by ezs | Mar 6, 2007 | fun stuff, travel, Uncategorized
All of the food so far in Beijing has been excellent.
Last night I headed out with Laurence and we ran into the Dong Hua Men Night Market – which is renowned in Beijing.
There is a wide range of regional delicacies on sale – including lamb kebabs, pork and beef skewers and fruit.
Then there are the real specialties. In the interests of fairness – think how interesting pork scratchings and haggis are..
Starfish on a stick:
And roasted and fried scorpions, silkworm grubs and crickets:
Silkworm grubs. Crunchy on the outside, silky and velvety on the inside. That’s what my online gourmet reviewer said.
Scorpions. Crunchy with a bite. I made that one up.
Finally crickets. Fried and ready to go.
by ezs | Mar 6, 2007 | travel, Uncategorized
The Beijing skyline is filled with cranes.
by ezs | Mar 4, 2007 | travel, Uncategorized
I’ve been taking pictures of my stay in Beijing – I’ve added the pictures from Laurence too.
In addition I am creating some panoramic shots stitching together many pictures to make a panorama.
The panorama is great for trying to give some feeling of the scale of the sights.
Here is Mao’s Mausoleum from a couple of pictures:
And here are a couple of pictures from the Forbidden City – still these pictures don’t give the vastness of the scale:
[For the record – I am using Hugin to create the pictures – it is free and opensource.]
by ezs | Mar 3, 2007 | evilzenscientist, travel, Uncategorized
I am here in Beijing with Laurence – a colleague from the UK.
Yesterday we did the unthinkable – and booked ourselves on an organised tour to the Great Wall.
First stop – the Ming Tombs – about 50km North West of Beijing itself.
As you can see it was drizzling and foggy.
Next stop – after lunch and shopping – was the Great Wall at Ba Da Ling itself.
We drove for just a few minutes and from nowhere Tolkeinesque mountains started to loom up through the mist. Very impressive.
We arrived and the snow started falling. I wanted to get a geocache – so we took the less travelled and much much steeper southern part of the wall.
As you can see – almost whiteout conditions.
The climb up was just slippery; going down was part farce, part winter sport. I’ll post a video of that later!
Here is a view during the summer to show the difference:
Finally – back into a very very wet Beijing for the evening.
We decided to avoid the local delicacies on sale in the hutong – pictures of those soon – but it was a festival – so fireworks, firecrackers – and kids with sparklers.
by ezs | Mar 2, 2007 | travel, Uncategorized
I’m in Beijing with Laurence – a friend from work in the UK.
I spent the morning in the local Novell office – great views; mainly of construction:
We were taken out to lunch by the project team from Novell – to a local tofu restuarant. Tofu served in ways I’d never seen it before. Even as a dessert.
This evening we took a taxi to Tiananmen Square – and walked around. It truly is immense. We were accosted by dozens of people selling kites, Mao watches, books of Mao Quotations – and people just wanting to talk and speak English.
We then went wandering, found a restuarant, and using a combination of pointing and my month old mandarin skills – we ordered Peking Duck, rice and beer. I even managed to ask for a receipt and get the taxi driver back to our hotel.
by ezs | Mar 1, 2007 | evilzenscientist, travel, Uncategorized
I’ve just arrived in Beijing after a day of travelling. I left home before dawn for a 6am flight to San Francisco, then flew to Beijing.
The flight was uneventful; immigration stressfree.
First impressions of Beijing? It’s raining, foggy and construction is everywhere.
Tomorrow I will be in the local Novell office, more updates then.
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