China Part 2: Beijing Day 1

A 12-hour flight is hard. The worst part is actually the sitting -- my butt hurt about an hour and a half into the flight, and all the rest of the way. I did have time to read over 200 pages of my friend Chuck's novel, so that was good, but on the way back I took the pillow they gave me and sat on it all the way back to LA. That helped a little.

We landed in Beijing in the afternoon, but 1:00 AM West Coast time. We stayed up until 10:00 China time, but jet lag does not go away in a day, and I woke up at 3:00 AM.

So I was tired when we started the day, and the first thing we did was took a fairly long bus drive to the jade shop. It turns out that shopping is something you do on a tour, more than you would ever choose to on your own. Jackie got some nice jade earrings, but I was feeling ill. Next stop was lunch, and I skipped it. Then on to the Great Wall, our first big attraction, with me feeling terrible. But I got out of the bus and walked with Jackie up some steps and walked around, although I was in no shape to go up the hill. All my pictures that day are blurred at the top and bottom for some reason, but I have a picture to prove we were at the Great Wall. It really is pretty amazing -- wide and tall and running up the hills and across the hilltops in both directions, with lots of little towers. Some of our group walked all the way to the top of that hill behind us, but several stayed close to the bottom.

We had an hour and a half at the wall, and as I walked around, I felt much better. I realized that I had been feeling motion sickness. I used to get carsick as a kid, but as an adult I mostly only get seasick, and that only a couple of times although I have been on many boats. But at least two other times -- once in St. Lucia and once in Canada -- I got sick on buses when I was really exhausted. Fortunately, getting out of the bus for a good long time was the cure, and I felt fine the rest of the trip.

Next stop was the Beijing Zoo, and guess what we saw there? This guy in the picture was hiding in the back, and I silently willed him to come out and give us some good pictures. And he did, wandered all around and then stretched out and posed for us. I love it when ridiculous stuff works. There were some little baby pandas too, plenty of pandas.

Dinner was Peking Duck. It was good, but they wrap it up like Mu She Pork and put plum sauce on it and pieces of cucumber, and then you can't taste the duck as much. There was lots of duck, so I just ate some of it plain. During that meal they introduced us to Chinese firewater, which I have since learned is the most-consumed alcoholic beverage in the world. It's about 50 percent alcohol, served in very small glasses. For those who have tried Aguardiente, that's the closest thing I know of. One of our group, Cedric, took a great liking to firewater, and that became an ongoing joke for the whole trip.

By then of course we had met all of the 11 other people in our tour group and spent the day with our tour guide, Nina (actually Li Nan, but our guides took English names for us.) It was a nice group, and we liked Nina, so things were off to a good start.