SNOW

It snowed in Beijing last night . . . and this morning!  Not a huge amount, maybe an inch, but we certainly weren’t expecting it.  So, naturally, we were not very prepared.  We had a great breakfast at the hotel (everything you could ask for) and then headed out at 8 a.m.  I didn’t bring the slip-ons for my cowboy boots, so that’s all I did throughout the day; slip-on . . .  the snow and ice.  A couple took some spills, altho thankfully, the only thing hurt was their pride.  One of our party is just getting over a cold (incidentally, we all had our temperatures checked on the plane for swine flu), so she really suffered.  Several of the gang bought gloves and caps from street vendors.

First stop, the Forbidden City itself.  This is the old Emperor’s home, all 9,999 rooms.  Yes, that’s right.  We didn’t go into each one, but about walked our hooves off checking out as many as we could.  Our tour guides gave us some wonderful history, as well as teaching us all a little rudimentary Chinese.

From there, we walked right on through to Tian An Men Square.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t enter the Square itself, since Congress is in Session right now.  We also discovered that because of that, we will not be able to do our Business Conference Tuesday night.  So that will be postponed to Shanghai.  With Congress, there were also lots of soldiers around in their green uniforms.  Sure do look young.

No worries.  By the time we got done with Tian An Men, we were all about froze to death.  A little hot tea at our lunch stop thawed us out just enough to discover a raging appetite.  Unfortunately again, the service turned out to be a little slow, so to make up for that, they poured another round of Chinese beer.  Not a bad tradeoff!  And the quality of the food made up for the wait, anyway.

Back out to brave the cold.  The government-run Pearl Market is right next to the Summer Palace.  It would have been better had we not stopped there, as we lightened the wallet considerably.  That will teach me to skip Kathy’s birthday one year!  We did learn a lot about pearls, tho.  The Summer Palace may be beautiful in Summer, but chilly now.  Interesting that it has been sacked and burned twice, but rebuilt.  I do have to say that while impressive, the maintenance of the properties could be picked up a bit.  And no modern conveniences to remove the snow – it was all being done by shovel and twig broom.

Next up – the Olympics.  Nearly everyone remembers the “Birdsnest” from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics.  Quite an impressive building, even if we couldn’t get that close.  A seven-star hotel is being built right next to it, with Bill Gates reportedly buying the top floor.

Last stop was dinner.  Half the fun is guessing what is in the dishes we are eating.  There was no doubt on the fish – there was his toothy grin.  They say they need to see the head and tail as part of the overall presentation.  I always thot that Chinese food filled you up – for about an hour.  Not so with this stuff.  It sticks with you.  We’re sampling all the different cuisines of China on this trip – all have been great so far.

The 15-hour time difference really makes communicating back home a challenge.  We have been really impressed with the friendliness of the people.  Sure hope the weather improves tomorrow.  We’re attempting our assault on the Great Wall.

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