Beijing 2

Okay, basically this is going to be all of the other places I went.

This was part of a Chinese Traditional Opera that I saw at Laoshe Teahouse. All of the female roles were played by men, which made for some very interesting singing. At least once a day I would have a random person come up to me and ask where I was from. Then they'd ask to take me to a teahouse to have tea and practise their English. This of course was code for "Hey! I'm going to take you to a tea place that I work for. You'll end up spending about thirty bucks on a cup of "traditional tea" you sucker!" So I was always telling people that I was just about to meet up with some friends. The one I went to was nice and cheap since I went with this girl I met at my hostel from Rome who's Chinese was amazing (weird story: she'd been told by someone that someday China would be the biggest world power, so she's devoted a ridiculous amount of her time to learning Mandarin; is this brilliant or is she crazy? I'm not really sure).

"Snack Street" on Wangfujing. Selling the weirdest food on a stick you can find anywhere: scorpions, starfish, squid, baby lobsters, silkworm, mystery meats and other very random things.

The entrance to the Forbidden city. The most crowded place to be in all of Beijing I'm sure. It was big and old and under a massive amount of renovation to prepare for the 2008 Olympics.

Ming Tombs. This is the gate of life and death. We could only exit through it to enter the land of the living. Fun!
The Temple of Heaven. I got completely lost trying to find it and eventually had to hire a rickshaw to get there, which was interesting as well. This was on my last day in Beijing so I was already all "templed out", but it was still quite beautiful.