the long winded china stories
(part four)

we get our tickets to the forbidden city and go in. this by far was
my favourite thing i saw in beijing. the whole place is sort of maze
like and ancient. you can look into various buildings and see how
the emperors lived. see their thrones, beds, and other things. to
see it proper you really need to spend more than the few hours we did
there. i wanted to get a book on it. but the books i saw were too
expensive and just not very good.


























after the forbidden city we wanted to get something to eat. we were
all getting rather tired and cranky at this point as well. j'avex and
mara wanted to go to this vegetarian restaurant they had read about.
so we tried to get a cab. but most said no they wouldn't take us there.
one said he would but when we got in he just sat there. and then mumbled
something that none of us could understand. and it wasn't just a beijing
accent we couldn't understand. so we got out of the cab. we decide
just to walk and see what we find. in the end we end up back at pizza hut again.

the next day we go back to tian jin. we couldn't get me a ticket in
tian jin until the next evening. we tried to get me a soft car sleeper
but they were very unfriendly at the ticket booth and i ended up in a
hard sleeper. the train was very hot. and at one point some people
tried to kick me out of my middle sleeper. but the conductor lady showed
them where their seats really were. she looked at them like they were
idiots.

after another long train ride i find myself in xuzhou. along the trip
i would get paranoid that i was going to miss my stop so i kept getting
up to see where we were. once i exited the station a bunch of taxi drivers
descended upon me. i told them i needed a phone. so they took me to a
phone and i called tiger to let him know i was back. i had arranged
for him to meet me but there had been some miscommunication and he wasn't
there. by now all the cab drivers were surrounding me. it was obvious the
story had spread about the stupid rich foreigner who didn't know how much cabs
cost. so they all wanted to charge me too much. i named my price and
finally a nice cab driver behind me said ok and i left the others
standing around with their mouths hanging open.



part one
part two
part three
part five
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