Beijing and on my way home

I caught the 11 hour train ride to Beijing from Shanghai. I had the lower bunk and shared my compartment with 2 Chinese women and a Chinese man. No late night sharing of stories because I was the only English speaking person. They were very helpful and kind to me when I had to store my luggage and settle in. I had trouble getting to sleep which was a problem because the lights were switched on as we came into the train station at 6 AM. I had only about 4 hours sleep and I was heading into a large city with some instructions on how to take the subway and walk to my small hotel. It was also raining at the time which unbeknownst to me was a good thing because would comment in the coming days how clear the air was after the rain. I got to my hotel okay and quickly made friends with some people at the hotel: Charlie, an oil and gas manager from Calgary; Colin, a Scottish English as a second language teacher in Beijing, and Maggie, a Chinese student from Dalian, China. We went out to breakfast which was dumplings and an oatmeal like soup for about a $1. During the breakfast I got instructions to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Sqare which are within walking distance of each other. They had suggested I take a cab but I decided to walk. By walking I discovered the difference between how close something can seem on a map and the reality of the distance on the ground. Not having slept much I was getting tired by the time I got to the Forbidden City which was becoming more like the Forbidding City because it is so large in scale and I was diminishing in energy. Once I started walking from one section of the city to the next I felt more energized. I had seen the movie "the Last Emperor" which is the story of the last emperor who left the grounds in I believe in 1924. He had been established as the emperor at the age of 3. The buildings and space are overwhelming and it is hard to capture in pictures because the scale is so large. There are 8700 rooms and the overall space it covers is some other phenenomal number. Let's just say it is very big. Some of the buildings are under renovations which is true of many parts of Beijing due to the Olympics coming in August. When I visited the Forbidden City, as well as the artifacts on display at the Shanghai, it brought home the understanding of China as a huge empire which is beginning to recapture its former prominence. The amount of energy and determination it would take to make this palace a reality is truly remarkable. The Chinese are into having the biggest palace on earth (the Forbidden City) , the largest public square in the world (Tiananamen Square) in addition to the largest population etc. The square and palace are within easy walking distance, you walk out of the city practically into the square. After I walked around the square I took four subway stops to the Silk market because I wanted to get started on buying some stuff which I had left until Beijing because I did not want to be carrying gifts across the country. I walked into the market and bumped into Charlie from the hotel. I hadn't planned on it but I already began buying and haggling that afternoon. I had my tailored Australian cashmere wool suit ordered before I left and had pretty well decided what my purchases would be the next time I was going to be there.
The next day I woke up early and went on the 10 kilometer hike of the Great Wall. It didn't start out well because the bus was overbooked and our driver was trying to get 5 of us into a car about the size of a Honda Accord. We refused and so we had to wait around for an hour and a half. Then we spent 3 hours getting to where we would begin our hike because we were not going to the most visited site which is generally just a short hike, look and see, and then back home. Ours was 6 hours round trip plus a 4 hour walk because the wall is not a flat walk but the wall reflects the up and down terrain it is built on. We walked past 30 of those outposts you see in the picture. It was great not only because of the wall but also because of the cleaner countryside air and it was a nice warm day despite the fact we were in higher elevation. I walked with my trip companions a Dutch couple and an English couple. I was the lonely guy on his own but of course I am never lonely because the fellow travellers are quite friendly and there is never a shortage of things to talk about whether it is our native countries, what we are experiencing in the present,or where else we have been in our travels up until this point. The walk was good exercise and I have a good understanding of the again impressive achievement of creating a barrier of this immensity. A little humour was provided when someone had written in black "Made in China" on the wall.
The next day I went back to the Silk market and perfected my haggling skills. Just as I was getting good at it I was done buying what I needed. It is fun to engage in the haggling but it can be time consuming and draining. Afterwards I went up to the Temple of Heaven with Charlie who had gone to the market with me. The Temple of Heaven is like a huge park in Beijing and a respite from the traffic, people, and noise of Beijing. It is the religious shrines where offerings to the gods had been made for centuries. Not nearly as large as the Forbidden City ,which is the home and political administration of the Emperor, this temple had a long history archeologists having found evidence of sacrifices being conducted 5500 hundred years ago at this site.
I went out and had Peking duck that night plus visited a night club in the infamous Houhai Lake area. The next morning I got up and took a cab to look at the Olympic site. It was a little disappointing because you cannot get to close to the buildings but nonetheless it was an impressive amount of interesting architecture going into the main structures.
There is so much more I could have done in Beijing if I had time and yet I was ready to go home after being away on my own for 10 and a half weeks. I felt I had done what I had set out to do in terms of the 3 and half weeks I had to see China and Thailand. I had enjoyed myself with the nice balance of seeing some interesting places like Hong Kong, Bangkok, Ko Phangnan, Yangshuo, Shanghai, and Beijing plus doing the activities of hiking, biking, snorkeling, scuba diving, moped riding, and conversing with people from different countries all over the world. I was ready to go and see my family and friends.