Crowds upon crowds upon crowds.....

Last week, beginning on October 1, was China's National Day holiday. (Think Chinese July 4th) It also corresponds to Mid Autumn Day Festival. This is basically a week were a fair percentage of the country is off work and, most of them come to Beijing. The Tuesday I had a guest in town from Chicago, via Korea. We went to see many sites. Tian'anmen, Summer Palace, Great Wall at Badaling, Forbidden City, and shopping in the Wangfujing area just east of the Forbidden city. Many pictures that I hope to post at some point, if I can persuade the internet to bend to my will. Most of the sites were very scenic, which you can plainly see from the photos I've posted. Wangfujing is a pretty interesting area. Many specialized shops. (chopstick store, comb store, jewelry store, camera store etc) . And back alleys where you can haggle a pretty good deal.



On my first trip to the alleys I saw a very nice Chess set. (I had no money on me or to spare if I did!) I comment to the vendor how nice it was, how very pretty it was. His starting price was 300RMB($38 at the current conversion rate). All I could say was I had no money. He assumed that the haggling had begun. Well after a few rounds of me trying to convince him that I had no money and was walking away, the price had made it down to 10RMB ($1.25). So as you can see the prices are very flexible at times. My friends were very impressed by my haggling technique (and they are Chinese!)

You can also eat some interesting "food" in these alleys. (Deep Fried Fresh Scorpion-Ka-Bobs). I've not eaten anything too adventurous yet. But now that I've grown accustomed to the diet, I can start branching out trying more and more interesting things.