Beijing - First Few Days

First post on ye ole blog eh, if this isn't any good I know you'll all delete this link..and I wouldn't blame you. I'll keep it short because it's nearly 6am & I am pretty drunk on the local brew - Tsingtao.

Jet lag hit us fairly hard so we were all over the place for the first few days or so but managed to get a few sights in.

We had a bit of a stroll around Tiananmen Square on Wednesday and managed to make it out for a trek of the Great Wall of China at Juyongguan on Thursday. It was built in the 5th century by the Ming dynasty and is one of the most strategically important sections of the Great Wall due to its position as a link to Beijing, but I didn't need to tell you that right...?

Below - The view from the base of the Juyongguan section of the Great Wall

After we conquered the wall (the pic above is of me at the top...shattered) we got a cab back in to town and did a tour of some inner city hutongs (narrow alleyways, built after Genghis Khan reduced Beijing to rubble, which are being swiftly demolished as Beijing attempts to became a truly modern city for the 2008 Olympics), the Beijing Bell & Drum Towers (built in 13th century to inform the locals of the coming of both morning & evening) before we ended up in a Porcelain factory for a look around and a bit of a mess about on the potters' wheel.

Generally it's been a good laugh so far. The lack of signs/people with any shred of decent English is a bit worrying at times but the sign language has been put to good use. The locals are pretty sound - always either coming up & supplying us with unsolicited "harrows", asking us to stand in for photos with them or just plain staring us out because they've seen less westerners than I've seen salads.

Zài jiàn,

Phil