Well I have a bit more time on my hands today ... the cold weather is setting in ... another stange phenomenon in china is the tour group ... more often that not in the city it is groups of chinese tourist's from out of town somewhere... they like to travel in groups. You can see them assembling into formations here ... each flag there represents a tour guide leader ... the flags and hats tend to get colour cordinated ... not sure how each group decides on a colour ... they could be a contentious issue ... especially the red one ! ....but they get 'hatted' up and head into the ol 'forbidden city' . How naughty! Well it aint forbidden now if your happy to part with 50 quai. But its definitely an interesting look. I'll drag out some ol photos from my look around there sometime. So here we have the Yellow team ... come on get it together yellow!

off to an early start its the orange team through the gates .. . follow the orange flag ... no one gets lost .. lost in the forbidden palace ....

whilst yellow team is still waiting on a few stragglers ... :) Wave that yellow flag ... they can't be too far away!

so what lies beyond those big red ralls? well a beautiful tranquil garden ... you can walk down this section for free ... it's just behind the big red wall ...it's a stark contrast to the other side which is 'chang an jie' (long peace avenue) which is bj's busiest street. Just a few metres away thousands of cars are to and fro'ing whilst here its virtual tranquility.

Ok enough peace and harmony! Weve got power lines to roll out ... a lot of the old 'hutong' (long little alley way old style beijing area) place have been 'upgraded' and what not ... theyve been rolling out cable and electricity ... no HV insulated cherry pickers here ... climb on up boys and crimp those cables! You can see a 'dianren' (electricity worker) on each pole there.

On another side note about learning chinese language.... learning one word can mean you've potentially learn't 2 or 3 others ... for example 'dian nao' is computer. dian = electriciy ... nao = brain. so electric brain is a computer. How cool. so now you know the word for computer, electricity and brain. then to further add to that if something is broken thats called 'huai'.... ie ...."dian nao huai le!" (computer is broken). And then 'nao huai le' .... brain broken ... guess what that means .... u stupid! hehehehe

so you thought what could possibly be next?? ... well wait till i come across the old sacada's in a cage seller! ...but for now we got a bird on a stick. No not for eating this one. Just walking out in the nothern beijing district i came across this guy ... out walking his bird ... as you do! I'm guessing he had his wings clipped ... i didnt know how to ask that one ...

the locals were quite amused as well .....and yes it put a smile on my dial too :)

While this birdie is cool it was not quite as cool as the bird we met at '798'. 798 is bj's uber arts district. It's an old wartime factory ... now defunct ... artists have taken over the space and converted it into a 'arts' precinct. Each artist has their own little piece of space and some of the work there is quite amazing ... there was a bird that spoke more mandarin than me ... and probably with better tones! He even had a repotoire sheet ... laopo was having a great conversation with him ... and i had no idea what they were talking about! I'll no doubt be tripping out that way with chromi ..my friend from aus! stay tuned for some pics from 798!