G'day!

Greeting to one and all from sunny Beijing where the temperature is -1℃ at 430 in the afternoon. Positively balmy after this morning's -11℃ (actually more like -17℃ if you consider the wind chill factor!). I went for a walk this morning to take some photos of some old school apartment blocks not far away. I'm not sure if they worked out ok, as I didn't want to take my gloves off which made me even more un-cordinated than usual. We'll wait and see, I suppose.

Anyhoo, I hope everyone is enjoying the festive season. Mel and I are flying out to Thailand early tomorrow morning. Looking forward to the being in place that's warm. All the time! And I don't have to put on 17 layers of clothes just to pop over to the supermarket for some milk. Yes, should be good:) Obviously the "17 layers of clothes" is a slight exaggeration, but it'll be sweet to be able to kick around in shorts and a t-shirt again.

In my last post I mentioned that Mel and I had a short trip before Xmas. We flew to the province of Shandong, which is south of Beijing. We spent three days in the city of Zibo. Zibo is an industrial city so the pollution is quite amazing - as you can see in the picture below. After Zibo, we headed further south to Nanjing, the original capital of the Ming dynasty. We visited Dr Sun Yat Sen's mausoleum which was very, very impressive. For those who don't know, Dr Sun is considered the father of Chinese revolution and was president of the first Chinese republic in 1911 or 12. We also visited a Ming dynasty tomb which was interesting but not nearly as popular as Dr Sun's memorial.

I was wanted to put some more pictures up but due to the earthquake in Taiwan a couple of days ago, the internet connection is kinda patchy at times. Maybe when we get back from Thailand. Hope everyone has a blast on New Years Eve.

Zaijien (Chinese for goodbye, although the spelling could be dodgy!)

TONE

Merry Xmas and all that!

Gday,

Hope everyone's enjoying Christmas.
It's pretty low key affair for me and Mel. The first Christmas we've had by ourselves. I think the parents would have liked us to be in NZ &/or OZ, but waddaya gunna do? We're having dinner with a friend tonight. Probably a couple of sherberts too:)
Before Christmas we had a bit of trip around, visiting a couple of places that have connections with Mel's employer - basically a bit of PR. It was kinda cool as we stayed in some nice places and got taken out for dinner. A lot! We got to eat some pretty freaky food too!

The Five Freakiest Foods Mel & Tone Ate on Their Little Trip

1. Snake & Scorpion Soup - actually tasted pretty good. We didn't eat the scorpions but Mel ate some snake and thought it tasted like chicken. I missed out because apparently Chinese people love snake!

2. Stingray - also tasted good. A lot like shark. A dash of salt, a splash of lemon and some chips would've made it great:)

3. Sea Cucumber & Tofu Soup - tasted good, especially the tofu. The sea cucumber was like rubber:(

4. Donkey - tasted all right, but was chewy. Kind of like beef jerky.

5. Roast Pigeon - wasn't as good as Peking Duck. Very bony.

I've included some photos for your enjoyment. None of the scorpion though. Maybe tomorrow. Or more likely the day after as I'll be off to the pub to watch the cricket from Melbourne. Hopefully the Aussies will make it 4-0, Warney will get number 700 and Gilly will hit 3 '6s' to move to 100 career '6s'. Go the Aussies:)

Anyhoo, the pictures are of Dr Sun Yat Sen's Mausoleum in Nanjing, a headline from the China Daily (far and away the worst newspaper I have read. Ever. In the world. Total propaganda), Taishan (the most sacred of China's 5 sacred mountain, the head of a statue of Confucious and a sign of Chinese support and encouragement for yours truly:)

Enjoy!

Later
TONE

Oops!

The pictures came out in the wrong order.

1. The Taoist temple eave.
2. The Front Gate ceiling.
3. The fur seller.

And the last two are pretty obvious. ENJOY!

Hi there,

Here are the photos I tried to upload the other day. We have the backdoor to Chairman Mao's house taken from the old Front Gate to the Forbidden City, as well as one of the ceiling of the Front Gate. There's one of the eave on a Taoist temple not far from our apartment. You might not be able to see it clearly, but there's a fur seller in one. He had tiger and leopard furs draped over his shoulders. I've seen quite a few of these guys around some of the markets. Kinda sad methinks. The last one is of a cement truck and its blanket. I told you so!

I had a good trip to to see the Great Wall. It was a renovated section but it was still impressive. The day was sunny and clear which was great. It also wasn't as cold as I expected. I'll put up some pictures soon.

Cheers
TONE

Some more photos

Hey there,

Well today I was going to put some more pictures up, including one of a cement truck with a blanket on (they really do exist!), but for some reason I can't upload the photos. Hmmm ... dunno what's going on. Never mind, I'll have another crack at it later on.

Tomorrow I'm off to see the Great Wall, which I'm kinda excited about. Hopefully there won't be too many people around as we're going to relatively unknown bit. Also it is really cold - it's just on 5pm and the temperature is currently 0°. Yaay! Anyhoo, we're also going to visit the tombs of some of the Ming dynasty emperors. According the Lonely Planet you can actually go down inside one of the tombs. But knowing those buggers it's probably all lies.

Well that's me for the moment. Hopefully I'll more to say on Friday when I'm planning to cover the issue of beggars on the streets and how to avoid them. I should have more photos as well and hopefully they'll load ok. Bloody technology!!

CHEERS
TONE

Greeting and salutations!

It’s been a few days since I last posted something. This is mostly due to me catching a cold early in the week and feeling like crap until yesterday. Anyhoo, I’m mostly better now which is good for me☺ And Mel too. She’s already had the cold but she doesn't have put up with blowing my nose and coughing all through the night! It's good to sleep through the night again!

So what been going on? Actually a better question might be what’s been going down? And the answer would be the temperature. In a big way! I’m pretty sure the temperature hasn’t been over zero since Monday or Tuesday. In fact it’s so cold that the cement trucks have blankets on them. I know you’re all saying “yeah right, Tone. Whatever man!” and I don’t blame you one bit. But it’s the truth and I shall provide pictorial evidence as soon as I can.

Early in the week I spent a bit more time around Tiananmen Square. On Tuesday I braved the rush hour crowds on the subway in an attempt to beat the crowds going to see Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum. I got there around 830 and, despite the bitter cold; there were already thousands of people in the square. I made my way to the end of the ever-growing queue only to be shouted at by a guy with megaphone from about a metre away. After I recovered from that audiological blow to my brain, another guy (sans megaphone) was yelling at me “Sir. Sir. Sir. No cameras, no bags. Go bag check. Follow, follow.” And so I did. Well I tried to! This little fella was all energy. He ran out on to the street with his hand up to stop the traffic. Unfortunately the bus drivers saw things differently and kept right on going. Luckily for the little guy I was lagging and he had to stop. If wasn’t for that I think have may ended up as the front ornament on the Number 24 bus!!!

So eventually I got back to the still-lengthening queue and lined up. After waiting a few minutes the line started moving into the compound containing Mao’s body. As the line moved around a corner created by a wheelie bin, I swear every second guy in the line spat or blew his nose into the bin. Really classy! Better than lobbing a big loogey on the big man I suppose. Anyhoo followed the dotted yellow line on the ground around a couple of more corners before we came into line with front door of the mausoleum.

Once inside all hats came off and pretty much all talking stopped. Some people had bought flowers to lie on a big statue of Mao, along with a few hundred others. At this point the line split in two and went through a door on each side of the room. The line them came back together on the other side before splitting once again in front of the ‘Great Helmsman’ and his crystal coffin. By this time there was no talking at all. All eyes were on the big guy. I say 'big guy' but he wasn't so big. He actually looked really small, but that could because he’d been dead for 30 years! We could only see his head and shoulders. The rest of him was covered by a flag, which I would swear was Russian but I know that doesn’t make any sense!

I do have some more to say but I'll save that for later. I'll also have some more photos for you to have a look at.

CHEERS
TONE