Tuesday in Beijing

On the Tuesday I took the metro to Tienanmen square. I then walked up to the park where the Temple of Heaven is. This was a temple where the emperor used to pray for a good harvest. Needles to say this was very impressive. The park was very big and restful. I didn't see anyone doing Tai Chi, but I did see a number of people walking backwards. I don't know why. The road from Tienanmen square to the park with the Temple of Heaven in it was meant to have a lot of interesting side streets branching from it. They have just knocked down all the interesting streets. They seem to be planning to rebuild with newer more modern buildings for the Olympics next year. Ummm, I will be impressed if they actually get buildings up by next year. On the way to the temple of heaven, I visited a natural history museum. There was a big exhibition of dinosaur stuff. They had a model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex eating some other kind of dinosaur. This freaked out a 4 year old, who was both fascinated, but also wanted to hide. There was also an external building that contained human body parts. Thanks to the Rough guide of Beijing for telling me this. The room had glass vases with body parts in it. There were human brains and some corpses with missing and rotting flesh. There were some embryos of different sizes. There was a very large and loud party of school children. They had no problem with the human body parts, but I think they were too busy playing games to notice all the dead people in vases. Children have no appreciation of death. I was actually tempted to take some pictures. This was forbidden for obvious reasons. On the way back, I stopped off at the Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant for my supper. One of speciality dishs in Beijing is Peking duck. This was a famous restaurant, where people such as George Bush (the old) and Fedro Castro had eaten there. The restaurant looked expsensive and complicated. Too many stars. I know my place in this world. There was a fast food place at the front -- that was also expensive, but was good. I lost my Peking duck virginity there.