(written 8/4, posted at first wifi opportunity)

Beijing has dutifully shown me its many faces.

On arrival, the city was drenched and chilled, its residents dodging puddles via dislodged bricks. Our taxi driver craned his head out the open drivers side window to see the traffic on the freeway, since his front window was too fogged. (He was on his cell phone too, but that goes without saying.) Then, two days later, we sweated atop the temple at Jingshan Park and looked over a brilliant clear city. Beijingers, shocked at such a thing, flooded the lookout points, and even more choked the Forbidden City, which, luckily, we skipped, but could still see an aerial view from the hill.

We rushed through Houhai, a lakeside nightmare of overpriced lounges with pink velvet couches lining the 'shore' and rickshaw drivers screaming HELLO, trying to get back to Nanluogo Xiang, the 'artsy sector', so we could get some wifi, which we ended up just stealing from the backpackers hostel. Later, at the late night skewer bar down the street from our hotel (in a neighborhood with rather fewer tourists), I noted that the same price (35 RMB/US$5.50) bought either, in the touristy areas, one solitary glass of mango juice... or, in our neighborhood: 2 variously spiced chicken wing skewers, 2 shrimp skewers, 5 potato skewers, 5 eggplant skewers, 2 mantou skewers and 2 tofu skin skewers. Given that the chicken wings and shrimp especially blew the pants off any bar wings in the states, I'd say the choice is an easy one. The question of how on earth events in my life have come to lead to my traveling around Asia with someone who orders skewered BREAD in such a restaurant (as this is what mantou is) is another thing entirely.