Let's Explore!

Next week, I am discussing poetry about Mao with
a panda at a tea shop on the Great Wall.
You know.  Normal China stuff.

This is going to be more pics and less words and isn't that actually kinda nice?  Got my butt out of bed at 7:30 and was out of the apartment with something of a plan from yesterday I pushed back.  Walk that way, catch a bus, jump on the metro, and start doing all that stuff you're supposed to do in China.  Google isn't a thing here, which meant no Google maps for me once I left the apartment.  I used APPLE maps, which worked OKAY, but my little GPS locator kept crapping out on me.  By 10:30 I was on a bus toward Beijing proper.  

Also, it was May Day which meant myself and a good deal of China had no work and thought, yeah, Tiananmen Square. Here's pictures so you know how my day was without me having to write about a lot of it.   

The pollution is real.

Couple things I want to commit to writing.  Met a rather interesting French guy, formerly in I.T., who has been traveling the world for the past 21 months.  He had plenty to say so I could just mentally veg and we did the Forbidden City together.  While I enjoyed his company and all, I did suddenly want to be on my own and rather abruptly wished him well and headed to the metro.  Cool dude, though.

Two.  What's the buzz on the tap water in Beijing?  Okay, I know not to drink it and was told not to cook with it, but I was also told it is fine for brushing your teeth and not to panic if it gets in your eyes or whatever in the shower.  So... what do people do with the whole washing dishes thing?  I can't imagine I am supposed to use the filtered water that is delivered in 5 gallon jugs, am I?  I did one load of washing with that water, trying to be as conservative as possible, but it still ate abut 15% of my 5 gallon tank.  Tonight's dishes were washed with boiled tap, a touch of bleach, and dish soap.  I dunno.  By the end of the year, I'll probably just be using spit, rain water, and the stuff from the bathroom tap.