Day 4 the river and shops near the Hutong

At the end of the residential portion of the Hutong, it opened up into a very peaceful river with trendy shops and restaurants lining the riverbank. It was a surprise to see new and upscale businesses in such a traditional, historical setting.

At the end of the walk, we found a couple of musicians playing traditional instruments on the street. Apparently, there were just doing it for their own entertainment, and were NOT asking for money. The old man also had a huge mop-like brush and a bucket of water. When he finished playing, he started writing in water on the sidewalk. He saw us and wrote "beautiful America". Eventually he gave Paul the brush to write, which was fun. There were also people sitting around playing Mahjong on the street.

For dinner that night, we had Peking Duck. This consisted of duck sliced into small, thin pieces - about 2"x2" - at the table, then placed in thin crepe-like pancakes and topped with slivers of green onion and sauce before being folded burrito style to eat. The Chinese way was to not touch any of the food, but to do it all with chopsticks --HA! We also had a variety of other dishes -- too many to count. Dessert seems almost non-existent, except for sliced fruit to end the meal.

When we returned to the hotel, several of us decided to go for a walk in the area. Our two single guys had each gone for a walk earlier and thought there was a "strip club" down the street--so we walked that direction. It was interesting to see real life at night, although it was very poor-looking and junky. Most people seemed to live behind their tiny storefronts. It looked like the guys were right about the strip club and some men came out and tried to get us to come in. We had a lot of laughs about it--but a few days later found out that it was actually a Karaoke night spot. We also stopped at a vet's shop and talked to them about a little dog some of us had seen earlier. It was sort of a combination vet office/pet store. Actually, we saw very few pets around Beijing, and almost no birds.

After we got back to the hotel, we wanted to see the aquarium Ken and Mary had seen earlier. It turned out to be the fish tank for the hotel restaurant, with fish for sale for dinner. Not my kind of aquarium! We also had an opportunity to check our e-mail on John's computer. He brought his laptop and finally, after three days, was able to connect to the Internet. It's hard to believe we could be so far from home and still be in touch with such routine things!