Due to the distances and cost of travel in China, we’ve taken a lot of overnight transportation. China is by far the largest country we’ve visited on this trip. Just to give you some perspective, its roughly three times the size of India, the next largest country we’ve visited. China is also approximately the same size of the US (even including Alaska), so imagine how long it would take to get from the southwest corner to the northeast corner as we’ve done in China. Secondly, with distances so far, the only transportation options are often train or plane, both of which are pretty pricey. Yea, Chinese trains are nice, but they’re pretty expensive relative to other Asian trains. So to save time and money, we’ve gone for overnight travel wherever we could. The night train from Qingdao to Beijing was pretty nice. It left at around 8pm, shortly after which I passed out. When I awoke, we were rolling into Beijing Station. Joylani and I navigated our way out of the massive station, dealt with some touts (there’s scammers even in China), and got a taxi to take us to our hotel. That’s the other thing. With Chinese cities being really modern and expensive, cheap accommodation is hard to find. The cities don’t have budget backpacker enclaves like most other Asian cities and urban accommodation is really expensive. So for the first time since Europe, we’ve made a habit of booking accommodation in advance. Back to Beijing, we found out hostel and as usual after an overnight journey, showered and took a morning nap. My first impressions of Beijing were kind of what I expected. It is huge, super modern, has lots of construction going on, and polluted. Like other Chinese cities, it is clean with wide streets and lots of space. Although big and modern, Beijing is also famous for its hutongs, or alleyways. Our hotel is back in a hutong area and although interesting, its like a labyrinth back here. We started our day with a trip to the Beijing Art Museum. Although I wouldn’t go to any art museums or galleries if it weren’t for Joylani, most exhibits have some redeeming qualities at least. Not this one though. The first floor was all “modern-media” art, which is to say it’s a bunch of electronics and CG graphics. While it sounds cool, the exhibits were weird. Walking through the exhibit was like a futuristic nightmare. We escaped to the next floor, which was totally dedicated to one German “artist’s” work. To me, his “art” exemplified all that is wrong with so-called modern art: big canvases painted a single color w/ no variation or pattern (okay, house painters can do that), paintings of single lines (great, the artist attended pre-school), and other ridiculous things. Of course, his bio showed he’s nearly 80, has married three times, has kids ranging from age 2 to 50, among other things. The last floor was an exhibit on the evolution of German landscape realism. I was happy to get out of there to say the least. Since our next destination is home, we headed to the Silk Market, which is really five floors of anything you’d ever want to buy. We didn’t buy anything, but did some “research” on prices. I think we’ll check out a couple less-touristy markets too and then decide the best place to go on a shopping spree. I figure there’s a lot of things I’ll need once we go home for good, so I might as well buy them here and save a bundle. After the market, we ducked into a local place for dinner before retiring to our hostel. Our first day in Beijing wasn’t too exciting, but we got to know the city a little. Regarding Beijing, so far, so good. We’ve heard so many negative opinions of Beijing, but it seems like an okay place. Perhaps we’re just practicing the famous saying, “The key to happiness is having low expectations.”