Beijing, China, July 7th

The train ride was extremely uneventful, which is a good thing. Jet lag is still a slight problem. Went to bed at 8:45pm and woke up at 4am, with only waking up once in the night. Once I woke up I watched the countryside roll by. It was rural and lush. In a weird way it reminds of the Polish countryside. Green fields with simple structures and people working their tails off. The train was delayed into Beijing so we had to grab breakfast at a KFC. Yes, you read that correctly, Kentucky Fried Chicken. Ironically it is right across the street from Tiananmen Square. Breakfast was not “a bucket of yard bird” but chicken patty somewhat akin to Chick Fil-A.

Walking through Tiananmen Square I was awestruck by the fact that I was walking where all the protests and protest backlash occurred twenty years ago. Wow, twenty years ago, I am getting old. Second, the size and scale of the actual square is hard to describe. Everything in China is so massive and beyond the scale of anything I am used to. Driving through the city all you see is huge apartment buildings. We drove around the city for almost an hour and a half in total at different time during the day and the amount of high rise apartment buildings is staggering. The city is in total preparation mode for the Olympics which are about a month away. It reminds me of when I was getting ready for finals in college. Everything is going to get done, not sure how, but it always did. Same thing for Beijing. In the last year they have added over 17,000 public buses and 70,000 new cabs. Another observation riding around in the bus is the fact that although bikes still play a prominent role automobiles have exploded over here n the last few years. They say that 1,000 cars are purchased in China…, EVERY DAY! You do not really see any old cars on the road. I am not sure how the roads will handle it.

Anyway back to Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen translates to “Gate of Heavenly Peace”. The gate itself is what I took so many pictures of. The Forbidden City is massive; it is the world's largest surviving palace complex and covers 72 ha. It is a rectangle 961 meters from north to south and 753 meters from east to west. It consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms. We walking over three miles and really did not see the whole place. Dragons are everywhere. Dragons enjoy a distinct role for the Chinese. If a dragon is shown with claws only an emperor can have one that displays five claws. Think of it like generals, the more claws the higher the rank. I also took a lot pictures of rooftops with a string of animals on them. The more animals the more important the building is, with nine being the most animals that can be shown.

On the way out of the palace we ran into some school kids who were on the way in. They asked to take pictures of us so we returned the favor. They were thrilled to take pictures with guys like me, read chubby, and the African-American teachers in our group. It was fun. Everyone is so nice and receptive. The west has made their mark here. I saw hundreds of NBA t-shirts and only half were Houston Rocket/Yao Ming related.

I will post more later. I have to run.

Here is link to even more photos.

I will try to indentify the pictures once we get dd the road.