Beijing pt2

So then the following day, I went shopping and bought myself an erhu, which is a type of Chinese violin with two strings. The box sits between the strings and the strings themselves rest on a wooden bridge on a snake skin covering to the sounding chamber. By Saturday, Liz was free again, so we hit an international art festival being held in Beijing at the time. Liz came home with a very attractive statue of a man pouring tea, and I picked up a couple of cups as a present for my housemate.

Much of the following week involved trips to temples, a mosque, a few restaurants and a lot of DVD shops. The temples were all spectacular, (though temple fatigue did begin to set in towards the end of the trip), and the photos are marvellous (I'll get them online eventually). The Temple of Heaven was particularly memorable, partially because I was escorted there by four very personable young women, but mostly becuase it was just beautiful - the buildings, the gardens, everything. The Lama Temple was something of a highlight too, with its 18m high sandalwood statue of Buddha.

At the end of the week, Liz and I travelled to Mutanyu (or something like that) where we visited the Great Wall. Aside from being 6000km long and built mostly halfway up a mountain, it was particularly impressive cause the stairs all made 'glug-glug' noises as people walked up them. Along with that evening's trip to a Tibetan restaurant, it was a great end to an excellent trip.