From Olympia to the Ruins.

After getting Kyle a cheap 60 kaui bike, he took it for a test run with me to the development site of the new Olympic area where Beijing will be hosting the 2008 games. It took us about 30 minutes to get there from our luxurious apartment at Dong Wang Zhuang. The first thing I noticed was cranes, cranes, cranes! There were dozens and dozens of cranes everywhere surrounded by buildings still in shell-form in construction. Then a question came to mind: "will they be able to complete this massive undertaking in time for the Olympics?"

The main buildings such as the "Birds Nest" National Stadium, the National Aquatic Centre, and the National Indoor Stadium were taking shape and colour quite beautifully. I'll have to check back in a few months to monitor their steady progress of these and other venues in construction around the city of dust and sand.

From the Olympic Park, we travelled north and stumbled upon the National Forest Park also in construction. We couldn't contain our laughter as we tried to grasp the idea of constructing a man-made National Forest over a wide plot of uncultivable land. We were spoiled by the lush greenness of Vancouver that we took for granted.

Following the big yellow line that outlined the 5th Ring Road on the map, we decided to take this route to the Yuan Ming Yuan gardens (Old Summer Palace). Little did we know that this took us to the on-ramp to the freeway. Riding our bikes on the shoulder, we took the ramp and found ourselves travelling with vehicles zooming by to our left. To make matters worse, the shoulder width we constrained to within narrowed and narrowed until we had no choice but to occupy a small part of the lane for automobiles! We persevered, however, as it was too late to turn back and continued our trek West, hoping that they'd be an off-ramp ahead soon enough. Up on the overpass and under a few others, we kept peddling and peddling, avoiding the busses and lorries that came quite close at times. Then we hit another on-ramp. Carefully manoeuvring around the speeding vehicles merging onto the 5th Ring Road, we had successfully averted casualty. With cars and trucks and even larger automobiles honking from behind, we were not in the mood to play a real-life version of Frogger.

At last, we noticed a freeway sign that informed us that an off-ramp was ahead and I started counting down the metres left to safety. Just then, a police cruiser with flashing lights pulled up beside us and an officer said something in Chinese though the megaphone he had in his hand. Not knowing what he wanted from us (or playing dumb), we continued our way hoping that they'd get off our tail and let us be who we appeared to be: crazy foreigners risking our lives to see a garden in ruins! That, of course, didn't happen, and they managed to stop us in our tracks when they pulled their cruiser up ahead of us and stepped out of the vehicle. After explaining ourselves about the mistake we made to travel on the shoulder on a freeway overpass and showing the officers of our intended destination on the map in English, they took us kindly, gave us a verbal warning, and left us to be.

Yuan Ming Yuan is divided into 3 main gardens: Yuan Ming Yuan (Garden of Perfect Slendor), Chang Chun Yuan (Garden of Everlasting Spring), and Wan Chun Yuan (Garden of Eternal Spring) spread over 350 hectares in all. We only had enough daylight to cover the south side of the garden which didn't have much left after the Anglo-French forces invaded Beijing in 1860 and torched it to the ground. It was like walking through a graveyard, but instead of headstones, there were stones of buildings that once stood here. Strolling through the garden and over the zig-zag bridge over a man-made lake half frozen, a sense of sombreness overcame us. The evening sun casting its last rays of light through the dense bamboo forest only heightened this feeling.

At nightfall, Robert joined us for a night tour of Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City. A warm cup of Double Mocha Macchiato was in order after the weather dipped to near freezing conditions outside, so we popped into the Starbucks in Houhai and rambled on about religion and life stuff in the warmth into the wee hours of the morning.