Beijing, here I come.....

Came back from Beijing, China a week ago. After washing 3 lots of dirty clothes accumulated over the seven day tour and cleaning up hubby's apartment, I can now rest a bit and reminscience over our holidays.

The tour is quite tiring and I fell sick with a hacking cough.Tthe air over the city is both polluted and hazy so much so that one can hardly see the blue sky. Traffic congested in the morning rush hour and evening. But, the trip cannot be all complaints without some of the highlights. There are 51 of us in the group, mostly overseas chinese from the United States, Taiwan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. There were also 3 "ang moh" in the group. A big group no doubt, but very jolly holiday makers. It was a 44th high school reunion for the group of ladies from Taiwan and they really enjoyed themselves.

We visited several tourist attractions such as the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Great Wall, the iconic Bird's nest stadium, Water Cube, Ming Tombs and a few of summer palaces and resorts. Not to mention the shopping at the silk factory, tea houses, jade and pearl stores. We also did some good bargaining at three other shopping malls and hubby seems very satisfied with the imitation Polo and Ralph Lauren shirts and jackets that he bought.

I had my first paranormal encounter at the Chengde Imperial Summer resort. This resort was used by  the chinese emperors and their empresses, concubines (can't remember their names, as the chinese history seems complicated) to get away from the hustle and bustle of court administration, summer heat and  enjoy respite on its scenic grounds and beautiful lakes. Everyone was busy taking photographs of the courts and living quarters when one of the ladies in the group check her camera and noticed a cat like creature with two big eyes staring at her on the screen. She later told me that she had this gift of paranormal sighting and although she sense that there was "something" in the resort, she did not see it until it materialized on her screen. It made my hair stood on end when I saw the ghostly creature. She said that the creature could be the restless soul of someone who was burnt to death there. True enough, the resort was burnt down sometime in the middle of the seventeen century but rebuilt some 150 years later. A conicidence?

Ghosts aside, I must stay that I was a good break and brought back some good and interesting memories of Beijing.