track our trek

we arrived in beijing monday night after a lovely flight on cathay pacific. daryll got a customs agent w/ a bad attitude who hemmed and hawed for a few mintues and then demanded to see his “us id card” before allowing him through…i should think that the chinese visa office had sufficient time to scrutinize his identity while they held our passports for 2 days! thank goodness we’d arranged for an airport pick-up from our hostel…it was a huge relief to see the guy standing there w/ our names on a sign, and after the hour ride, we knew it would’ve taken us forever to struggle through buses and trains on our own! (especially since ni hao – hello – is the only chinese we know!) we took a walk through our neighborhood in the old part of beijing after checking in. the old city is made up of courtyard houses and small businesses, most of which still don’t have indoor bathrooms, so there are extremely stinky public toilets every 50 yards or so. add that to the trash thrown right in the street and the chorus of people spitting great hockers on the ground all over the place & i can see china will take some serious getting used to! (evidently all the hong kong signs that say “no spitting” and “spitting spreads germs” haven’t made it here yet.)