Ne Hao Ma

The Great Wall is just that. Great. Absolutely goregous. However, we all nearly died on the Great Wall because it poured on us for about half of our trek, but trust me, it was a blessing. You see, the rain got rid of the annoying "friends" we had that tried to sell us tons of stuff! The people will follow you for a 5 hour hike just to sell a tshirt! The person who pegged Deeps and me was an old lady (90 years old, 80 pounds) who wanted to pull me up a steep part. Nice, but no thanks! I can just see the headlines "US citizen kills innocent old lady on Great Wall." Aside from tshirts, you can also buy beer. They have to cater to the Aussie and British population somehow!
On a more serious note, we are loving China. The GW was absolutely breath taking and amazing. We hiked through 30 towers - some from the Ming dymasty and some from another dynasty. Some parts are finished, and some are not - I would have never been able to run the unfinished parts like the soldiers had to!
I think it's the only man made structure you can see from the moon and I believe it because we didn't get too far in 5 hours of diifficult hiking. It's simply massive.
Beijing is interesting...there are a lot of large skyscrapers with the traditional Chinese roofs, the people are surprisingly nice, and the language barrier is enormous. Traffic rivals the Bay Area. We went to the Temple of Heaven and were amazed at how well perserved some of the extremely old buildings are, and very bright - much red, yellow, green, blue and gold. We've also had the traditional Peking Duck dinner, not a fan, and have gone grocery shopping to find that the boxes of Cheerios here have each serving in individual bags. Love it!
The subway here is clean, people not pushy, and everything is written in English as well. They are prepping heavily for the Olympics which come here in 2008 - TONS of building, renovation, etc. Beijing is also very clean...people sweep the streets, subway, etc. constantly. Pollution is awful, awful, awful (LA times 10) BUT today we have a blue sky day (VERY VERY unusual). We'll enjoy our tour of the Forbidden City with the sun on our backs :)
Watched an acrobatics show yesterday eve. The kids were doing the most amazing things - three tiered human pyramids with 3 back tucks off of the top, running up poles and doing flips off, etc. Quite amazing!
All is well...probably won't hear from me for a few days as we are taking a train tomorrow to some village or something. Take care!!!!