Beijing - Part 3

Just to finish up on our trip to Beijing, here are some highlights that I didn't cover in the other posts:

Beijing is big. Like really, really, really big. Just over 13mm people. That's big. There are lots of cars and there is always traffic, like LA and NY. Interestingly, driving there seems much more sane than where we live in Henan. Here, lane markings are treated like a mere suggestion, and horns are the signaling device of choice, as opposed to blinkers.

Since our last time to Beijing in 2003, I had heard how much the city had changed for the Olympics. My observations:
1) Yes, the high rises are far more modern and the center of downtown looks much more like most major cities I have seen. The row upon row of communist era high rise apartments marching in gray uniformity have given way to lots of unique architecture and glass.
2) Despite all the efforts to train hospitality and transportation workers in English, I didn't see much difference. Our efforts to find English speakers in hotels, taxis, train station, etc were not met with great success. I didn't see any signage in English anywhere that we went except for the modernized hutong shopping street where the ancient style lanterns proclaimed, "VISA, the modern payment method". (And this is one of the few places in China where you can actually use a credit card -- what a hard habit for this American to break!)

The most fun part of our trip was visiting a park in the hutong area. There is a large lake which was a frozen wonderland. The adventurous among us (aka Julia and Kristen) were able to choose among ice skating (way too traditional), ice bicycling and ice skiing, kind of. They chose the latter which consisted of two metal chairs on runners propelled by ski poles. I don't have photos of this yet, but will post them when I do. It looked like a blast, and I know they both had a great time. It was amazing how fast they would go on the ice! I am not sure how turning was accomplished, probably much like it is on a sled, but they were able to maneuver amazingly well. The lake was packed with sledders, skaters and sliders of all sorts. We even saw a mountain goat pulling a sled over the ice. What made my eyes get wide with surprise was seeing the running water coming in one side of the lake not at all far from where hundreds of people were skating...just how thick WAS that ice? I don't know but no one seemed very concerned, and by the time I realized how close it was Kristen was safely on dry land.

So that concludes my comments on our fast trip to Beijing. It really did make me excited about returning in April with the girls. I now see it as so much more than another trip to the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, both awesome landmarks, but just a part of what Beijing has to offer.

Now...on to Spring Festival!