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We left Dr. Sun to stay in Beijing to stay for about 6 days. We stayed in a pretty cheap place that was like 120 dollars for 5 nights and it was right in the middle of the city. A lot of the subway there is in English so it was really easy to use. So much of the city was under construction in preparation for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. They had many statues of athletes and such and the city was pretty nice. They are building a ton of hotels for the games and I think China is hoping to jumpstart their economy. I think the Olympics will be a great success but after they are over they will have no one to live in these beautiful hotels they are building. The people cannot afford to stay in them.

The first picture is basically an average BEIJING CITY scene. We were never in insanely crowded areas, but there were always people busy at any time of the day.

TIANANMEN SQUARE was a pretty cool sight to see. The square itself can hold almost 300,000 people and it has a couple of government buildings on each side. In the back is the tall monument to Mao in front of his mausoleum. Mao had his body preserved by filling it with formaldehyde and it is on view to the public. He did alot for the country by modernizing it as their leader and the people love him despite the last few years of his life when he started bulldozing many ancient relics and sites. We waited in line with a few thousand people to see his body on display. It was a bit eerie to see a dead man's body as fully armed guards yelled at you to move along.

We visited an ANCIENT OBSERVATORY, that unforunately had many parts closed. Still, we got to see many astrological and measuring devices. The one on the left with the dragons dripping water into the frogs' mouths is a model of the first seismograph in the world.

John and I went to BEHAI LAKE which was right in the middle of the city. That is one of the truly neat things about Bejing- there are lakes all over the place. For a couple dollars we got admittance into a beautiful park with buildings, gardens and statues.

We saw the BELL AND DRUM TOWERS which had massive drums and one enormous bell. It would have been fun to ring...just once.

The FORBIDDEN PALACE is the most visited attraction in all of China. The front of the palace can be seen in the pictures of Tiananment square where Mao used to give his speeches (his picture is now there.) There were so many old buildings that were used in ancient times for meeting places for officials and where the emperor would change his clothes or give a speech. There us a picture of one of the guard lions that can be seen everywhere and also a Buddha statue.

We travelled to the BADALING section of the GREAT WALL since you can go to several different parts. You took plastic sleds up a ramp like a roller coaster and then walked on a mile or so of the wall. It was amazing to see the wall go on for as far as the eye could see and hard to imagine how it was built in the first place. I got a t-shirt that says 'I climbed the Great Wall' for $1.60.

The WHITE DABOGA was a very tall building that was surrounded by Buddhist temples. John named it 'China's Great White Nipple' because it didnt seem to do too much otherwise. You can see a few pictures of the Gods we were not supposed to take. (Look at the giant gold Buddha.)

The SUMMER PALACE was an enormous 700 acre area North of Beijing that was like an escape for the Emperor or other highly important people in ancient times. There was a huge lake in the middle and nice trees and gardens everywhere. One of the pictures is of a 500 foot long marble bridge which was pretty amazing. Below that is a 1.5 mile long walkway that had all its wood pieces covered with intricate paintings. In all there were over 8,000 paintings.

The last set of pictures is THE HEAVENLY TEMPLE where the emperor and other people would go to pray to the gods of the heavens. This was extremely important to them because the heaven god brought rain and sunshine and would decide the outcome of their crops.

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