Photos added to old posts

To complement the lovely but limited iPhone photos, I've added some photos from our real cameras to the old posts. Shangri-la was particularly photogenic.
Krissy

Xiaohei, the puppy at our hutong hotel

Will we ever get home?

Or should we join the ranks of the airport disclaimed?

A cloudy eclipse

Dont worry, it was still pretty cool. It was overcast the whole time,
but the clouds got thin enough some of the time for us to get a good
view of the shrinking crescent sun through our special glasses. As it
aproached totality, it got dark faster and faster, and we caught a
glimpse or two of a very thin crescent. We were near a couple
enthusiastic tour groups, and someone shouted "5 minutes to totality,"
then "one minute," then "30 seconds" and then it got as dark as the
middle of the night. Street lights even came on. Because of the
clouds, we didn't see the "diamond ring" effect or the corona, but
someone yelled "diamond ring" at about the time we would have seen it
(no one laughed). After almost 6 minutes of total darkness, it
gradually became daytime again, and started pouring rain about 15
minutes later. It was kind of exciting, but wouldn't have been worth
the big trip had we not stretched it into a three week awesome
vacation. Now we're even more curious to see a REAL eclipse,
unobscured by clouds... Someday!

Jansen & our lovely guide Amy

Krissy provided the smile cue by counting to 3 incorrectly in
Chinese... she CLAIMS she messed up on purpose :)

Catching up

Back in the city after our wall trek, we walked through Temple of
Heaven Park and saw lots of locals gathered to sing, play instruments,
play card games or mahjong, or just socialize in the shade. That
evening we went to an acrobatics show. Really talented kids! (their
ages seemed to range from about 8 to 15)

The next morning we went to the Forbidden City.
J: "I guess there's not that much to say about the Forbidden City." K:
"Aside from how much we hated it?" J: "Yeah we were pretty
miserable." It was a humid 95 degree morning with thousands and
thousands and thousands of people crammed inside the symbolic center
of the Chinese universe. We found there was not all THAT much to see,
and most sightseeing consisted of squeezing into a courtyard, finding
the extremely smudged pane of plastic through which you could sort of
peer into some room or other, whilst being jostled and jabbed in the
ribs by chinese tourists who often insist on keeping their umbrellas up even
in dense crowds (to shield the sun, not the rain, mind you.) Were
krissy not wearing a brimmed hat and glasses, she would likely have
been blinded by an umbrella spoke - J was safe because of his height.

Dinner was lovely Peking Duck at Da Dong, a restaurant famous for this
dish (which they just call kao ya, roast duck). They carve the ducks
on a tray near your table, and alert you when your particular bird is
being sliced into bite size morsels. The duck is eaten burrito-style
in a pancake with condiments like plum sauce, cucumber, radish, garlic
paste, shallots, and some mystery things.

Yesterday morning we went to the White Cloud Temple, a Taoist complex
of shrines and temples. It was quite peaceful with just a few
visitors. Taoist monks were going about their business in their simple
monk outfits and cool topknot hairdos.

Next we went to the Summer Palace, built on a lake to the northwest of
the city center where it's cooler. This seemed like an excellent idea
on such a hot day. Unfortunately, the temperature was not noticably
different and there were throngs of tourists buying their chubby
children annoying bird whistles. Combined with the cicadas, the noise
was verging on maddening at times... but fortunately there were 1-yuan
popsicles to be bought, providing a nice distraction from the noise
and the heat. Everyone seemed to have the green kind, so we bought one
even though we were suspicious of the beans pictured on the wrapper.

Just to be safe, we also got one in a blue wrapper which turned out to
be coconut. The green actually was quite tasty once we got used to it
(definitely bean based). Many more popsicles were consumed in the
attempt to make the visit more bearable. Luckily we made it to the top
of the temple on the hill without passing out. The view really was
nice, the buildings were pretty, and there was even a bit of a breeze.
J sketched some wall decoration patterns.

For dinner we had Taiwanese food - couldn't really tell you any
characteristics to distinguish it from Chinese food, at least from
this one experience, but the drinks were worth mentioning: mango purée
and coconut milk with gooey tapioca balls, and an iced green tea latte.

A final goodbye this morning to the extraordinarily nice hotel ladies
(never caught their names), the talking bird, and the puppy (named
Xiao-hei), a quick breakfast at a place down the hutong, and we were
off to the airport.

That brings us to the present - here we are in Shanghai! Eclipse
tomorrow morning!

The Wall

After dinner at the guesthouse in Jinshanling, one of the enthusiastic
young girls working in the summer-camp-like dining hall helped us get
some food for the next morning, since we were getting up so early. She
gave us some cute little "sun cakes" (pancakes) and some kind of fried
bread.

According to an iPhone app, the sunrise here should be at around 5:00,
but when we ran this by someone at the front desk (aided by a nice
sketch of a sunrise by K) she said no, 4:30! It ended up being hard to
tell who was right because of the mountainous terrain, but boy are we
glad we went as early as we did. We set our alarm for 3:30, and hit
the road to the wall by 4:30 with the sky a gradually lightening navy
blue, and the moon and a couple planets still bright.

When we got up to the wall, here's what we saw...

The 5 hour hike was gorgeous and unforgettable. I'm glad we started at 4:30 because it sure was hot by 10.