First China Weekend

So for our first weekend in Beijing, we started off going to the market. The market was just a local one, maybe 10 minutes walk from our apartment.

The place is huge and it was packed! People everywhere, pushing each other in true Beijing style. Some old woman tried to push me but I showed her :)

The noodle man was chopping noodles for all he was worth. Fresh noodles for dinner

They also had so many types of mushrooms!
We ended up buying about 2 weeks worth of groceries (including about 6kg of chicken) for about $25. I couldn't believe how much stuff we got.
On the way home there was a weird impromptu market by the side of the river ("river", pretty much a drain) where I was accosted by some guy, no idea why.

However, fishing in the canal/drain thing does not strike me as a good idea. Well I hope they don't catch anything, and if they do, I really hope they don't eat it!

This afternoon we took our first trip on the metro out to the China University of Geoscience which is about 1.5 hours away from the house (an hour on the train and half hour walk). Like everywhere else, there's a dirty great big Mao looking at me.

We were there to go rock climbing on an outdoor climbing wall. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I can guarantee you that it wasn't this:

It was fricking huge! Also it doesn't open in the morning because it gets sun. Once we started climbing the wall face was really hot at the top.

The climbing was fun, really long climbs though. We were taking some of the chinese Thoughtworkers for their first climbing session, they did really well. I did have to share my shoes with a big Chinese guy though, they only had one pair of shoes larger than 42 (they were 44's, still too small). He seemed friendly though. We also got talking to a girl who spotted my PADI bag, she had done her instructors in Malaysia, which was a bit of a coincidence. She backed up the theory that the only diving in China is Hainan island. Apparently they have diving clubs in Beijing but there's nowhere to go other than overseas.

On the way home on the train, there was a busker going through the train. He had the best china-fro I've seen so far:

All in all, it was a fun day, beautiful weather, fun at the market, first trip on the metro, climbing, meeting odd people and then a nice dinner of new, cheap market food. And tomorrow we're off to the FORBIDDEN CITY!!