So, Tien'anmen, The Forbidden City and The Imperial Summer Palace yesterday. The guide said that was the worst day for walking, but today we walk the Great Wall so I'll take his comment with a grain of salt. Speaking of our guide, even with my wife's average of around 40 percent accurate translation, I can tell that he's got a great way with making history come alive. As we toured the sites, our small group of 13 would swell to 3 times that as people listened to him speak. It got to the point where I asked Sherry to teach me a phrase: "Ni you may yo fu chen? May yo?! Guen kai!" It translates to "Have you paid money for this? No?! Then get lost!". [Note from Sherry: Luckily Bill didn't have to use the phrase yet, although we came close a couple of times. When I told the guide what I taught Bill, he gently said "Uh, you should probably not use the phrase 'guen kai' - it's a bit rude; you should say 'tsou kai' instead." I guess telling someone to walk away rather than get lost is slightly more appropriate when we're guests in their country!]

In front of Mao's Tomb ...[Tallest flagpole in the country - no other flagpole is allowed to be this tall. The guys in front are on guard for 15 minutes at a time and can only move their eyeballs. The trick, the box they stand in blows cool air in the summer and heat in the winter!]

Tien'anmen Square was a trip, I'm not a globetrotting Square connoisseur but it's definitely one big public square. The biggest highlight is Mao Zedong's tomb, or more specifically the 5000+ people lined up to enter it. It's the queue to end all queues: the tomb is massive, it must be a city block in size, and the line snakes out of it, goes completely around the building and off a good distance still. I'll never complain about the line-ups at Disney World again. [Sherry's note: Keep in mind that you would be in line for over an hour and then get shuffled through inside for a total of 30 seconds, straining your head to see the body of Mao. The guide suggested that waiting in line for that long was not going to be so enjoyable for us! So we skipped it.]

Forbidden City, what else can I say? Great architecture, great history. Sherry finally ran out of steam trying to concentrate on translating for me, so I got the English audio guide. It's a pretty nifty system where you carry what amounts to an electronic map that tracks your position in the palace and starts up when you approach an audio highlight. The information is pretty good too, although I think I'm missing a lot of neat details that the guide is providing in Chinese. Still, Sherry has been a great sport about it and I really appreciate her efforts. [Sherry's note: It was well worth the RMB 40 to be able to concentrate on just understanding the guide for myself! My Chinese is really not that good, so I can understand about 80% of what the guide says and then because he talks so fast and my simultaneous interpretation skills are a bit rusty, Bill gets about 50% of what I got, hence the 40% he ends up hearing from me in my broken Grade 3 comprehension of Chinese!]

In some ways, I found the Summer Palace even more interesting than the Forbidden City, in the imprint that the Dowager Empress has left on it. If you go to the site and follow the history, you'll know what I mean. She really was a power-hungry drama queen. There are a lot of renovation going on in preparation for the Beijing Olympics in 2008, so Sherry and I have plans to come back in 2009, when everything is finished and accessible. If you're planning on seeing these cultural artifacts, you better hurry too. There were SO many people there, and all of that tourist poundings are tearing the places apart.

Today, the Great Wall. I can't wait.