still Sunday, after the lama temple hua and i met up with William and Helen and went to guomao to find eat. guomao is the trade centre so a lot of convention centers and international hotels are there. there is also a Bentley dealership. i saw a picture of a Bentley on the wall and said something about those being nice cars but i could not understand why they would post a picture of one randomly on a wall. Turns out it was not quite as random as i thought. We actually had a really hard time finding a restaurant that was open. Remember this is new years day. Also people in our party did not want to eat at a place that was not "authentic". i was up for the international buffet cause of the awesome sign. That was one plus of this area lots of neon. Check that, lots of moving neon. The pic does not capture the fact that the buffet sign was moving all those purty colors all over the place.

this was a new four seasons condo building being built. It was just cool seeing that tall a building being built. It seems like they have a lot to finish though before the building moratorium kicks in at the end of 2006. i would like to come back next year to see how widely people are following that. The thought is that they finish all building except for Olympic facility building by the end of 2006 so that they are not building when people start to arrive and the dust has a chance to settle.






here is the first pic of the infamous general tso (read the comments for more discussion on this). i know it is blurry. It was starting to get dark out and my pics take a nose dive the darker it gets. You can still see it though . It looks a lot like colonel sanders and the menu is not that different.




here is yet another cool building with neon that changed colors on the sides. Blame my fascination on neon and big buildings with growing up in the Midwest where we did not have much of any.







Here is the canal street of Beijing. Everyone (including myself) expects a street but it is a building with fake whatever luxury goods you need. i still have not been there but will probably head down there at some point. Trouble is i cannot remember how to get there but i know there is a subway station near it. i think i am going to get myself a Louis vitton bag like kanyes.