beijing

welcome to [smoggy] beijing! we'll start off in tianamen square. we skipped out on going to see mao's body and just walked through the square itself. it dominates the center of the city and makes you feel very small to stand in the wide open space of it.

it's actually 4 parts. two gates to the city on the north and south end, the monument to the people's heroes is in the middle (which you can see below, the tall thing), and the mausoleum of mao (above).
this is one of the temples at the summer palace. you walk up a very steep hill to get to the top. when you're standing at the door of the temple looking outward, you see a giant man-made lake. or the idea of a lake, since it's so smoggy you really can't see very much at all.
see what i mean?
i was walking around the summer palace with one of those audioguides that tracks where you are and chimes in with relevant information. it told me about who knocked the heads off of the statues of this temple.. but i don't remember anymore.
one of my favorite things about being in asia is how you can see the difference between eastern and western imaginations. they have all kinds of elaborate, imaginary animals in their culture.. but that are very highly regarded and taken very seriously. it doesn't feel like santa-imaginary. it feels like thousands-of-years-of-tradition-steeped-into-it-imaginary.
the photo below is of a tour group at the forbidden city (which is in the photo below it). guillermo and i joked about how next time we would join millions of tour groups and just pile the hats on top of each other to show what super-tourists we were.
i did something weird with the final four so i can't write commentary within them.. but they are: the forbidden city, which is made up of one of the largest collections of preserved old buildings/temples in china.

our hutong (alley neighborhood) where our hostel was.

and two pictures of our peking duck experience, which is carved tableside.