Giant Panda

The centre of Beijing is closed for "Olympic Rehearsals" at the moment so we are going to the outlying sites first. Today we went to Beijing Zoo. Barry was very excited indeed to see a Giant Panda - there were two panda houses one built for the Asian games a few years ago and a new one built for this year's Olympics with about 8 pandas in. I can quite see how they are not surviving in the wild - all they do is lie there and eat bamboo(!) but I must admit they are very cute.

It was not the only attraction at the panda house, as the only Western-looking person I was quite a celebrity to the children present. One stared so much that his father asked if he could take some photos of me and him(!)

The pandas were housed quite palatially but the same could not be said of the rest - felt really sorry for the White Tiger, normal Tiger and Lion who were each in a 8x8 cell, poor dabs. There was also a noctural animal bit in which one exhibit was the "European hedgehog" but he must have been hiding!

It has been a bit of a strange day on the linguistic front. I learnt a new Mandarin word - I think it is "hen-hao" which mean "great" - think of "hen house" and leave the s out. But Cherry brought another of her many relatives along today - Lily, who just happens to be studying in France. We spent most of the day chatting in French since it is a lot stronger than her English, much to the bewilderment of Cherry's nephews who are struggling with English and didn't realise we'd departed from it!

At lunchtime we had a rather nice mango iced drink at a modern Beijing cafe - expensive by Chinese standards at 28 yuan, but this is only just over 2 pounds. In the afternoon we went for a look around a clothes market which had an incredible number of shops. Cherry went wild in the aisles and stocked up on T-shirts for 80p.

This evening we went to sing karaoke. The karaoke place is very like Japanese set-ups where you get your own room for 6 people and just get on with it. 3 hours of karaoke with an all-you-can-eat buffet and thousands of songs to chose from cost under 3 pounds. Bargain. Goodness knows how low cost things are in the country if this is the standard in Beijing.

During my conversations with Lily I learnt that Beijing has practically changed beyond all recognition for the Olympics - it's much cleaner and there's been loads of English put up whereas before there was hardly a word. At least 3 underground lines have been dug out and the existing ones improved. Taxis have been obliged by a by-law to keep their air-conditioning on for the duration of the Olympics. And the number of new buildings/skyscrapers is incredible. They've certainly pulled out all the stops for the Olympics.

I learnt a new fact today - there has been a change in China's one-child policy. Apparently if both you and your husband are only children, you can have two children instead of one. Cherry is very excited by this development and resolved to find an only child to marry!!

Off to the Summer Palace tomorrow. Time for bed now :)