get across the street and drivers don’t give them an inch.
  

  Lunch in the alley

• Go one direction from our hotel and in a couple blocks you can go into a Gap or Apple store. Go the other direction and in a couple blocks you’re at a Rolls Royce dealership, followed by a Maserati/Ferrari dealer and a Mercedes and a BMW and not long after that an Aston Martin dealer.  Mao’s face may be plastered all over the city, but this is not his China anymore.  Still, for all those changes, it’s still the case that the best food you can get is in the alleys – the “hutongs” of Beijing.  Yesterday we had breakfast for $3 and lunch for $13.  Today’s breakfast was just under $2.  We loved it, and we haven’t gotten sick (yet)!
  

  Hutong breakfast kitchen … and dining room

• Sure, there are a lot of young people in Beijing, but there are a lot of old people, too, weathered faces and failing bodies.  And when you think of what they’ve seen.  Someone just my father’s age would have experienced Chiang Kaishek, the Rape of Nanjing, Mao’s victory in the civil war, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Nixon’s visit, Deng Xiaoping’s rise and fall and rise and fall and final rise to the top, the return of Hong Kong, and now decades of economic growth that western economist said couldn’t be sustained.  Actually, they still say it can’t be sustained.  Presumably if you say it long enough, eventually you’ll be right.
• While Mark didn’t mention it in his post below, Lefty loved the Great Wall.  After literally centuries of his … people? … carrying supplies to support the troops on the wall, he was quite pleased to be carried up there in style.
  

  Lefty on the Great Wall

All in all a great visit.  It turns out you there’s a lot to see in Beijing, and lots we didn’t get to do.  And this is just one city – imagine what you could do if you had years to travel the world and could come back to spend months here.  Hmmm…

Our friend Greg lived in Beijing for a year or more and told us the place to be was in the Park. Yesterday was a gorgeous Saturday, warm and sunny, and apparently he told lots of people that, because they all followed his instructions and went to the parks.  Some of the highlights:

Forbidden City from Jingshan Park

Jingshan Park is a 55-acre park immediately north of the Forbidden City, full of people doing tai chi, dancing, smelling the peonies, you name it.  The major feature is a big artificial hill, made when they dug the moat for the Forbidden City, from which there are great views.  We’d toured the Forbidden City the day before and I wasn’t enamored of it; it just seemed like a big space with a lot of buildings.  But from the hill you had a great sense of just how massive it was.

People were exercising everywhere, although sometimes the exercise was … odd.  As we were climbing up the hill, one older, shirtless guy was first falling backwards into a tree and later clapping his hands to it.  Repeatedly.  Women, again, mostly older, were dancing everywhere, though again not exactly breaking a sweat.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big fan of being outside and moving.  It was amusing, though, that it was everywhere.  If there was space, there were a group of people dancing or doing tai chi, or swinging things, or … something.  Of course, the most interesting dancer by far was a wonderful guy, leading a group of mostly women, who was really having fun.

How can you be sad when you’re dancing?

The Sound of Music

The highlight, though, by far, was a couple playing music.  He was playing the harmonica and she was singing.  I heard her from a bit away and thought her voice was beautiful and the closer we got the more I liked it.  And when she started singing from The Sound of Music I was all hers.  Let’s go to the tape, though I’m not sure we have this whole posting to You Tube down right.  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wbvUgwSEcIE

Then there are the lakes near Jingshan Park and the Forbidden City.  There are three of them, and walking around them I felt like I was back in Minneapolis.  Some people might think Beijing is nothing like Minneapolis, but only if you’ve never walked around the lakes on a beautiful spring day.  Just as in Minneapolis, everyone was out and having fun and flying kites and swimming (trust me, you wouldn’t want to have been swimming in that water) and boating and tai chi-ing, and dancing … you get the point.  Best of all, once you pass to the second lake, Houhai, there are gaudy bars everywhere!

And we finally found something that isn’t cheap in China – $8 for a gin and tonic.  It was, however, one of the finest gin and tonics I’ve ever had: sitting on the roof of Beyond Bar, on a couch, with my Kindle.  Mark hadn’t joined me for that part of the walk, so I sat there reading, relaxing, watching the world go buy below while waiting for him to join me.  And though the drinks ain’t cheap, you can sit as long as you want with one drink and they’ll never even ask if you want another until you flag them down.  It was sweet.

Oh yeah, the kite flying.  I know I haven’t grown too old when kites in the air still awe me.

Nice day for flying a kite