This is Mary, Ann's younger sister and honorary guest blogger, chronicling my whirlwind tour of Beijing with Michael's mother, Mary. We spent the better part of our first day in Beijing wandering around the Forbidden City and Imperial Gardens, where everything was fragrant and in bloom (a welcome sight for two gals from the Midwest).
At Ann's suggestion, we decided to take a pedicab through the winding hutong (old neighborhood).
Of course, we caught the oldest and most rickety of the bunch, but were rewarded with a delicious sampling of teas served by a charming shopkeeper whose 300 year-old family farm is in southern China (near Xiamen). He explained that farm labor is efficiently divided -- the men working in the fields and the women packing the tea leaves for sale. He and his wife are separated by several hundred miles most of the year--very hard on family life but seemingly quite common among the Chinese.
Another highlight was the brief tour of one of the courtyard homes where our hosts tried somewhat unsuccessfully to explain the principles of feng shui and the four linguistic tones of the Chinese language to us.
This is our hotel off Wangfujing Street (the major shopping district) where Mary had a bowl of very spaghetti-like noodles (sans Parmesan) with the lone fork in the restaurant. The open-air market has an impressive array of culinary delights, including the "scorpion on a stick" that we observed some US tourists gobbled down.
Day Two--An exhausting day yet breathtaking day at Mutianyu (one of the less populated areas to view the Wall). My trusty pedometer clocked 18 miles -- Thomas chided me for making his grandmother walk down the mountain rather than taking the cable car as most informed tourists do. Of course, the cherry blossoms were blooming everywhere which afforded some truly stunning views that pictures cannot capture.
Mary took a picture of me being "captured" by a costumed Mongol soldier whose growling and grunting somewhat surprised yet delighted me.
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