Beijing. Crouching Tiger, Flying Chinamen.

Ah, the Northern Capital. Had to get up 5:30 this morning to catch our 8:30 flight. It's my third day here and I'm exhausted. The morning has barely trickled out of the sky and yet the city is awake and bustling. Seniors are gathered in parks and on the sidewalks. In rank and file formation they're practicing Tai Chi, Chinese fan dancing or whatever. The roads are already packed with taxis, buses and fools who insist on travelling perpendicular to traffic flow, impeding the rest of us.

It's funny here. You look around and the city is pretty developed. It has malls, hotels, an airport, all the comforts of western life. They've even got loud-mouthed bastards like they have back home. However, there exist small reminders that China is still, in fact, a communist country. No one dresses in navy blue uniforms or calls you "comrade" anymore, but you'll see signs all over the place with names like The People's Bank and The Labourer's Insurance Company, The Worker's Taxi Services and so on. And you'd best watch your step around here, cuz one small slip up and you'll find your democratic ass in the People's jail.

Beijing isn't quite as I pictured it. It's a lot like Xi'an, but has a larger urban center and the stores don't close at 9pm (like they do in Xi'an). It's too bad that I'm stuck with the tour and its 6am wake up calls, otherwise, I'd love to check out the nightlife here. I was considering sacrifcing a night of sleep to brave the Beijing night and try my hand at mixing with the locals, but I dare not in a place like China, without a buddy or at least a Lonely Planet.

Bikes are everywhere! More than in Tokyo - braver too. I've seen 10 bikers so far ride perpendicular into moving traffic, only to emerge safely on the other side of the street. People here are nuts.

It's not as hot as Xi'an either. The guide says we're lucky, it rained last night so it's only about 25 degrees today*. Also fewer people squatting in the streets. According to the guide, the best city is still Shanghai, but Beijing is making a run for that title.

*on a side note, here's a funny tidbit regarding the temperature here. Legally, employers are obligated to give people the day off if it hits or exceeds 40 degrees centigrate. However, the only official temperatures are those provided by the government-run marquees all around. So even on days where it's 45 degrees here, it never officially gets over 39.5.

This is Coal Hill. It sounds more impressive in Chinese, but apparently, they filmed parts of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon here. If you're Chinese, you probably hated that movie.

This place used to be some Imperial stomping ground, from what I could gather from the guide's spiel. Lots of man made mountains (which are just weird stacks of rocks like this one) and an artificial pond, shown below.

These royals really knew how to live. This was just their garden.

There's an ancient tree somewhere around here that the last Emperor of the Ming Dynasty hung himself on, due to peasant uprisings.

I wanted to take a shot of it, but the guide later told me that the real tree died forever ago and the tree they have now is merely a stand in. What a gyp.

These little gondola things are cool. Scholars used to just sit here and contemplate life.

Check it out, each of those paintings were done by hand in incredible detail.

Around Coal Hill are old communities that are all walled up. Life back then was decidedly more savage than it is now.

It's hard to believe that people in this day still live like this, but they do. It looks shabby from the outside, but it's modernly (relatively) furnished inside with TVs and running water and so on.

Top of the hill and a beautiful view of the Forbidden City. (click the photo for a short clip).

There was a souvenir stand at the top and I had my name engraved on one of those jade name stamps (called hanko in Japanese, not sure what it's called in Chinese). Mr. Wong helped me bargain the guy down. If there's one thing I love about HK people, it's their ability to talk anyone down from any perch on sheer aggression alone.

On the way back to the foot of the hill, we stopped to watch an old man play the violin. He looked over at me, stopped playing and asked, "You. Where from?" The entire crowd turned to look at me.

I answered in Cantonese at first, but he just kept looking at me, so I tried it in shaky Mandarin. "Wo she ja na da ren." A smile spread across his face and he yelled back, "CANADA!" Everyone laughed and he went back to playing. Mr. Wong sang along loudly to half a song before his wife dragged him away. (click for clip of the old man playing).

Night time now. What's a trip to Beijing without checking out some acrobatics? Man, those French jokers that make up Cirque de Soleil have nothing on Chinese acrobats.

These people can bend, flip and jump in ways hat you'd think only a very limber Spiderman could. A lot of these acrobats were really young, looked like they were only in their teens. The must have been training since they were kids!

Shit, when I was a kid, we'd spend our free time giving each other Indian burns in the school yard, asking, "Hey, does this hurt?"

This was one of the most incredible tricks I saw all night. Click the photo to see for yourself.