It’s been a while since my last posting.  A while. Seems when you are traveling you want to share more about the sights and sounds of the moment.  I suppose because they feel so new.  Especially when you are in a country so different from your own. Excitement takes over. There really is a kind of childlikeness that you want to share with your community in a sort of “look mom” fashion.

When you’re at home.  Less of the new and more of the familiar. Which is a relief sometimes.  Or, not.

I went to Beijing, China last week.  A long way to go for just a week, however, the opportunity presented itself quickly, and I decided rather quickly.  In all my journey’s I have never seen Beijing.  If you study Chinese language like I did, there was naturally the dream of going to Beijing.  I tried to go there many years ago, but the timing was off. Guess the timing was on this time.  And so, crazily, one day, like a dream, I awoke in one of the largest cities in the world, clocking in at 22 million people.

I can say, honestly, that I have never seen a bigger city in my life. How many Salt Lake Cities would fit inside Beijing?  That would be something to measure.  The city went on and on and on.  The traffic went on and on and on.  I traveled there with a very old friend, Mark Griffith who was scouting schools and housing for his family who planned to move to Beijing in February.  I helped him scout.  And in the meantime, assimilated the city.

While there Mark and I spent a harrowing day in the police station for taking video footage of a Military Complex (it looked like condominiums I swear).  My Chinese got ten times better that day after having to explain myself a few times, pulling out all the humble terms I could muster, trying to explain exactly why we were taking pictures (to bring then back to his wife to see).  Four hours later, Mark and I were let go, after it seemed like the whole Military Industrial Complex, came to the police station to scrutinize us.

I took a full day to walk the Forbidden City.  Beautiful.  Old. It was something to veer of to the side alleys to discover the less looked at parts.  There were some interesting displays about Concubine life in the Forbidden City.  The Cypress trees back in the garden were beautiful.

I ate luscious food.  Three stints at Din Tai Feng, and their excellent dumplings.  Had, funny enough, crazy good Peking Duck.  The plum sauce, the duck, the garlic and side dishes, yum.  Mark and I ordered a very expensive mushroom that night that one could dip into a tomato beer.  Wasn’t as good as we hoped.  Very expensive mushroom.  One night we went to eat Hwo Gwo (hot pot), and another night lamb skewers and spicy tofu and green beans near some friends Hu Tong.  I did eat a couple red bean paste dumplings. I seem to have developed a taste for these that many other foreigners just don’t share.

I spoke Chinese non stop for an entire week and that was really good. Admittedly, I had lost alot of my vocabulary, but it came back slowly but surely.

Back home now.   Jet lag lingers a little.  There is always the strange thought of, was I really there?  When it comes and goes so fast, digestion comes later.  The trip was a metaphorical eating.  What sticks around and what sloughs away will remain to be seen.

If you go to Beijing just a friendly reminder from the bathroom police “Please don’t throw toilet paper down the toilet, it gets stuck in the pipes and it is a harrowing experience trying to retrieve it.”.  That was a real quote on a real bathroom stall. Harrowing. Harrowing.