Day 5

After our post yesterday, we met up with our group at the hotel and attended an amazing Chinese acrobat show. The theatre is pictured above. It felt great to be together in a group, traveling in an air-conditioned coach after spending the last four days in crazy taxi land.

After having breakfast with yet another retired Australian couple, the group headed to Tianamen Square, which can accomodate 1 million people, 1/10 the population of Beijing.

Our guide, Joy, filled us in on a lot of the history.

We then strolled under the great picture of Mao, which is also the first gate into the Forbidden City. We were all given audio tours, and we strolled through different areas than we did yesterday.

Travel today culminated with a Hutong tour on bicycle rickshaws. You haven't traveled until you've been through Beijing's congested streets on the back of a bike. Exhilarating. Hutongs are narrow alleys and interconnected homes and courtyards of ancient China. Hutongs are still living, breathing neighborhoods, much different from the cityscape we've been encountering. Many of the homes are more than 250 years old. Part of Hutong tour involved stopping at the home of Mr. Lu, a champion raiser of fighting crickets. Yes, really! He also raises grasshoppers, which are raised for the chirping sound they make in his courtyard.

Tomorrow we head to the Great Wall and to Chongqing. And most importantly, tomorrow we can say only "one more day until Ava." We are not sure what the Internet situation will be like in our new hotel, so if we do not post tomorrow, we will soon.