21 July 2009 We drove out into the suburbs to take a look at what was left of some local hutongs and so Song and Peichen could get us to try donkey meat. We finally found a restaurant and what was left of the hutongs that used to surround it. There was a low brick…

20 July 2009 After breaky we drove about 70Km west of Beijing to a section of the great wall. As with most of the tourist attractions we had been near, it was full of people, mostly Chinese who had come to see one of their national icons. It was great to get out of Beijing…

19 July 2009 We had organized with Jiaao and Xiao the night before to meet up and go to the forbidden city and Tiananmen square, as the night wore on the meeting time grew steadily later in the day. So it was fairly late when we finally kicked off and caught the train to Tiananmen.…

18th July 2009 The day of the wedding we were all up and showered nice and early, Jiaao arrived just as we had finished getting organized. Song had stayed the night at her Mum’s apartment. We had a bit of a photo opp with Peichen’s family while we waited for the cars to arrive. When…

17 July 2009 Tiff and Song headed out to get their nails done after we dropped off the ironing, did I mention that labor is inexpensive in China, People don’t do their own Ironing it’s cheaper to have someone else do it. Peichen, one of his school mates and I went on one crazy shopping…

16 July 2009 Day two kicked off a little later in the morning (common around Chinese, when they start talking about times prior to 9am just nod and smile). In Beijing odd and even numbered vehicles were restricted from driving on certain days of the week during the Olympics (an unsuccessful attempt to clear the…

15 July 2009 The trouble started at customs, the air hostesses had given us health declaration forms and even though I had a cold I put down all clear, Tiff on the other hand being too honest for her own good had put down sinus trouble that she had had since she was a kid.…