Ni Hao Posted Wednesday, April 30, 2008 So after a 1-hour flight to LAX, a 13-hour flight to Seoul, a 2-hour flight to Beijing, several layovers and a couple crazy taxi drivers: Good morning from Beijing. The really wild thing is that the Pistons are in the second quarter right now on Tuesday in the States and the clock next to me reads 7:42 a.m. Wednesday. We’re 15 hours ahead of left-coast time (12 hours ahead of EST -- in case math is not your thing).  From the hotel room, we’re looking out over some Hutongs.  Not everyone is up yet. Kimi, Tiff and I are off to Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City later today. -cmg First day complete Posted Wednesday, April 30, 2008 We took it easy on our first day in China. We walked to the Drum Tower in the north end of the city and climbed the steep stairs to the top, watched a drum presentation, slipped around the tight corners of the city’s hutongs on rickshaws, took a special tea tasting, visited (for a price) the inside of a hutong, strolled along the lakes, listened to authentic Chinese musicians, toured the Forbidden City, and Tian’namen Square, and the Temple of Heaven, haggled for a shirt at the Pearl Market, feasted on an authentic Beijing dinner with Kimi’s father’s friend Dennis and his associates (complete with our own private room, roasted duck, lamb, some crazy bean stuff, hot fish and like 10 other things I couldn’t pronounce), visited the new spaceship-like performing arts center. And we did it all on foot. Good thing we’re only hiking 10 kms on the Great Wall tomorrow.                Some observations of the city: The people are very friendly (though they spit a lot and many children use the street as a toilet). The city planners of Beijing are genius for putting in so many beautiful parks. You should be careful what you post on your blog. I’m now able to post, but only because I removed the previous post on this page, which contained words that are not to be used (now that I’m back, and rereading this, I can tell you the comment was about a water-torture prison, which was intended to freak out my mom). I guess we’ll see if this post works. -cmg.
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The Great Wall Posted Thursday, May 1, 2008 Sometimes you do something so remarkable that even as it’s happening, you know you’ll remember it the rest of your life. I felt that way in the cab on the way to the Great Wall. Seriously, our cab ride from Beijing to Jinshanling, where we began our trek across the Great Wall, was like something out of a chase scene in a movie. At one point our driver (who I fn loved), was driving in the emergency lane ... on the oncoming traffic side. Cars were driving four wide on a two-lane highway at high speeds with horse carts and stray chickens adding to the havoc. It should have been a video game. As for the Great Wall -- brilliant. Our 2 1/2-hour cab drive landed us unnerved but safe at Jinshanling. Four hours later we completed our 10-km journey at Simitai. In between we climbed up and over a crumbling, but beautiful section of the Wall, were accosted at nearly all of the 30 towers by gypsies selling water, complained a lot (Dad, I tried to use the Kool-aid trick), marveled a lot more and finished with Tiff singing Chariots of Fire before tripping and falling on the very last step. We’re exhausted now, so tomorrow we’re taking it easy at Summer Palace, where we can look out over the lake with our feet up. The pics/videos:                We also snuck a peak at the new Olympic campus. “NO PICTURES!!!!”  Observations: It’s the Worker’s Holiday here, which I guess is the Chinese equivalent to Thanksgiving. We saw a lot of families hugging and hanging -- a lot of which we saw on the side of the freeway, which was weird. Also, our concierge is a moron. I asked him a week ago to book us train tickets to Shanghai and he failed. Because of the holiday everything is booked. So we’re taking a plane to Shanghai on Saturday afternoon instead of an overnight train. I think we got tickets for $60. Everyone else is asleep so I’m sitting here drinking Yangjing beer, and putting this together as I watch the Chelsea-Liverpool match at about midnight Friday in Beijing. I can’t help but wonder if my friend the Rook is doing the same in the a.m. Thursday in San Jose. This time change stuff blows my mind. - cmg
Intoxicated Posted Friday, May 2, 2008 Wow. So I guess the best way to start this one is to say I’ve had a lot to drink. Thank you Michael from Singapore and Rowand from Norway. To recap: Today we slept in and actually had breakfast. We spent most of the day at the Summer Palace, which is the former palatial summer stomping grounds of both the Ming and Qing dynasties. Basically it’s a really sweet park on a lake with a lot of cool things to look at. How did we get intoxicated? After visiting the Summer Palace we went out to the lake’s region to have dinner. And after dinner we wandered. Tiff and Kimi started the craziness by improv dancing in front of one bar, which was followed by more drinks and then three stools at a bar. And at this bar I met Rowand while the girls were bouncing to the live band (which played everything from Deep Purple to Chinese to Sweet Child). Rowand bought us shots, which was followed by Michael from Singapore inviting us to his table for some hookah and drinks for his brother’s 26th birthday. We played some game called 007, which I plan on teaching others, and just got completely silly. Anyway... I just hope I spelled everything correctly at this point. Much love. the pics/videos:         Time for bed. -cmg
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