Beijing, China
Friday, May 12, 2006
We started our visit to Beijing with a visit to the forbidden city, which was dampened a bit by rains. Friday night we got to see some incredible Chinese acrobatics at the theater. Saturday we got up at the crack of dawn to drive 3 hours to a lesser traveled section of the Great Wall. What an incredible hike. It was 4 hours of steep ups and downs, and the scenery was breathtaking. Deffinately a highlight of the trip.
Beijing is getting ready big time for the 2008 olympics, but we didn’t really find the construction to be much more prolific than the other cities we visited in China. We found it interesting that Beijing plans to cut off the fuel supplies during the olympics, so that locals can’t drive. After being there a few days, we realized that this is probably for the safety of pedestrians, rather than out of consern for traffic congestion. There must be many fatalities a day here, because cars simply do not stop for pedestrians.
