Thoughts of Baby Pigeon + Pictures

The Li Ning Store (check out the gymnast maniqinns!):

At the Great Wall:

Baby Pigeon and Duck are my favorite food items so far:
The 'Change Face' lady:


The entrance to Dave's Condo:

Random observations from the trip so far.

-People wear Olympic credentials around Beijing like Orientation kids wear their name badges around Ann Arbor. The only difference is a credential gets you in the fast track at many places, so rather than being made fun of you get nicer treatment.

-Chinese people seem very impatient compared to other people when it comes to waiting in line, driving, and the subway system. People practically have their noses on the subway door before it stops, push and shove regularly through crowds, and drivers will cross into oncoming traffic not only to pass cars, but to just drive alongside of them if they don't like driving behind them.

-Gymnastics is much more highly regarded/ respected here. To say you train/ play a certain sport, the Chinese phrase is more or less “I like to kick” for ball sports, “I like to hit,” for things like tennis, etc. For Gymnastics and martial arts you use the qualifier lian- 'intensive train.' So you say, “Wo xihuan lian ti cao” which translates to “I like to intensively train gymnastics.” Check out the top photo of the Li Ning store. All of the maniqinns (at least 6) are male gymnasts:

-Yesterday at the massage parlor I definitely butchered the Chinese language. When the lady came in the room, she immediately started talking very quickly in Chinese. My mind went blank. I had all sorts of phrases in my back pocket- “I don't understand” “I don't speak Chinese” “sorry,” etc. What came out of my mouth was “wo bu Zhongwen”… “I- no- Chinese language.” It was terrible. But the foot massage I received for an hour was not. It was unbelievable.