This post has been a long time coming, but I’ve been busy doing this that and the other for the past week.
We visited Beijing recently, and took the soft sleeper train to get there. I really enjoyed the train trip, and would much rather prefer taking the train than a plane in China, given the chance. You don’t need to pay for a hotel on the night that you take the train, and you can arrive in the morning relaxed and ready to go (most of the time).
We had our own compartment to ourselves on the way back from Beijing, which was nice. I realized that our compartment had an A/C control halfway through the trip, when I woke up and felt like I was in a sauna. Too bad the controls were written in Chinese, but I figured it out eventually.
The first comment I might mention about Beijing is that it’s wildly more polluted than Shanghai is. I am unfortunately getting accustomed to the pollution, but this is a sign that my lungs are getting used to the feeling of smoking 70 cigarettes a day (the equivalent of breathing Beijing air). In Beijing, we stayed at the Yanshan hotel in the Zhongguacun area of Haidian district.. we had gas masks in our room in what appeared to be little Pringles cans. I was extremely tempted to pilfer this and wear it around, but then felt guilty at the last second. I would totally buy it if I could find one in a store and walk around with a gas mask. Kevin was quick to point out that weople might think I was a terrorist, though.
Upon arrival in Beijing, K and I visited Professor Jikun Liu of Tsinghua (the “MIT” of China). When we got to Tsinghua, it must have been about 98 degrees and sunny, and the pollution was making my throat hurt. Take a look at the inside of the building, the modernist architecture was very impressive.
Other than Tsinghua, we got to check out some of the other areas in Beijing, including the forbidden city, summer palace, and great wall. I got to meet up with Christine, my wondrous UMMUN DSG, who works for the State department now. Yikes, I know, I was nervous that we’d be followed by the “party” when we hung out with her 
Pictures of my trip are available on my Flickr stream, but some of the more notable ones are included here.
Reusable ceramic juice containers. Maybe the FDA would throw flags all over this, but otherwise it’s a great idea.
This place was… interesting for vegetarian pedestrians.
Wow. I feel like a tiny little bug compared to the great wall.
I can see why it is called the “Great” wall.
This has got to be one of my favorite pictures from this trip. I’m not sure exactly where these two guys (possibly monks?) are from, but this picture perfectly describes China to me. It embraces its rich cultural heritage while adopting technology at a harrowing pace. Well, in some places, anyway. Shanghai already seems like its totally commercialized.
Christine took us to one of the top 10 restaurants in the world as of 1993. It had excellent Baozi, I probably will never have better in my life.
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