Tiananmen and Family Li

Today we set out for Tiananmen square on foot and quickly realized that the smog-soaked city was not only poisoning the lungs of its dwellers and affording a landscaped blanket of non-photogenic haze, but it also doubled as an aggessive and effective oven. We were beading with sweat and had to take a seat in the middle of the square. It wasn't really that impressive... big i guess, but aside from the obolisk in the center, uninteresting. So we plowed on through to the forbidden city and imperial palace. There we were equally scortched by the heat and equally bored. Its probabally our fault for not loving it as much as others ovbously do by the way they talk about it, but we were just not into it. 80% of the buildings were covered in bamboo scaffolding because they were cleaning and renovating the place for the 2008 olympics, so it gave it a completely different feel. We walked through passing many gateways and actually really had a good time in the imperial garden.

Then we took a good sit and tried to plan our next move. We decided we we wouldn't do anything big so dinner sounded as good as anything. We headed for Family Li restaraunt via motorized ricshaw. I never thought kate would go for it, but she has been becoming more and more adventurous. We didn't exactly have an address, or really anything other than the name and a phone number, and the driver didn't speak a lick of english... so the result was us winding around the hutongs N.E. of the forbidden city for 30min lookign for the damn place.

When we finally made it we found ourselves in a family's courtyard... apperently the Li family. We were seated and had an amazing 35 course meal... well 33, but I like to count the different drinks as courses too. Afterwards we left, not knowing were we were and proceeded to get lost again, this time on our own accord. After wandering around a lake (i don't know how we got there) we stumbled upon an exercise arena which was a cross between a playground and physical therepy rehabilitation. Later we found ourselves in the middle of a group aerobics class with a floutist laying the beat down. Keep in mind this was 11:00 PM.