A little news

Hi all! We're still in Beijing, still having email/web access trouble, still having a good time.

Yesterday was a good day for everyone, I think. We spent the day before rushing around this huge hot city in taxis, failing to find an open internet cafe that would offer better facilities than the grotty Internet Bar round the corner (over-18s only). I've been able to download our photos into HW & YJ's PC, and burn them on to a CD, so we don't need computers that our cameras will talk to, but we do need ones with CD drives if we're to load any photos. Mostly, we can't even get into gmail here, and I'm posting via email to the blog (you can try my old bigfoot address if you want to get in touch soon, or text Heather or me ...).

So yesterday we stayed close to home. The Yong He Tibetan Bhuddist Temple is local, colourful (photos to come!), calming, huge and smells strongly of the enormous amounts of sandalwood incense burned. We found shade and wrote postcards, then headed off to a pretty but not-delicious veggie restaurant nearby. This took us into hutongs for the first time (again, photos to come!) - people living very close to each other, hanging out with each other, adults and children on the street: a bit like George Street only more picturesque.

We spent the later afternoon in the paying entry bit (20p each) of the park over the road from the hotel. Parks in China are great. I want to live here when I'm old: people of all ages, but older ones particularly, hang around singing, playing instruments, flying kites, watching schools of carp, chatting and exercising. We've only seen one guy so far doing something we are sure was Tai Chi, but we've seen all sorts of other things, from swordplay to badminton, and from gentle stretches on the state-provided outdoor gym (looks pretty much like a kids playground in the UK, but with bigger equipment, and no grafitti) to sweaty sit-ups on the parallel bars. The one thing you can't do is walk on the grass - but the hard surfaces include ones designed for massaging your feet as you walk on them!

Then another huge, delicious meal with HW and YJ in another local restaurant, this one with NE China specialities (yam noodles, corn pancakes, etc) - Melissa ate aubergines, green and red peppers and big mild chillies with pleasure(!), though both girls liked the big chunky potato chips best (but didn't use the condensed milk dip provided ...). After, we went back to the streetside bit of the local park and played badminton and pois for an hour or two.

Tonight we're off to the outskirts of the metropolitan area, and what may be a luxury hotel by the sound of it - we're visiting the Wall and the place where H and Lani came to the UN conference until Sunday night. Next week we're going to Yujin's home town in rural Shang Dong province - travelling there on Thursday or Friday and staying a week - definitely no internet then! Then back in Beijing, or we may try and get out of the city (if only to find a way to stop HW & YJ paying for everything!) for a bit before we leave for India on Oct 13th.

love to all of you from all of us:

- Mark