beijing, china

i mean. Apparently we're going to station in the 'jing for a little bit. We have good reasons for this, part of it is waiting on a permit to get through Tibet. Well, one permit gets you to Lhasa, Tibet, and the other allows you to leave the city. Apparently it's a bit of a prickly situation, that you should look up more about. That's nice of them to offer a permit so that you can leave their city. And you thought Branson Missouri could suck you in---

But, it's given a good chance to see the sites around Beijing which there's a few to offer. The biggest being the Great Wall. I'm not confident in my history, but I'm pretty sure the Chinese built it around 600 to keep the Mongolians from getting to their sweet alpine slide on the China side of the wall. Video should be below. Yes, I got to hook up with the Combs' brothers (Ping Chi Ling and La Dudsa, though I ended up taking over the aka La dudsa for reasons you will discover if you find out the interpretation). We also visited Summer Palace which is basically the old Emperor's summer gig and puts anyone on MTV's 'Cribs' to shame, went to a water park, and they even properly lived up Beijing by getting bamboozled by a crafty taxi driver who took advantage of his foreign passengers.

We made a great contact here in the 'jing, Bo Yee, through Emma's endless network of Asia who is uber helpful and entertaining to stay with. That would be her in what an American would think is pajamas, but is actually kung fu attire as she's being filmed doing her kung fu for a reality show about a day in the life of someone who lives in the 'jing. I think I'm gathering that if you're a "half" (half Chinese and half American) you are a valuable commodity for the entertainment industry. I'm able to learn even more about the culture since Bo Yee is just about as familiar with China as she is America.

So, all's well, and my next goal is to expose some of the entertaining idiosyncracies of Chinese culture.