Winding Down in Beijing

Well, this adventure is winding down,and our goal to cover a lot of territory today was dampened by rain which started late morning. We headed to Beihei Park, one of the private gardens of Emperors and his family. It is just outside the Forbidden city and we had never been. WHAT A TREAT! Even with gray skies it was lovely and we spent a number of hours walking around the lake, clibming hills and getting great views of the city.

Zoe and Mae, after encouragement in their provinces from various people, now insist on kneeling before Buddha, bowing three times, making a prayer or having a moment of silent contemplation, then dropping 5 RMB into the donation box. They search out prayer wheels and think carefully about what they pray for (No toy or DS/Gameboy requests allowed). Zoe got quite into it, and began asking me a number of questions about the various reincarnations of the Buddha, and my intro to world religions university class began to fail me quite quickly. Living in Asia for so long you would think that I would know these things. I hope her interest lasts.

Got a phone call from my mom about this point, and our Watsonville friend, Hunter. We rented paddle boats to take out onto the lake and it began to rain hard just as we pulled away from the dock. Then the winds began, and I had a horrible vision of us being lost at "sea" (Well, it IS supposed to represent the ocean) and having to be towed in at great expense by the boat staff with all the locals looking on getting their jollies at our expense. We paddled hard and our ride on the lake lasted a total of 10 minutes. But the girls enjoyed it..until they started getting soaked and freezing.

I forgot what a royal pain in the butt trying to find a taxi in the rain is.....in KL at least it was 80 degrees....not so today and poor Mae, who stubbornly refuses to wear socks and anything but a sweater, was shaking like a leaf by the time we found a cab. Give us another parent of the year award for our planning, but we did have plenty of toilet paper this time.

Just desperate to get inside, I pulled out an old business card for the Shard Box shop near Ritan Park..God, I LOVE this shop, and Ian hadn't been. He now loves it too. Fascinating place and the owner had lots of time to talk with us about various items. When we were both engrossed in looking at jewelry with 2000 year old coins, porcelain beads and other cool stuff, the staff took Zoe and Mae outside, around the corner to the building's lock communal pit toilet. Where else would you let a stranger take your kids to the toilet...LOL. Zoe continues to assimilate quite well, and is so proud of her squatting abilities...she can go alone. Not so Mae, who continues to sometimes call them Squish Toilets and prefers to have me dangle her over the loo to do her business. My back is quite shot after two weeks of this.

We then walked, in the drizzle, to the NEW silk alley market, a frightening experience of 4-5 stories of hundreds of stalls, and according to my guidebook, sees upwards of 20K people a day(!!!). We got jackets (SURPRISE) a few teeshirts, and a gift or two...ran into a line of stall workers all from ChaoHu (I tested the veracity of this with info that only us ChaoHu insiders could know). Zoe got horribly embarrassed because these girls and couple of guys made a HUGE deal out of her. Pissed Mae off and she began to slide into a funk. Add this to the 2 1/2 hour search for a taxi, and you can guess the rest.

We had 'room service' tonight (nice food ordered at a restaurant down the hutong and delivered to our room, along with another bottle of wine.....) packed our bags so that we are not rushed tomorrow, and will call it a night.

I know we said we wouldn't be back for at least five years, but we are once again planning a trip sooner rather than later. At breakfast this morning, almost every group was doing the same.....kind of funny.

But once China gets in your blood......