We also visited the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.
Then later in the day Hannah and I tagged along for business meetings David had with a supplier outside of Beijing. It was far enough outside of Beijing to be considered the countryside. Apparently people in the countryside haven't seen many Americans in real life, because they were ALL staring. Between my blonde hair, Hannah's big eyes, and her "white" face, we were quite a spectacle. Bicyclists would slow down or stop to gawk, small children would stare, and we worried that we might cause an accident when we hit the road where cars were driving. The best one was were a little girl ran around to the front of us, stopped, looked back at Hannah, covered her mouth and let out a giggly squeal then ducked into a nearby doorway. It was hilarious. They wouldn't let us walk out on the street alone, so we had our babysitter following close behind all the time. We tried waving at the small children to show we were friendly, but none waved back. We thought maybe this wasn't their custom. Later we saw people waving, so the kids were either too stunned or too scared to wave back. It was hilarious.
Our babysitter (name unknown, he spoke no english, we just used hand signals) bought us some pineapple on a stick from a little sidewalk produce stand. Then he wanted us to have some meat on a stick from a sidewalk vendor. We signalled for just 1. He gave us each 6 by the time we were done as well as some boiled peanuts (maybe holding up 1 finger means 6 in Chinese?). Hannah and I discovered we LOVE lamb. It was sooo good!
While we were waiting for our meat on a stick to cook we noticed a baby playing under a pool table on the sidewalk a little way up the sidewalk. You don't see that everyday.
This is a picture of us with our babysitter after going to a dinner of Peking duck with several of David's business associates.
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