Sunday, March 2, 2008

Forbidden City Follies

 2007-02-20 Beijing Forb City 014

Well, here we are at Tienaman Square, the site of the horrible student
massacre all those years ago. It is directly across the street from the
Forbidden City, which for some reason still has a big picture on Mao. I
guess there are some that still respect the guy! Anyway, we had a great
time at the Forbidden City which went on and on and on! Finally Dad
started doing his little jogging sideways dance because he can't walk
very far without his back bugging him. He was a pretty funny site
dancing through the Forbidden City. I mostly pretended that I didn't
know who he was, but we sort of stuck out in the crowd, especially Dad
with his purple Cadbury baseball cap which he bought at the world center
for Cadbury in Australia!
Beijing was totally choked with smog both days that we were there.
People are so used to it that they hardly even notice. It's like the
worse inversion day in SLC over and over and over. I don't know how
they can stand it! Even everything at the Forbidden City is covered
with a coat of gritty dirt, including all the windows. I think they
might spiff it up for the Olympics, but you never know! BUT this
morning when we drove to the airport, it had somehow all blown
out...maybe for the last day of the Chinese New Year last night when we
were treated to massive fireworks all over the city! It even more
amazing than Chiapas, Mexico on Christmas Eve!
We're now in Taipei and will send more tomorrow. It will be our last
full day before we get on the plane to come home. We are in a fabulous
hotel and look forward to our last presentation tomorrow which is a 5
hour workshop. The people are always so interesting and fun!

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