(Guest Written by Gerrie - Lisa let me use her blog to update you on our visit to China to see her.)How can you not love a country
where young men tell you,
“You are beautiful”
and “You are so young;
your skin is so moist”!
We had an amazing time in the land of Ancient Temples, Pandas and the 2008 Summer Olympics.
There were literally millions of Chinese citizens around us – yet it was an orchestrated chaos. It is very hard to describe the traffic – hundreds of taxis, cars, bicycles, motorized bikes and pedestrians moving in a weave that looks like a tapestry from above. Amazingly, there are very few accidents – though the taxi I was in one evening did side-swipe a bus. To the driver’s credit he only had one eye and was trying to keep up with our other taxi (when there are 5 Americans in your party there is no way to share one taxi!) since he did not really know where we were going. It only cost us 7 extra Yuan to switch taxi's ( 7 Yuan = one dollar); talk about an inexpensive cultural experience!
Where else in the world can you go where one day there is no road and the next day there is; where one day a skyscraper is only a foundation and the next it is already reaching 10 stories high! Not only are they working 24 hour days and 7 day weeks, but the construction workers
climb up the sides of the buildings on bamboo scaffolding- sometimes the workers are held secure by ropes…sometimes not! Parts of Beijing look like New York with street signs written with Chinese characters!
The architecture is truly the most creative I have ever seen in one city.
The parks are filled with 
glorious blooms while most of them are hand watered by little old women carrying water buckets.
The people of Beijing and Tianjin (the city where Lisa lives) are very busy getting ready to welcome the world for the Summer Olympics. 
The stadiums shine in the sun and the smog – something they are also working on. They have plans to seed clouds to make it rain, close factories for a month before the games and will even limit the cars that drive the streets to alternating odd/even license plates. After visiting, I have no doubt that they will succeed with their plans.
One of our favorite activities was eating! What amazing food and what bargains! At some of the restaurants the locals favor, we had 7 course meals for less than $2 apiece! We also sampled Vietnamese, Uygur (from the Xinjiang province) , Korean and Italian (Chinese style) food.
We did have lunch one day at one of the many McDonalds – they had a few specialties: corn as a side, Wasabi sauce to dip your chicken McNuggets in, coconut cream ‘pies’ and if you want, they will deliver a meal with one of their delivery bikes.
The stadiums shine in the sun and the smog – something they are also working on. They have plans to seed clouds to make it rain, close factories for a month before the games and will even limit the cars that drive the streets to alternating odd/even license plates. After visiting, I have no doubt that they will succeed with their plans.One of our favorite activities was eating! What amazing food and what bargains! At some of the restaurants the locals favor, we had 7 course meals for less than $2 apiece! We also sampled Vietnamese, Uygur (from the Xinjiang province) , Korean and Italian (Chinese style) food.
We did have lunch one day at one of the many McDonalds – they had a few specialties: corn as a side, Wasabi sauce to dip your chicken McNuggets in, coconut cream ‘pies’ and if you want, they will deliver a meal with one of their delivery bikes. 
Practice up with your chopsticks before you go – the only time we saw forks were in our hotel dining room and they rolled their eyes a bit when I asked for one. I am pretty proficient with chopsticks, but eating a fried egg for breakfast was a bit tricky!We visited many of the ‘touristy’ sites in Beijing: Tiananmen Square and Mao’s ‘tomb’, The Forbidden city, The Temple of Heaven, The Summer Palace, The Hutong District and the Great Wall. They were all impressive; seeing the buildings and history of 800 plus years ago next to modern sky rises was another reminder of the contrasts of China. But my favorite place and time was in Tianjin. We were able to attend Lisa’s Chinese class, be extra hands with her English class for children, attend an English Corner, and even be the ‘stars’ of “AN AMERICAN TALK SHOW” at a University. The young Chinese we met love to practice their English, so we had many conversations about everything under the sun!
I fell in love with the land and people of China and understand why Lisa wants to go back for another year. Her Chinese is amazing after 9 months – thank goodness, because I learned 4 phrases and a few numbers while I was there. (One evening George and I were on our way back to our hotel without Lisa and our taxi driver had to stop twice to ask directions. I chuckled to myself – like Charlie of the MTA fame, it would have been “George and Gerrie on the streets of Tianjin – oh no, will they ever return?!*” My “hello/nihao” and “thank you/ “xiexie” were not going to get us anywhere!)
There is so much more to tell…and I have lots of photos to share….....
but I have taken up enough of Lisa’s blog page, so "Zaijian" for now!
* Hope the Kingston Trio doesn't mind my "borrowing" their lyrics
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