Our first foray into Beijing becomes a forced march to the forbidden city. Our hotel is located some distance from the central core. The plan was to follow a canal that courses nearby the hotel and traces a meandering course to the palace and tienamem square. Unfortunatley after some delightful few kilometers on foot we find that the canal goes decidedly off script. The riverside pathway abruptly ends and we have to bushwhack our way through narrow sidestreets, markets, deadend roads, railway yards and random footpaths heading in the general direction of downtown. After 14 km of treaking we give up and board the metro and head the short few stops to Tienamen square. Beijing is hugh and sprawling with an infrastructure buiilt on the old Soviet era grand designs. So distances are much longer than they seem. Every street has as scattering of Moaist era soviet architecture rapidly being overshadowed by the new and shiney economic miracles. Traffic chokes every mile of newly constructed road and the bicyles that Beijing was famous for have largely been replaced by cars, cars, and more cars. The middle class dream has arrived in Beijing in a big way and it is everywhere to be seen.
we get notification from our shipper that the cars have finally all arrived in Beijing and are being kept in a bonded warehouse pending customs and inmmigration scutineering.
By the time got to the "forbidden city" our feet where clapped out and we decided that the tour through this ancient and immense compound was best left for another day. Lee and I hail a cab and convince the cabby (100 yuan does the trick) to battle ruch hour traffic back to our hotel.
