Summer Palace Forbidden City view on train from Xian me and Tiffany, I think early morning of arrival Beijing train station before showering or anything, we went straight to the great wall it was raining, but cool, non-humid weather finally! more great wall views too mistry =( I run up, the stairs are steep!! They say you're not a hero until you've climbed the great wall... so I'm a hero! one more view we went up the steeper, "less" crowded side, left on the map hugging the great wall (ba da ling) sign. I'm soaking wet artist painting a really cute panda making jade TsingHua University TsingHua again so much grassy space..how I miss a campus with open space TsingHua's pretty lagoon one more building for TsingHua we went to a military camp to watch a demonstration no photos during the top secret very superb show, but they let us pose with the soldiers afterwards : ) it must be a tough job.. his poor arm I liked the flags somewhere in the city : ) WongFuJie, the souvenir shopping street in Beijing mm, grapes coated in hard sugar! mmm, scorpions, they're alive! and then fried nice, spicy and crunchy, just for me a wagon for dinner, at RenLaoShi's suggestion, we ate at this place (Yinglan's friend from Singapore, Seraphina, me, Yinglan) where we were treated like royalty the Qing empress' favorite delicacies, on the top right and lower left one morning we woke up at 3:30am and attempted to watch the flag rising ceremony we were quite happy before rain sparked utter chaos (tiffany, joyce, tomy) vase inside the People's Great Hall the average tourist doesn't get to enter, but we were meeting the 4th top official in China so of course it was back to our formal wear (coordinator Tomy and me) me and Mark, the really cool tour guide from group 4, which I really wanted to desert to, before I found my friends in group 3 pretty ceiling lights pretty painting Assistant Secretary General Walter and me (so he has a reputation for being really hot...what do you guys think?) outside the Great Hall painting inside building of Beijing DaXue (the famed Peking University performing arts building library (oh, did you know university t-shirts are only $15 yuan, that's like 2 bucks!!) by the PekingU lion stone lion then we went to this place called DaoYuTai I think it's a place for VIP to stay me sandwiched by my group 3 mentor Yinglan and coordinator Tomy we met with the foreign minister of China more cool ceiling lights back at PekingU (we were there a lot to "rehearse") but we had many breaks to roam a bit around the campus Pogoda in PekingU PekingU's lake Polly gave me a face massage, because I ached all over from getting 9 mosquiter bites in 2 days, including two suspicious ones on my neck (not hickies!!) the show Joyce, Nam, and Alex (center) from our group were selected to play this painting game I did something against the rules of my "superiors", and alone attempted to watch the flag ceremony again because nobody wanted to wake up early I can't believe thousands of people will show up at the crack of dawn every morning, it's like the mecca for Chinese people but I got to hear the music and see the flag rise! (it was drizzly, but at least not thunderstorming) I had some time, front view of People's Great Hall MaoZeDong's Memorial Hall closer view of the statue Monument to the People's Heroes National Museum of China Countdown to the 2008 Olympics (beinging 8/8/08!, lots of 8's are lucky) Tien 'an men incompetent photographer just took me, and not me with Mao's handsome photo So I took one more photo Entrance to the Forbidden City, though at 6am, it wasn't open yet The flag's up (it only took like a minute or two) are these guys in line?? Peking Duck!!! It was oily, but delicious : )