Beijing and Yiwu

I have finally made it to a computer so have lots of bloggage to catch up on. We had a great few days in Beijing. On the second day with Lily she took us up to the Great Wall at Badaling, the restored section for tourists. Kate's American friend Pete from Quzhou came with us. It was another sunny still day, so not as cold as we or Lily expected! There was a lot of haze, so you didn't get quite the impression of the wall snaking over the hills into the distance, but the shades of hills fading were lovely. There were hardly any people there, and it was perfect climbing weather. I don't think it would matter how many times you saw the Great Wall, it is still an amazing place to be actually standing.

We took our time and wandered up. Pete went on ahead at one stage, and we realised we needed to head back to the van fairly soon, so we sent Bill off to get him. Ten minutes later I found Pete - Bill had gone right past him and was ploughing on to the top. So I sent Pete after Bill - we could see them in the distance, 2 little figures a hundred yards apart almost running up the steepest bit looking for each other! It was very funny, to the rest of us at least. Eventually they met up on the highest point, and came back down to us.

We had lunch at the restaurant we went to before, with the magic show. Pete tried some snake, but we didn't try the donkey.

We drove back to Beijing past the Olympic Village, Birdsnest and watercube. Very impressive looking, and a shame we didn't have time to go in and look around, but I guess you can't do everything.

Lily took us up the drum tower, where we watched them beat out the half hour. There was a great view of the city, and we could see people ice skating on a frozen lake, which looked fun.

Kate had a sugar horse blown for her by a man on the steet, because her birthday is in the year of the horse (so is Pete's).

The hutong tour in rickshaws was good too, although I think we all felt a bit silly in our rickshaws. We visited 2 families in their houses, one less well off where they lived in one quarter of the compound, in a wee two room house with a little lean-to cupboard really as the kitchen. They were very pleasant, a retired artist and school teacher, and had lived there all their married life, and the man's father before him.
The other house seemed to be the whole 4 sides of the compound, much flasher, and really quite modern. They were very proud of their son living in Canada, and were keen to chat to Pete.

The rickshaws dropped us off at the edge of the lake, and we had an hilarious hour on the ice! Hannah and Pete hired skates, Kate and Bill hired "ice bikes" and Charlotte and I shared an "ice chair". The chair was like a little kid's school chair, welded to two runners, with another wee seat lower down in front, and you poled it along with metal sticks like long screwdrivers. We had no direction control at all, but could pick up a bit of speed! The bikes were also on runners, and were similarly directionless, but a lot faster. The surface of the lake was far from smooth, so the skaters were really no better off, but we all had lots of fun. There was a huge orange sun setting in the haze behind leafless trees, and it was absolutely picturesque.
Afterwards we walked down the food market street and Pete tried scorpions on a stick, Hannah had "stinky tofu", and Kate tried silkworms on a stick. Charlotte Bill and I were less adventurous and stuck to sticks of toffee covered crabapples and strawberries.

Pete left us there and the rest of us went out for dinner, to a smorgasbord restaurant that Lily chose for us because she thought Kate might be missing Western food. It had everything - sushi, chinese food, roast beef, pizza, pasta, and the most amazing selection of deserts with a chocolate fountain to dip your skewer of fruit under!

The next day in Beijing we were on our own. We slept through hotel breakfast, so bought chicken wraps on the street. We caught the subway to the zoo in the morning, and had a lovely time looking at the pandas, once again with hardly any one else there. The lack of crowds certainly compensates for the cold!

After lunch at a wee noodle shop Kate found in our street we headed off to the Visa place and the silk market. A couple of successful shopping hours later we were back at the hotel comparing purchases (and trying to fit them into our bags) before heading out to Ghost St for dinner.

It was sad seeing Hannah off the next morning, our little team further depleted. Our flight to Yiwu was delayed a couple of hours, so we sat playing 500 in the sun in the airport, watched by various Chinese all obviously trying to figure out the game.

Yiwu has been great fun. Lovely to meet Casey, she is such a sweetie. Their other Gapper friend Dylan was also here, so it was nice to meet him too.

First day we really just explored around their school, met Peter, opened our Christmas presents from Kate, had a swim and a sauna, and then went for tea to the hotel a couple of doors down, where there was a very loud wedding going on.

On Saturday we went to the Yiwu amusement park - Kate and Casey had been saving up this treat! It was really weird - completely deserted, and when we wanted to go on a ride they would start it up for us. The kids went on some pretty good rides however - one they voted the scariest ever! They had a go in zorb, which caused much hilarity. And we had a good long ride (inadvertently, through our lack of understanding) on the dodgems.

In the evening we had dinner near the night market, at a really nice restaurant, and then had a good wander through the market. Had to go back again last night however, for more DVDs!

We have eaten at Kate's little favourite noodle and dumpling places near her school - I think she is quite sad to say goodbye to all these.

Yesterday we braved the trade market, just the toy section but that was enough. Indescribable really! Just so much stuff - row after row of stalls of all sorts of things, lots of them the same as each other. Stopped for a brief rest in the middle and had a shoe clean. Charlotte has a nasty cold, and had a bit of a fever, so was not quite at her best unfortunately, but I think we are booked in for another foray today.

I have been up early and been to the park watching the tai chi, but the kids will be wondering where I am so had better finish. Love to all xxx

Hello Kate

In Beijing and Kate is here!! So lovely to see her. She is just exactly the same and it's just as though we have seen her yesterday. Although she has picked up a few bad Chinese and Aussie speech habits,such as "uh" for "yes" which we are already working hard to break her of. Her Chinese is very impressive though!

We had a good flight from Hong Kong, but didn't arrive until about midnight, and of course we were up til about 1.30 greeting our last wee darling, so a bit tired today. Lily is great, and has been very pleasant and helpful. We have Mr Liu again as driver too - he remembered Charlotte particularly.

It has been a gorgeous clear sunny day, pretty nippy but not much wind and pleasant in the sun. We started the day with some exercise in the garden of the Temple of Heaven with all the locals who go there everyday to do theirs. Lily persuaded us to join in some of it - it's more energetic than it looks.

The Temple of Heaven itself was looking stunning against the sky in the morning sun. All the important monuments have had fresh paint and a general spruce-up in honour of the olympics, so everything looks sparkling fresh.

We went for an early lunch of Beijing noodles, at the place where you went Jiggs, where they shout out as you go in. It was a pretty good lunch - we wished you were here to help finish it!

Mr Liu dropped us off at Tienanmen Square and we walked across the square to the Imperial Palace and Forbidden City. That's looking great too. The moat is frozen solid, and there were hardly any other tourists so we were able to look at everything very easily, and get good clear photos (no download facilities here unfortunately).

We had a quick hour at the silk market, enough for Bill to replace his suitcase, and me to replace my handbag just before the straps of the old one fail completely, Hannah to buy a jacket, and Charlotte and Kate to buy (independently) identical shoes!

Then off to the acrobatic show, which was completely amazing. Some of it was almost too scary to watch (when two guys were juggling and skipping up on top of spinning cages), or a bit horrifying (when three girls almost turned themselves inside out one on top of each other), but it was spectacular. The girls on bikes were great, and the best part was all the young guys tumbling through hoops at top speed.

Our Beijing duck dinner afterwards was in a private banquet room, and as well as duck we had a selection of delicious other things, once again more than we could manage.

Now we are at a little internet cafe just down the road. Great wall tomorrow, and the hutong. We are loving it, especially having Kate with us. Love to all xxx