Beijing Nights

What a day I just had! After a traditional citron-style meal of Mongolian beef, citron spicey shrip and roasted lamb, Zhongcheng and I visited the Olympic park. I've seen the Bird's Nest in photos before, but they do nothing to convey the architechtural marvel that this building is. Hopefully, I can post some of the pictures I took tomorrow. We also got to see the Water Cube and Beijing's famous 7-star hotel, Pangu. What does 7 stars get you? An underwhelming-sized lobby that smells like baby angels.

The highlight of my day was visiting the Beijing Capital museum that opened just in time for last year's Olympic toursits. Like the Bird's Nest, the architechture of this modern building constructed of steel, wood and glass did not disappoint. My favorite part was the artifacts laid out in chronological order juxtaposed with a timeline of China's and Beijing's historically-significant events. Some of these artifacts were over 1,000 years old!

Following our tour of the museum, we boarded the subway for a cross-town trek to a well-known Beijing seafood restaurant. We met up with one of Zhongcheng's partners and a client of his is from a nearby Chinese province but also making her first visit to Beijing. You can't believe the display of exotic sea life that was right next to our table! It was a Tillman Fertita Chinese aquarina dream. Sea urchins, salamanders, sharks, giant lobsters, flounder, and turtles. Lucky for me, they kept the meal pretty tame. We had steamed sole fish, red crab, eel, and beef, all of which was cooked. I sure feel like the spoiled American with how well I'm eating right now.

Signing off for a good night's rest after lots of walking today. Tomorrow morning Zhongcheng will pick me up to visit his office and get some work done and then I will tour a local site with one of his partners.