Picnic at Beihai Park

We wanted to visit the Mausoleum of Chairman Mao today, but after lining up at security to enter Tiananmen Square (again), we found that no bags are allowed inside. We were invited to leave our belongings inside the dodgy open lockers nearby, so we decided to leave it for another day and left the busy square.

Our backup plan for the day was a picnic at Beihai Park. The park has a great white stupa in the middle of an island in the lake and several little temples around it. 

Chinese people love their parks and seem to hang around them a lot, some of them listening to their own music, some other playing cards or mah-jong. We like to observe them as we walk around, probably almost as they enjoy staring at us like we are aliens.

We expected to see a lot more 'western' people around, but most of the times we are the only odd ones out when walking around or catching public transport. At the same time, we thought a lot more English would be spoken around the capital city, especially after the 2008 Olympics everyone is still talking about. Turns out we are wrong! A minimum of Chinese should be learned before venturing into this country, just to make life a little easier.

Dinner was special: after an aperitivo of scorpions on a stick at Dong Hua Men food market (very popular among tourists it seems), we decided to try a little local restaurant serving donkey meat. Needless to say, the food was delicious - we will definitely be back for a donkey treat before we leave Beijing on Wednesday.