Going Solo...

Today marks my first day of going it alone in China. Yesterday I left Dave in Beijing and hopped on the Z85 Overnight Train headed for Suzhou. The journey was reasonably uneventful- apart from a chinese man asking me to put my shoes back on because my feet smelt and spilling the contents of my pot noodle on myself.

The train was quite comfortable and despite only having a "hard" sleeper I had a good nights kip- there was even a western toilet on the train. The Journey was well timed as the train departed at 7.30pm so after a few hours of playing PSP I then watched the Royle Family and ate my pot noodle- well what was left of it. Then I read my book for an hour and went to sleep about 11pm.

The train arrived in Suzhou at about 7am. It's quite a scary feeling getting off a train by yourself in a city you don't know, and where you don't have a clue where your going. Leaving the train station all I had was the phone number and name of the hostel where I was staing at, but after a little initial confusion with the taxi we managed to find the hostel OK.

First impressions of Suzhou are good. My bed wasn't ready when I arrived so I headed out at 8.30am for a few hours to scope out the city and get some breakfast. It's a lot greener than anywwhere I have been in China before and whilst it may not live up completely to having the title "the Venice of China" the lakes running through the city are certainly beautiful.

I will spend 2/3 days here- maybe 3- then head onto Nanjing by bus.Where a friend of Nancy's will show me around I hope as my friend Matt (that I met in Beijing) is on his own vacation in Kunming. I think I will spend another 3 days in Nanjing before travelling by train to Hangzhou. Hangzhou is meant to be the "most beautiful city" in China so I'm looking forward to going there- think I spend 4 or 5 days there before moving on to Shanghai. In Shanghai I will meet Clare and we will spend CHinese New Year there before moving on to Chengdu on the 20th Februrary. In Chengdu we will go to a Panda sanctuary and visit the huge Buddha they have at Le Shan before going a Yangtze River cruise (if not too expesive). On the 25th we make the short flight back up to Shijiazhuang so I can show Clare where I have lived all this time and then the next day we will get the train to Beijing where we will go to the Great Wall and Temple of Heaven- as well as doing some shopping I expect. Hopefully in Beijing we can meet up with Dave and the other's for one last goodbye.

Then it's time for me to come home!

So Long Shijiazhuang!

For my last "official" night in the Shiz we organised a little shindig just for the no.42 teachers. We ate out at our favourite Lamb restuarant down the street and then had a house party in Brocks apartment.

The evening got a little messsy. No Trip to the Lamb Restuarant is complete without countless complimentary shots of Bijou from the locals and this occaisiona was no different. The only change was that Brock and I also ordered a small carraffe of the foul smelling dirt liquour for ourselves as well. Couple this with the crate of beer we polished off and the bottle of gin and tonic that was passed around and you'll start to understand why Dave and Meredith decided it was a wise idea to have a wrestling contest- and also why I'm helplessly slurring my words and dropping R's all over the place, a lot more than usual I mean!

The Next morning I had to get up early to go and buy my flight ticket from Shanghai to Chengdu, so there was no chance of sleeping off the hangover. Once again Nancy was a great help. After saying good bye to all my friends and the chinese teachers that I had become friendly with it was finally time to say goodbye to Shijiazhaung!

Students Lunch!

After telling my classes that I planned to leave China I recieved many requests to go and have lunch with the students- as well as farewell letters and presents. I tried to accomodate as many as possible but it wasn't that easy having 0ver 700 students it was quite hard to fit them all in.

One day I went with 3 girls from class 20; Rowland, Ketty and Rose. We ordered a lot of food and thought we would have plenty to spare but they ate a surprising amount for 3 (young) girls and almost all of it was eaten. It was a nice way to say goodbye to some of my favourite students.

One of Many last Nights!

For My last Weekend in Shijazhaung we all decided to have a celebration. We got all the teachers together and went for a Beijing Duck meal in our town. Always a delicious and quite an experience with the chef bringing the bird to your table to be cut and specially slicing off the most tender part of the duck for you to eat first before getting down to business with the rest of it! Afterwards we ended up in YYBB and then Mazzo club once more.

The Sunday after we went to the house of one of the school teachers, called Violet. She has been applying to go to American as a foreign teacher and so needs help and advice practicing her spoken english and also for the interview-which she ensures us will be very tough. So she invited us all over for dinner and said that she would teach us how to make the traditional chinese dish of dumplings!

I love eating dumplings so I jumped at the chance to learn how to make them. I thought I could add it to my expanding repoirtoire of chinese dishes- currently stands at 3 (gongbao ji ding, suan la todou si and rice). I was a little dissappointed when I arrived as everything had already been prepared, all we had to do was physically make the dumplings. But looking back this was a good thing as the dumplings take a long time to make and cook and if we had had to prepare everything as well I think it may have been an even more late evening

Violet and her husband Michael have a lovely home set in a communist compound. Michael is also a teacher but he is currently placed at a country side school as he wanted to go and help some of the less fortunate children. We were joined for the evening by Violet's Sister and her mother who were both visitng and both thrilled to meet some genuine "laowai"!




Making the dumplings was quite tricky. Violet's mum was a real pro and could make the things prefectly in a matter of seconds, we took considerably longer and our attempts were possibly as far off from looking like the real thing as they could be but at the end of the day they all still tasted the same, so who cares! We all made so many that I think Violet and Michael must have had enough left over to last them until New Years Eve!

Serve the Servants....Teach the Teachers

So after the school told me that I wasn't teaching the Kids for the final week of Classes they dropped the bombshell that instead we would be teaching the teachers. While we were only told about this a few days in advance Kristina, the older lady from America who th school hold only just slightly below Chairman Mao in their opinions, was told about it over a month ago and had prepared power point slide shows and full lesson plans.

We were told that we would work in pairs and would each teach two 45 minute lessons. We thought that this sounded very easy and that we could probably get away with preparring a 30 minute lesson and just field questions for the remainder. This, China Being China and Sandy being Sandy, was of course wrong. It turned out that we all would teach just 2 lessons each- but each lesson was 90 minutes long. Dave do not even find this out until he thought his first lesson was over the teachers refused to leave. Typical.

Topics of the week have been:
Dave- How I spend my Holidays and Weekends
Meredith - Educational Pressure
Brock - US Government
Becky - Family

Kristina taught every day in the schools auditorium using the full facilities of a slide projector and lights and sound. The rest of us just had to use Dave's class room and I had to make do with my laptop resting on top of a chair on the table.

I taught about the Education in England. First I spoke about the 4 different stages of school ; primary, secondary, higher and further. Then I broke them all down and spoke about each in detail-what they entailed, how difficult they were and what exams the students are expected to take. After that I spoke for a long time about how students go about training as a Teacher and how foreigners can become teachers in England - many eyes lit up at this point, and I was bombarded with questions of "How easy is it for me to get a job in England, where Can I get a Job?" I then spoke about my Education and showed photos of my secondary school, university and college days. The lesson side lasted just over an hour and then I took questions on any topic for half an hour. Questions included "Do you like David Beckham" and "How much was your laptop" so I'm glad I gave a clearly thought provoking talk.

Job Done

My time as a teacher has nearly come to an end. Last week was my final week of teaching kids and this afternoon I will give my lesson to the the teachers.

I was upset that the school decided that we would give classes to teachers in the final week as I had planned a party for the children but they told me the friday before the monday of the final week that instead I only had one more week left. This annoyed me as well as I had completed writing an exam for the kids to see how much they had learnt over the year. They sat the exam in their final lesson and then I had to go to their class rooms in my spare time to give them back their grades and prizes for the best attempts.

The kids took the exams quite seriously and most of them produced good papers. Some of the classes had lazy kids who didn't even bother writing their names, but I suppose you have that in every school.

Most of the papers were good- obviously the grade A sets were better than the B sets- but there were a few choice quotes ;
"I very like listen to Gay Sing Music"
"I like to drink Cock"
"My Father is My Mother"
"You wank to know about me"

and personal favourite

"my father is a cock. he cocks me."

But I probaly shouldn't be laughing at my failings as a teacher.

Saying goodbye to the students was quite sad, a few cried and since then i've had a steady stream of emails repeatedly asking "why? Why you leave China?" Rather more pleasing was is the collection of toys and presents I have amassed in the last week.

I have enjoyed teaching but I cannot wait to get back to England.

Exploring Shijiazhuang

After spending nearly 5 months in Shijiazhuang I still havn't really seen much of the city apart from the shopping malls and bars and have not been to any of the recommended sites around the area. One night after moaning about this to Nancy we decided that enough was enough and we'd finally go and see the places recommended by the guide books before my time ran out.

First was Zhaozhou Bridge 安濟橋. This is probably the most famous site in Hebei. Made world famous by its appearance in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (I think). We got up quite early and made our way across town to the bus station. Nancy had planned every thing to a "T" and all the buses linked together perfectly without any waiting around. The bus we had to catch to the bridge left a little to be desired though!






The bridge itself was very beautiful, it looked especially scenic in the winter as the water below it had frozen and we could walk around underneath it. Zhaozhou bridge is the oldest segmental stone bridge in the world. Also known as "safe crossing bridge" it was constructed in 595 AD during the Sui Dynasty. Despite everyones scepticism, including my own, the original bridge is still what is standing in place today, having survived 10 floods and a 7.2 richter earthquake. For once in China something was genuine!




After the bridge we made the short trip to Ba Lin Chan temple. One of the Most famous buddhist temples in the region and one that most Chinese will try to visit at least once during their life times. The temple was the first one of it's sort that I had seen (believe me there were plenty more to come) and that coupled with Nancy's enthusiam and excitment to be there made it quite interesting. The Monks were cool to see and there was plenty to look around. But it was so cold that we didn't spend any more than an hour or so there and were soon back on the train to the shiz.

Not just my general laziness for once

Not just my general laziness for once

Whilst most people assume that I’ve got bored with the routine of keeping a blog or that I’m too caught up in the West Wing to bother updating, there is actually a good reason why this page has been rather uncared for in the past week. There was some sort of Tsunami off the coast of Taiwan that managed to damage the wires that deal with international Internet pages.

Not all the wires were destroyed, but 3 out of 4 were, so whilst we can access the Internet, there are 3 times that amount of people trying to access the information on the same wire at the same time, so it runs unbelievably slow. I wasn’t going to update until this sorted itself out but it’s been a while now and it doesn’t seem as if the problem will be resolved soon, so I thought I’d post without pictures of videos and try to upload them at a later stage.

Charlie

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year

After Christmas day we had to work all week through to Sunday- New Years Eve. We finished at Noon and soon 9 of us found ourselves on the train destined (once again) for a big night out in Beijing. The eventual group that we amassed there was 14 in total as Wallace and Renée, Brock’s friends from home, brought some friends of their town from their town as well-so we had built up quite a decent little crowd.

Because of having to teach we couldn’t catch a train until 2.30pm and didn’t arrive in Beijing until 5pm and not at the hostel until 6pm. After a few problems checking in- I’ll let you read Dave’s account of it but the moral of the story is you must always remember to take your passport and visa with you to any hotel you want to check in at, and if you don’t just try and make up a name that might have stayed there before, do not bother with photocopy’s of your passport as they are only ever used as evidence against you- we set out for a meal at an American Diner called “Steak & Eggs” and got back to the hostel for about 10pm.

After a few hours drinking and playing table football New Years was looming so we decided it was time to go up to the roof. Brock and his friends had done it before, said it was easily accessible and gave superb views of Beijing- we were hoping for hundreds upon hundreds of fireworks. Well the roof was locked and we despite our best efforts we couldn’t get up, so we sprinted downstairs to the courtyard and had our rendition of ‘auld lang syn’ out there, all shook hands and wished each other the best.

After that we headed to Brown’s nightclub and welcomed the New Year in, in style. The rest left about 3/4am but Anthony and I stayed on and were later taken to a 24-hour bar called “the Den” by a fellow English man for a few late beers as well.

Now the part of the checking in problem from before that I hadn’t mentioned was that Anthony wasn’t allowed to check in-despite arguing for about the best part of an hour. So he officially had nowhere to stay. With Dave sharing a room with Hilary, the 3 girls and Zack in one room and then Brock and I in a twin room there was only really one place for him to stay. So he and I tried to go top to toe in my tiny single bed- but I woke up and found him sleeping on the floor- apparently I stole all the covers!

The next morning we woke up said our goodbyes and Dave and I went to check into our 5 Star Hotel for a day of relaxation and recovery! Money very well spent! We hung out in the steam room and hot spa and ate and drank for free the whole day. In the evening we ventured out – after free wine and gin & tonic- to Club Football to watch the Liverpool game and then back to the hotel with the idea of watching the Newcastle match at 1am. But after the exploits of the day before we were fast asleep before it started!

CS and Snow!

One of David and My favourite pastimes of late has been going to player Counter Strike at the 24 hour Internet Bar at the end of the street. Yes instead of exploring China, trying new cultures and experiencing what it really is like to live in a foriegn country, we lock ourselves in an internet bar for hours on end playing computer games.

It's actually not quite as Geeky as it might sound and we have made quite a few new friends whilst being there. It's also quite funny watching Dave's students squirm, as they see their teacher walk in. The Kids are not allowed out in the evenings but they sneek out and spend all night - 6pm to 6am- in the Net Bar before going to school the following day. If the school found out then I think they would be almost definitely be expelled.

Anyhow, one night after a long session on the computers and a few beers Dave and I left the Net Bar expecting to find the same dirty old street that always awaited us. Not So. In the 4 or 5 hours we had been in there the whole street had been completely covered in about a foot of snow. We couldn't believe it. It was quite a strange feeling walking down the deserted street at 3am with no one else around in crisp fresh snow.

Boxing Day football!

One of the best things about Christmas in England- apart spending time with your family and loved ones etc - is the obscene amount of football that is on around the festive period. Dave and I not wanting to miss out on this important English Tradition therefore organised a game for Boxing day- however unlike the games that were taking place in England we would be expected to play!

Dave's could couldn't wait for the match and put up posters around the school informing people of a Foreigner's team v No.42 Elect. Stretching the truth a little as there was only Dave and I playing for the Foreigner's team. It turned out to be one of Dave's Classes v another of Dave's class + him and I.

We turned up a little hung over and bloated from the day before and walked out onto the glorious mud pitch. We saw the other team all in their matching Portugal kits- what more encouragment did we need to try and win- and went about finding our team mates who had either forgotten or like us eaten too much the day before.

We managed to scramble together 6 players to accompany Dave and I and so we started 1 player down-2 if you include Dave! The game was quite good fun and ended up 5-5. We had gone 1-0 down within about 20 seconds of kick off and I was beggining to wonder what Dave and I had gotten ourselves into. Our team rallied however and I managed to bag 3 goals without reply to give us a 2 goal league. I probably shouldn't have enjoyed scoring against a bunch of 17 year olds quite as much as I did, but after my third goal I was tempted to do some sort of sommersault celebration but resisted.

That wasn't the end of the game however and the other team soon fought back to 3-3 and things were looking tough as they were camped out in our end and our lack of a proper 'keeper was seriously costing us everytime they came forward. However against the run of play we managed to nudge ourselves in front again when one of the our team who played the whole match in a huge puffa jacket, two pairs of trousers, gloves and scarf managed to take the ball around 3 players and finish beautifully. We then somehow found ourselves 5-3 up as Hunter- one of Dave's students that we went for dinner with earlier on in the year- unleashed a pearler of a shot from outside the area.

With what seemed to be a unasailable two goal lead with 5 minutes to go we sat back a bit- mistake I hear you cry and the other team worked their way back into it with a scrappy goal. It was back to the wall's stuff for the last few minutes but we just couldn't hold out and in the dying seconds the pretend portuguese got an equaliser.

THe game was very enjoyable and we have now made it a weekly fixture. Hopefully in the future fixtures all our team will turn up and we can find a proper goal keeper!

Water Colour Challenge!

A while back we were asked by Sandy if we wanted to have a few lessons in traditional Chinese painting. We thought that this was a strange offer-especially seeing as we had yet to receive one single chinese language lesson in the time we'd been here- but seeing as we had nothing better to do we thought we'd go along with it.

The lessons were quite good fun. The teacher assigned to us a famous chinese drawing out of his book and then we set about copying them. Dave was given the task of drawing a peice of cabbage with some chili's - quite apt as that is actually one of Dave's favourite chinese dishes - and I was alloted a basket of peaches. We quite happily spent our weeks wasting time drawing.

After two weeks of lessons we finally learnt the reason for us having these lessons.The school had entered us into a province wide talent contest-where foreigners had to demonstrate any skills that they had learnt in China. Our performance would be Kristina singing a traditional Chinese song whilst Becky, Meredith, Dave and I did our painting in the back ground. Fine, I hear you saym but what you don't understand is that usually Dave and I had spent about 15-20 minutes on each of our little masterpieces; Kristina's performance of two songs was scheduled to last about 8 minutes!

Still nervous on the day and not sure how we were going to manage it, we went on stage and managed quite admirably, and I'm sure it must have been fixed as somehow we managed to come 2nd out of about 40 Entries-some of them were pretty terrible but I think Kristina's excellent singing- she was a professional singer in America- carried us all through!

The next day we were supposed to repeat our performance at a special christmas meal that was attended by all of Shijiazhuang's big wigs- but Sandy who had managed quite amazingly the day before sent us along to a event where we would be painting without any paint brushes or paper. So it was up to Kristina to sing by herself whilst the rest of us sat by watching, enjoying the excellent food and getting drunk!

So This is Christmas, In Shi Jia Zhung!

Merry Christmas Everybody!



I hope you all have a great day and enjoy yourselves very much.Thingsdon't feel too Christmas-esque here at the moment but that will improve once everyone else is up and we start to undo our few presents.



Christmas fever has hit Shijiazhuang with a bang though. The Kids either love it or hate it. Some have been going out their way to make things christmassy for me-bringing in tinsel, fat santa decorations and giving me cards- others just sit there and say "I don't like Christmas, I prefer Spring Festival."

We have a small christmas tree assembled and a meagre offering of presents underneath so Dave and I will work our ways through them in time, this afternoon I think we will watch Borat the movie, some West Wing and then go for a Christmas Dinner at a hotel in town. Hopefully this evening, about the time when we are phoning our parents and friends, we should be a little drunk; not too bad as we have to teach tomorrow. YES! We have to teach tomorrow, on Boxing Day, what a disgrace. Seeing as the American Contingent don't even know what Boxing day is, I don't think it was ever likely the Chinese would have an idea.

To enchance your Christmas Spirit and your love for the season I leave you with a video of my Class singing a festive Favourite:



Take Care One and All!

Charlie

The Emperor's Silent Warriors

Mum and Dad did not want to leave China and not be able to say that they had seen the Terra Cotta Armies of Xian. They kindly offered to take Dave and I with them on their trip and so on Thursday 16th we caught our first internal flight from Shijiazhuang to Xian. The flight was relatively painless-less so than booking the tickets let me assure you- and we touched down in Xian after only 1hour 20 minutes. Whilst the cost of internal flights was surprisingly expensive when compared to train travel (£60 return when compared to about £9 on the train) it was certain worth the price in order to avoid spending 12 hours cooped up in a train cabin with the Parents! I think we all would have gone mental! Especially poor David.

Xian is about 1000Km SW of Shijiazhuang so we were expected very cold, hostile weather when we arrived- Hiliary even knitted a scarf for Dave to keep him warm. So imagine our surprise when we landed and it was bright sunshine and it stayed that way for the whole weeked. We flew on the thursday,spent thursday afternoon, friday and saturday until mid day there and the weather was superb! Hardly saw a cloud all weeked!



Xian used to be the capital city of many of the old Chinese dynasty's and so the walled city centre is full of many acient artifacts. On our first day there we explored the city inside the walls and found the Bell and Drum towers situated smack bang in the middle of the city where the four main roads convereged. Built orignally in 1384 and then relocated in 1582 the Bell tower was beautifully and intricately decorated with some fantastic artwork and also home to some quite interesting history, we paid 15Yuan for a audio guide to get the full story but got fed up after the first 4 minutes and decided not to use it again so we just made our ways around ourselves-always the best way. The view from the top was quite interesting and Dave and I spent a few minutes watching the lunancy that is Chinese Lane Discipline and general driving skills. At 5 'o' Clock there was a performance of the bells being rung inside the tower, accompanied by traditional instruments from the time, which we enjoyed listening to for some while.



We stayed at the Shangri La Golden Flower as even though it was slightly outside of the town walls it was the closest decent hotel to the Terra Cotta's and on the main road for easy access. The hotel was great and got even better when we realised that we had been upgraded to 'Horizon Club' members. I didn't have a clue what this meant, but due to Geeky Dave spending an innordinate amount of time on the internet researching such things he knew that this meant we were entitled to something. Boy was he right. Between 5.30pm - 7.30pm each day we had free food and alcoholic drinks and soft drinks and tea,coffee and hot chocolates were free all day. They even served breakfast in the morning. Superb and, rest assured, that they free alcohol was well and truley abused by all 4 of us on the saturday night!

Remember what I said about the hotel being the closest to the Terra Cotta's? Well we got in our taxi saturday morning, that we had ordered the day before, the concierge had pulled him over and given him instructions so we felt we didn't have to. We started what we believed would be the very quick-30 minutes max-journey to the museum. However,some way along the line we started to realise where we were going and didn't want to admit that it was the wrong way, but sure enough it was and we ended up at the airport:on the other side of town completely. This lead to a few irate phone calls and the driver shouting into his phone and then driving at break neck speeds, but we got there eventually.



The Terra Cotta Warriors were bult some 2,200 years ago in order to guard the tomb of despotic ruler Qin Shui Huangdi-the ruler who had unified China. They were only discovered in 1974 when some farmers were digging a well and accidentally dug brought up one of the heads with one of their bucket loads. Since then excavations have found three pits of soilders and found a total of 7,000 Soilders, but work is still on going and it is believed that they will find many more. Though I may not agree with the sentiment that the warriors are the '8th Wonder of the World' , they certainly were damn impressive and the sheer amount of detail that had gone into each warrior and the huge number of warriors were breathtaking. The warriors were origianlly coloured Blue and Yellow-the colours of the Emperor's Army Uniform-but when the Armies were destroyed by fire the paint melted away.



Of the three pits I think we all agreed that the first pit was the most impressive purely because of the scale and the amount of Soilders. Pit 2 was good but very dark and Pit 3 was only very small and not yet excavated fully. The museum was a little bit of a let down. Its main purpose is to serve as a home to the 2 Horse and Charriots that they unearthed. These were impressive but also quite confusing as they were said to be in 1:2 scale. We looked at the size of the men, and whilst I know the Chinese have a reputation for being on the small side, this would have made them rediculously tiny! The rest of the museum was a museum to the museum which was boring. With the warriors only being 30 years old to the public they still havn't really capitalised on them quite as much as they could, but China is addressing that problem as it is currently building a huge shopping plaza that you must walk through in order to reach the pits- all the chinese tat and imitation warriors you could ever wish for!



After our visit toe Terra Cotta's we went to a Hot Spring that was just down the road from the site. Mum and Dad had visited a few hot springs in New Zealand and so Dave and I were keen to go and see what they were like for ourselves. We turned up fully prepared with swimming trunks, towells and Dave even had his arm bands. However our face dropped when we got there and we discoverd that it was more of a museum to the hot springs, and the closest you could actually get to any water was to pay to take a shower. The museum itself was quite beautfiul and set picturesquely in the valley of the mountains so we enjoyed walking around for an hour or so, but we were annoyed as neither Lonely Planet or DK China had said that they were not bathing springs-GUTTED!



Saturday night we made the most of the free alcohol and Dave and I ended up in a English Themed pub at the hotel, complete with snooker table and darts board-SUPERB! On Sunday we had time to have a decent fried breakfast, a dip in the pool and then caught a taxi to the Airport to catch the train to return us back to the Shiz-thankfully it didn't try taking us to the Terra Cotta's again!

A Busy Weekend...

On Friday the 8th of December my Parents flew into Beijing from Hong Kong. After 2 weeks in relative paradise (New Zealand) I hoped that I could show them as good a time here in China as they had had there. We met them at the airport and made our way back to the hotel- which was the Novotel Peace, superbly located right in the centre of the city and the breakfast buffet was top notch: Dave and I feasted on Pancakes,Waffles, Bacon, Sauasages and Eggs for two days and it was Paradise!

On the Saturday we had a taxi take us to the Great Wall. I didn't think my parents would be able to manage the Jinshanglin to Simitai trek that Dave and I had been on previously so took them to the Badaling section. Badaling is the most Touristy area of the Wall. There was coffee shops, fair ground rides and even a roller coaster to save you walking up and down the wall. The taxi driver obviously thought it was important to save Mum and Dads old legs for the walk ahead and purchased us two tickets for the coaster. The slow ride up at a ridiculously steep angle was quite un-nerving but the the trip down was surprisingly good fun and faster than expected. Mum's fears that it would turn into a "mini nemisis" proved unfounded though. Here is a video from the ride, mum's manic laughing is probably scarier than the ride itself:



The walk up the wall was nice but very cold. I have seen friends pictures from high season and you can barely move at Badaling for all the people but on a day like it was it was (unsurprisingly perhaps) empty. We walked up and down the wall to the next section and back. We couldn't organise with the driver to pick us up somewhere else so we just did a big loop the loop. The steps were a lot easier to climb than on our previous trip but there were still some areas that were very steep and very hard work. Upon reaching the top Mum announced that she was "Knackered"-which made us all smile.




After the Wall we visited the Ming Tombs of Ding Ling (yes, I know you probably won't believe me). These were quite interesting and it was good to see where the old kings and queens had been buried but I think we were all just disappointed as everything was a reconstruction (once again).

Next we took the cab all the way to the Summer Palace where we spent about 2 and a Half hours just walking around. The Summer Palace was exaclty as described- a palace where the kings went duiring the summer; i.e. the Chinese version of Sandringham. I think the Summer Palace was my Parent's favourite part of the trip. It look splendid and was a great place to whiile away a few hours. With the huge lake frozen the pictures that could be taken were superb as well, and as always Dave and I are never ones to dissappoint.






In the evening Dave and I treated them to a meal at Fuku. Being our favourite restuarant in Beijing so far (we have visited each and every time we've been there) we thought it was a good way of getting them some decent Chinese food and also an excuse for us to go there again. Despite the Taxi dropping us off in the wrong place again (and this was despite having a map of Houhai with it drawn on) we got to the restuarant and had an enjoyable meal. Mum and Dad made some mistakes for further on in the week though. They both ate with Knife and Forks and complained that there was only 1 English menu. I just told them to wait for what my city had in store for them- there would be no such luxuries there.

We left on the Sunday to Bring my Parents back to Shijiazhuang, but the train was not leaving until 5.30pm so we had a whole day to do things. In the morning we visited an art gallery that had some amazing paintings on display - some of them were being sold for 400,000RMB- and also had an exhibition of the world's largest man made scrolled. That some fella had spent 18 years or so carving the pieces and printing. After that we went to Tian'eman Square and the parents posed for the usual Tourist Photos.



We then went to the Forbidden City. It turns out that Forbidden City is the largest Museum in the world. I felt slightly stupid upon realising this as I had spent about 20 minutes moaning that "I don't want to go to the Museum, I just want to walk around the Bloody Place". So thats what we did, we walked around the outside and then realised that we had to go into the 'museum' to see anything of interest. Once inside we were all shocked. The place was huge. We spent about 3.5 Hours there and could have done with much longer, we just about managed half of it. We were amazed at how quiet the place was the further you ventured in and explored and could not believe that we were smack in the centre of one of the World's biggest and busiest cities. The Whole place really was fascinating, and we even managed to find the 'mythical' Forbidden City Starbucks-which we had to visit, if only or the sake to prove it existed.






Dave and I left Beijing that weekend feeling overfed and exhausted but also happy that we had managed to see more of the city's 'highlights' in these 2 days there than we had previously managed all together in our past 3 attempts.