I was working up in Beijing a few weeks ago for a couple of days so had the chance to re-explore the city where I spent so much time when I lived in China previously. A lot has happened in China since March 2006 (when I flew out of Beijing airport to return home) most notably of course, the Olympics. When I was last here the government was shutting down mass number of factories and taking cars off the road in order to improve the air quality ahead of the olympics. As far as I'm concerned this must have been a terrific success as the 3 days that i was there I was greated by blue skies and bright sunshine - not one smog cloud - and the whole place was much, much cleaner than Shanghai (which is currently undergoing its own facelift in preparation for Expo 2010). I dropped into Tianamen Square but as it was the day before the 20th 
anniversary of the "incident" (don't want to get shut down - blogger is already banned in China) people were banned from walking there and the opportunities to take photos were extremely limited. I've seen TV reports that showed undercover police man blocking the shots of news reporters with umbrellas pretending to be tourists whislt carrying CS Spray and a pistol.The rest of the time in Beijing was spent shopping and catching up with old friends. A good friend of mine, Lisa, is now studying at law school in Beijing so I said I'd call in on her for a catch up. In order to make sure the students study and don't go out too much they locate the college as far out of the centre as possible - it was right near the radiant mountain. It took me 1 hour on the metro and then an additional 20/30 minute cab ride to get there.
Once 
I arrived we jumped straight back into the cab, as there is absolutely nothing in the area at all. For lunch we went to a people's liberation army themed restuarant. The whole place was decked out with communist propaganda and the staff were dressed up as either army officers or farm hands, on the hour every hour they performed all the old traditonal Maoist songs. We were eating at 12noon and I was amazed at how full the resutaurant was. Everyone else there was over the age of 60 though! Each audience member was given a red flag to wave and most of the people joined in dancing and singing along - unfortunately photos were not allowed to be taken.
I arrived we jumped straight back into the cab, as there is absolutely nothing in the area at all. For lunch we went to a people's liberation army themed restuarant. The whole place was decked out with communist propaganda and the staff were dressed up as either army officers or farm hands, on the hour every hour they performed all the old traditonal Maoist songs. We were eating at 12noon and I was amazed at how full the resutaurant was. Everyone else there was over the age of 60 though! Each audience member was given a red flag to wave and most of the people joined in dancing and singing along - unfortunately photos were not allowed to be taken.
After eating with Lisa she had to go back to school for class so I caught the taxi into town to meet up with another old friend, Vivien. Vivien was a teacher at No.42 School when i was there and has now married and is living in Beijing. She is no longer working as a teacher but would like to return to it and also misses Shijizahuang a lot!
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