Braving Brisk Beijing

Being the hearty New Englanders we are, Beijing decided to greet us with clear skies, temperatures around 35 or so with a brisk breeze that made our rickshaw ride through a hutong and our walking through Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City a chilling experience.

Ready to Go

View From Our Seat

How do they decide who gets the next fare?

However, one benefit was the beautiful clear blue skies pretty much absent of smog.  Two families we toured with today are repeat adopters and have brought their Chinese daughters with them.  One of them (11 years old) engaged herself with Hailie, and now we had a pack of girls running around throughout the silk factory visit suggesting to each other what their parents should be buying and having all of the sales associates nervously eyeing them as they bounced around the sales floor.  We felt like we were at a used car lot as there were dozens of salespeople and there were hardly any other potential customers there with our group.  We split the touring day in half with a very nice potpourri of choices at a Chinese restaurant adjacent to Tiananmen Square.  The big hit were the stir fried potatoes (essentially shoe string potatoes that were stir fried.)

What a cute ready to adopt from China family!

We had heard about how the Chinese would be prone to staring and maybe touching us and our children, and our group was definitely another tourist attraction while we were at the Forbidden City.  One lady had her significant other take her picture with our group prominently in the background, and Steve in particular was a real hit.  A pair of men who may have been Mongolian each had a picture with Steve, and then group of young adult Chinese immediately grabbed him for a picture with their group.  Maybe with his beard he was mistaken for Sean Connery? 

First day out of the chute after the long day before took its toll on Hailie.  She fell asleep at 4:30 so we were unable to go out for dinner.  But that was far from the worst aspect of her retiring early.  More on that later.