Our bus reached Beijing in the morning. 
We grabbed some food by the side of the road, outside the bus depot and walked to a bus stop that took us to the center of the city. Andy saw some funky looking hairdressers with big J-Pop hair hanging outside a barbershop and decided to get a hair cut. He and Omar went there while Mike and I walked further down the narrow lane to an internet cafe to get directions to our hostel. 
We came back to the barbershop and witnessed the beginnings of Andy's transformation into a J-Pop sensation (he's been on Japanese TV you know)..but these things take time, so we left Omar to document the process and Mike and I grabbed the metro to the hostel. Beijing is a strange city of facades from what I have seen. There is rapid construction of new traditional looking buildings and accents to stores all over. The shopekeepers seem trained to sell to foreigners, but there is a complete lack of warmth or reality. For a city with such a rich cultural history, it is sad to see it become this for the Olympics. We'll have to explore some more when we get back, but that is my initial impression. We waited for Andy and Omar at the metro stop, but gave up after a while to grab some noodles. I'd run out of clean shirts, and you really can't reuse once worn clothing in this humid heat, so I just walked around like that.
We grabbed some food by the side of the road, outside the bus depot and walked to a bus stop that took us to the center of the city. Andy saw some funky looking hairdressers with big J-Pop hair hanging outside a barbershop and decided to get a hair cut. He and Omar went there while Mike and I walked further down the narrow lane to an internet cafe to get directions to our hostel. 
We came back to the barbershop and witnessed the beginnings of Andy's transformation into a J-Pop sensation (he's been on Japanese TV you know)..but these things take time, so we left Omar to document the process and Mike and I grabbed the metro to the hostel. Beijing is a strange city of facades from what I have seen. There is rapid construction of new traditional looking buildings and accents to stores all over. The shopekeepers seem trained to sell to foreigners, but there is a complete lack of warmth or reality. For a city with such a rich cultural history, it is sad to see it become this for the Olympics. We'll have to explore some more when we get back, but that is my initial impression. We waited for Andy and Omar at the metro stop, but gave up after a while to grab some noodles. I'd run out of clean shirts, and you really can't reuse once worn clothing in this humid heat, so I just walked around like that.
While we were eating, Andy and Omar walked passed the restaurant. We got them and they grabbed some food too. After, we went and to the hostel where everyone else cleaned up while I checked email. Andy and Omar found a guitar and bongos in the hostel cafe and started playing music. I joined them with some singing and we entertained the other travellers in the hostel cafe for a while before heading out to walk around. The area we were in was surrounded by trendy, over priced shops that were fairly devoid of customers. People were walking around, but I didn't see many buying. I don't know who these stores cater too. I assume to foreigners. We met an interesting girl working at a music cd store who told us about a lot of different types of Chinese music. Communicating was interesting because Mike was not with us and she hardly knew any english. We managed to write notes and use hand gestures combining Andy's knowledge of Japansese (I guess some of the characters are common) to get some information.
We walked on and passed some tattoo shops and more expensive boutiques before settling on a place for dinner. We managed to order some vegetarian food and struck up a conversation with some guys at the table next door who looked like they could be in a band. Turns out they were. One of them spoke some english (his nickname as he told us was Paco). He was really into all kinds of music and their band played rap/rock. They also had a shop we visited with their own label of "urban" style clothing just like the U.S. He told us about a huge rock show like woodstock for Chinese Bands that takes place in October in Beijing. We got his info and will try and check out his band when we return to Beijing.
Afterwards, we walked past the Wu Mart and tons of trendy stores to make our way back to the hostel. We walked over to the hostel cafe and found it full of foreigners again. Omar picked up the bongos, Andy the guitar and we played music deep into the night, and talked about all the cafe folks about Mongolia, shared experiences, the joys of travelling etc. It was a pretty diverse group. We have not run into any Americans on this trip though we have come across Europeans, and some Chinese travellers. It was really fun playing to that crowd late at night. Since I could communicate to them in English, I was able to tell them about the songs we sang and about some of the wonderful experiences we had enjoyed in Anqing.
We went to bed later than we should have as usual, but as usual, it was worth it.
