Saturday, 17 September - Beijing

This was the day of "Cathy Wilkes Long March" [ Mao ] established communist China with a long many-year march across China on with his followers on foot ] - we walked and walked! We also have one member of the group - Betsy - already on the disabled list. Breakfast at the hotel was great. Semi-western.

 Then into the bus and off to Tian'anmen Square. The first real lesson of the day was how great are the distances in Beijing. We took some time getting close to the Square, then had a long walk including an underpass to get to the Square itself.

Betsy tripped and fell badly in the underpass, hitting her head and injuring her hip. After some time, she bravely decided to continue, with a person supporting her on each side. By an hour or so later though, it was clear she couldn't continue, so our escort brought her back to the hotel [ we have 2 escorts, a national one, Michelle, and a local Beijing one, Vyvian,...the later took care of us then ].

Betsy has now been to hospital and back, and will have xrays on Monday. They suspect a broken hip. Meanwhile, we had been swarmed by street vendors and most of us bought hats, postcards, souvenir books, silk purses, kites, etc. -- at wildly divergent prices! It's clear that bargaining is very much in order. Never pay more than half the original asking price. One hat vendor actually lifted Dave Wilkes' baseball cap! Tian'anmen Square really is as huge as it seemed when we watched events unfold years ago. Mao's mausoleum attracts many domestic tourists, but we skipped that long lineup and just enjoyed the sun and warmth outside.

Preparations for Beijing 2008 Olympics are underway, with the countdown clock visible from the Square.

Preparation for China's National Day on Oct 1st are also going on - bleachers block a lot of the Square. From there we continued to 

 

the Forbidden City, which is just across the street. By then a couple more people had decided it was too much walking and had headed back to the taxi area, with plans to meet us afterward. The trek under the street and through a maze of turns lost us one more person. When we couldn't find her in the designated 20 minutes, we continued on. Cathy said "she's very resourceful, don't worry", but we all did. When we reached the exit, there she was, calmly waiting for us! Phew! We all have little cards in our name tag holders that give taxi instructions in Mandarin to our hotel, so we're not really able to become totally lost.

Photos 17 Sep Beijing