so we are at Sunday. Today jasmine and i woke up and went to the forbidden city and tiananmen square. It was still bitter cold but at least it was clear out. The pictures for forbidden city and tiananmen are posted separately as there are so many of them.

after walking through tiananmen square we went to the south where some of the hutongs that remain in Beijing are located. The hutongs are the traditional style of housing in Beijing that are mostly torn down now so that large ugly apartment buildings could be put up in their place. Oh, and malls, lots of malls in their place.

i liked the full scale picture of Iverson on the bus. Kind of surreal considering you don't even see that in Seattle. Instead seattle's buses do silly things like adding wireless to the bus. Side note, i think this is a really bad idea and a continuation of the loss of a clean line between work and home. Now when i used to be able to read or just stare out the window and think about things i am going to be expected to take advantage of the wireless and be checking email or something on the bus. Maybe i should be a luddite.

another general tso spotting. The guy eating his meal in this picture looked so shocked when he realized that i was taking a picture of him enjoying his tasty general tso's.

the hutong area looks like it is about to be torn down which is too bad. The tea house i went to back in august is gone and all the stores are gone. There is still some of the area left but we will see how long it lasts.

you can see some of the areas that are being torn down here.











here are some things that should be torn down. For some reason everyone in Beijing thinks that these megaphones are the best advertisement device ever.

basically they tape down the trigger on the megaphone and blast what i am guessing in Chinese is suitcases, backpacks, suitcases, backpacks, etc...



here is one that probably is saying tights, shirts, tights, shirts, etc... Although this one is slightly better because it was the first in what is now a recurring theme. That of mannequins posing outside stores. Be prepared for many more pictures on this.






guess what this one was saying. I'll give you a hint, think of things you wear on your feets like shoes and sandals. Then repeat that thought through a megaphone in your brain FOREVER while screaming cause the megaphone by itself is not loud enough. You have to scream to really get your point across.






here the store keeper decided to give a little something back to the local economy and hired a guy to stand on the street and yell as loud as he could continuously into the megaphone. He must have been a student of circular breathing as he never stopped or lowered in volume.






more mannequins outside a street that closed. Yes that is right the entire street was closed. The store owner being a caring store owner decided to set her mannequins free once she shut down her store. But did she worry about things like where would the mannequins eat? How about sleep and fun? No, not at all. so now the mannequins have turned delinquent and just hang out on the street looking for trouble. It is well-intentioned decisions like this that are putting Beijing in danger.

here is the entrance to the hutong or as jasmine said "what i expected china to look like".









here is what it looks like once i allowed everyone back on to the street. It is a pretty popular place to hang out and wander around.

they have some really good restaurants here but you probably should have your full hep a set before eating there.

they also have random china kitsch for about 75% of the price of the markets so it is a good place to go to pick up small gifts for all your friends back home (except the loyal readers of this blog who will receive something really nice and expensive, not a .25 jade pendant :).

here is where the government has been disposing of all the delinquent mannequins who cannot give them an official store of residence. It is so sad to see the moral fiber of beijing's mannequins decaying in this fashion.





this is Michael schumacher's bike. Watch out taking off from a red light for the Schumacher chop.

after wandering through lots of dusty areas jasmine and i decided to grab the subway to wangfujing to get some foods.






we found where the sidewalk ends for the blind people following the blind path. If you miss the day in blind people navigation school that teaches you a sharp left turn of 7 dots means that you are wandering towards a steep drop off on to the third rail you are in trouble.

the weird thing about the blind people path is that i have never seen anyone using it. The only blind person i have seen is the guy playing the Chinese guitar (sorry for my cultural ignorance, that is pretty much what it looks like) and the people in the blind massage parlor.

here is an ice cream bar that turns you into a princess. The only drawback is that they cost 2 million quai and you need to send a application to buy one to the royal family in England.


after a nice dinner at south beauty which has become my favorite nice dinner place (thanks Jason and holly) we decided to go to bodhi yet again and get foot massages.

the taxi driver dropped us off in front of the archery range which i am definitely going to go back and check out.