The last 2 days were more mellow. Yesterday I went to the Lama temple which was quite interesting. Visitors lit incense outside each temple in honor of the budda, and then went inside and preyed. There was one rather large budda. The interesting thing is that at work (mostly chinese working there) there did not seem to be any budists, everyone was born again christian or completely non-religous. I wonder why this "population sample" is so different than the large chinese population. Or maybe I am wrong about the religous demographics of the larger population....
In the afternoon I went for a foot massage, and by the time it was over I had a pedicure, and a cupping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupping) treatment (I did not like that) and was charged 3 times the original amount... After that I was dehydrated and slept for 14 hours. I am anti-cupping.
This morning I went to celebrate the jewish new year. Getting tehre was an adventure. Services were held in the athletic club behind the capital club which is the 50'th floor of perhaps the tallest building in beijing. Despite this, the cabbie had no idea where it was (I had chinese written instructions for him...). Lucky I knew the name of a 5 star hotel 1 block away, so I made it there. Services were quite nice, with about 40 ex-pats, I had lunch there and then went to the summer palace for a nice quiet stroll along the lake. Woops! Well it was a nice visit with my 100,000 closest friends (damn national holiday!). Boy that place was crowded. Yet, its easy to tell how lovely a spot that is. It was also a great people watching place. And the lake truely is beautiful.
For my last night in Beijing, I went in search of hot pot. Of course I order 3 times too much food. The base pot, came with enough for dinner (fish, spinitch, garlic, bamboo) without the 4 additional items I ordered...
A random story. The was a jewish couple on my great wall trip that had spent the previous sabbath at chabbad. I don't know how this came up but they mentioned that there was an american there with a long beard who described himself as a professional card shark. I said, was his name Matt Granovettor by any chance? Well it turns out it was... (ok non bridge players can ignore my small world story)
The bridge world championships start here next week as part of the mind world games (bridge, chess and go are having simultaneous world championships). As the only open even in bridge was mixed teams, I am skipping this and head on to Xi'an tomorrow. But good luck to all my friends!
In summary, Beijing is a great place, but it would be much better if I spoke the language. Other taking away points:
Massage good, Cupping bad
Great Wall Great, Forbidden City Forbodden
$2 Meals great, $20 meals great but not any better. I keep wondering why are there 2 sets of prices for identical goods in this town....
