Beijing China

This day we walked over to a Hutong (old Chinese neighborhood) where the Chinese live, work and shop. It was most interesting. We bought peanuts on the street just like we do here in Lagos and found a delightful little tea house where a young woman named Alice and her 6 year old daughter live and work. She showed us how to make real Chinese tea and sold us a couple of tea pots and some of our favorite teas. The shop is just one room, and there is one tiny room in the back where they live. (There is a community bathroom about a half block down the street.) They seemed very happy and content with their life.
In the pictures where you see the head of an old man on a bicycle, we were riding behind him in a buggy pulled by the bike. It felt good on the little side streets but when he turned onto the big boulevards’, we were scared for our lives. He did get us to the pearl market in one piece. (When we left there, we found a cab to take us back to the hotel.) The pearl market was interesting and fun and enormous. Prices in general in Beijing were very reasonable if not downright cheap on Chinese merchandise. However, the American shops are not for bargain hunters. They had wonderful bead and antique markets that were tons of fun.
The next day, we took a cab to the Olympic park. It was delightful and we were glad we went. For about $10 US, you can go into the “bird’s nest” stadium where they had the opening ceremonies as well as other events. We were surprised to see how many people were in there. This was the second time since we were there that people wanted to have their picture made with me. Chris thinks it’s the white-blonde hair and red lips that make me stand out in a crowd. Anyway it was fun and we stayed there for a while, like many others just awed by the stadium.
On our way back to the hotel, we went to the Yonghegong Lama Temple. It was the largest temple we had ever seen and very well maintained to be so very old. Many visitors go there and buy incense and add it to the large incense burners. Like the other temples we saw later in the trip, there would be a portal to enter with numerous buildings and one very large building straight ahead. You could walk around, see the Buddhas, walk out the back and find another portal and more temples. There were also some very old trees in some of these old compounds that looked both old and wise.