China: "We Are Ready" Me: "Are you sure?"

We arrived in Beijing on the 13th August, from Tokyo via Shanghai. I was really sad to leave Japan, I'd kind of been Tokyo-ed out though cos it's pretty mad, but the country is really, really beautiful. Hopefully I'll get a chance to get back there someday.

Wow China. 10% of the world's websites are blocked for a sixth of the world population... including my blog.

So I find myself writing my Chinese blog well after leaving China for two reasons. 1) While I can still post on my blog, I can't access the actual finished product and 2) the Chinese are pretty sensitive about what you write about their country... so while I was a guest of theirs, I decided to keep my gob shut. Especially in *whispers* ....... Tibet.

So Beijing - our first stop. Now we've been here before, January/February 2005. Had a wonderful stay at Leo's Hostel (old one, now destroyed for the sake of the Olympics, along with that whole road... er, hello? Bitch about China #1). There is now a new Leo's, but we decided to stay in another part of town, in a little hutong (only-to-be-found-in-Beijing-alleyway-very-old-but-loads-are-being-destroyed-because-of-the-Olympics - Bitch about China #2). ANYWAY! Templeside Hostel, a lovely little place (so little that the taxi driver got lost three times and ending up dropping us off at the wrong place and washing his hands of us...) with 2 white kittens and their momma. The kittens, that were girls, ended up being called Frank and Dave on account of one of them having lovely blue eyes (Sinatra) and the other having different coloured eyes (a la Bowie). Their momma was Mama Cass.

We met loads of nice peeps there, Beth and Martin, Robert, Lorenzo, Hilda, Jane, Avery and her mate from Canada (I want to say Helen but I'm not sure). Oh, and who can forget youknowwhoatyouknowwhatdotcom (I don't want to advertise him here but my fellow Beijingers will know who I mean)! Had a few nights of too much beer/baijiu drinking (see Facebook photos)... courtesy of the crazy woman at the shop in our hutong who would sell us beer at 2:30am even though it was clear we didn't NEED any more... also she would be doing her washing at the same time. In the shop. Anyway, it was great meeting so many people cos in Japan, we hardly met anybody. It didn't help that we were mostly staying in Toyoko Inns or other business hotels full of business men in yukata wandering around smoking and choosing porn movies to watch in their room...

Oh, you want to know what there was to see in Beijing? Rubble, pavements dug up, dodgy watch salesmen trying to rip tourists off, pollution (yes you can actually SEE it), big signs about the Olympics declaring "We Are Ready" (that's the official song)........ oh God. Bitch about China #3. Am I only on #3? Okay okay... I'll stop.

Tiananmen Square. The world's largest square - Wikipedia says 440,000 sq metres - (very rectangular for a square though...) and home of pickled Mao (on holiday in Russia at the moment, being re-whatever needs doing-ed) and the Olympic countdown clock (they start on 08.08.08 the luckiest date in China, ever). At one end is the Gate of Heavenly Peace: TIAN (heaven) AN (peace) MEN (gate), the entrance to the Forbidden City, whose English audio tour is NO LONGER voiced by the one and only Roger Moore. Gutted. Ant bought a waving Mao watch for too much money and we watched the flag being lowered at sunset on the square. Kids fly kites everywhere which is quite cool. Also, the weather wasn't -7c like it was last time we were here! It isn't as stuffy as Japan was, but the pollution in the air makes it pretty dusty and a lot of people have coughs.

What else did we see? The Forbidden City, being rebuilt (okay, re-something-ed, not exactly rebuilt) for the Olympics so it's covered in scaffolding and green mesh. We skipped the audio tour after discovering the shocking truth about *gasp* Roger... Jingshan Park, Beihai Park (very nice!) and other stuff... The Temple Of Heaven, Summer Palace (much nicer actually IN summer) and the Lama Temple. Ant went to the Great Wall again. Last time we were here we had the Wall to ourselves. We went to Huang Hua, which was deserted on account of the temperature. Brr. This time Ant went to Simatai and Jinshanling, but I stayed in bed with... HUTONG FEVER.

Within days I had developed hutong fever, started by (as always) Patient Zero, one of the girls who worked at the hostel who I swear sneezed into my breakfast one morning. After a while, EVERYBODY had got it. Snotty, feeling like crap, sneezing, and general rubbish stuff.

We got the train to Xi'an after a week in Beijing. Hopefully there would be cleaner air, less sneezing, and some Terracotta Warriors we could have a look at...