Beijing Dock (Peking Duck)

In a few words, Beijing is big, shiny, and new. Add the word "very" before each of those descriptors, and you're a little closer to capturing the essence of this immense megalopolis and its palpable energy. I'm sure you're sick of hearing things like "China is exploding right now," and "you can see the future in Beijing," but the fact is, it's true. I live in New York, and Beijing is just plain impressive. The buildings are big, modern, and all brand new.

The airport here is the biggest thing I've ever seen. It goes on for miles, and half of it isn't even open yet. The roads, subway, and other infrastructure are all brand new. And the best part is that everything costs about a buck fiddy. Walking into a mall here is unlike anything I've ever seen anywhere...bright and shiny, it *looks* like capitalism. The funny part is, however, that you walk into a big electronics store, and it's still just 5 stories of lots of individual vendors hawking their wares. No price tags, it's still just good old-fashioned bargaining here.

We even had an encounter with our first con-artist of the trip today. He claimed to be an "English language volunteer" for the store, but he took us through the first four stories of the electronics department store-bazaar to an eery fifth floor twilight zone, where he sat us down at a little table while the guy who ostensibly worked there went to retrieve batteries for our cameras. At that point, our little friend mentioned that he had a buddy who was really into foreign currency and would be really interested in exchanging "just a little bit" with us. Jessica promptly cut off the conversation and dragged my naive self out of there before I could inquire further as to his friend's particular interests. Thank God at least one of us is a born cynic.

Faux pas of the day: asking for rice with Jessica's Kung Pau chicken. Whoops.

Lost in translation:
3 socks
1 pair of pants
1 pair of hiking boots
1 pair of sunglasses
2 camera batteries

After replacing our camera batteries, we were off up the street to try to get into the Games. We had chosen the table tennis venue (events are spread out all over the city), and hoped for the best. When we got there, we found that the ticket office was closed, unsurprisingly, so we asked a volunteer Olympics worker where we might find tickets, hoping she might have some insight. She suggested buying tickets "from one of the men on the bridge," which turned out to mean scalpers standing on a pedestrian bridge directly behind us. Apparently scalping is an expected practice.

In short, a ticket with face value of $20 was going for $400, so we passed on table tennis.