First off, I don't know why the map is locating me in Datun. Just ignore it. I do.

After I was talking to ye last on the 16th, I was true to my word and did nothing . Well, almost. I went to Wangfujing, because I knew they spoke English in the post office there, and I had a pile of soov-nears growing in my bag that were desperate to be sent home. At least, I was desperate to send them home. I misjudged the complexity of filling a box with trinkets and sending it to another continent though. It took well over an hour to accomplish the feat, and as I've told you before, there are no queues in China. And everything is written in Chinese. So it's rather a hindrance to one as uneducated as I.

Somehow, I managed to send the durned thing off, but whether it gets there or not is up to a greater power than I. The minute she'd sealed the box, I forgot everything that was in it, and was only then required to fill out a customs declaration form describing everything in detail. In four tiny lines. To relieve my frayed nerves, I went shopping, and purchased more bulky items, but happily, I found a Chinese flag.

That night, Ying and I went to a lovely local restaurant, even nicer than Quan Ju Du, and had more Peking Duck. Yum yum yum!!! There was also a variety show on, and I saw Chinese Opera (the weird, high pitched, gurgling songs and pink face paint); the Mask performance (awesome, don't know how he did it); a little magician/clown who balanced stuff on his chin (yawn); a tiny girl who lay on a chair and rolled heavy pots on her feet - one with a MAN in it!; music on a zither and erhu (pretty); and kung-fu (hai-ya!) . I was also providing entertainment, but mostly as an early side show. Then somebody gave me a fork and knife and I was boring again.

Yesterday, I did nothing at all. At one stage I went across the road to the 7/11 and bought some instant spaghetti which was delicious, except for the sauce. Chinese CANNOT do Italian. I bought an ice-cream from a gourmet ice-cream stand in Shanghai and it was the exact same consistency as the tomato sauce in the spaghetti - glue. No, gum. Melty chewing gum. Yeuck. In the evening, Ying and I crossed the road again and got bread and - finally! - a mooncake.

You see, as well as the National Day on October 1st (everyone has nine days off - highly irregular), there's the Mid-Autumn Festival. These mooncakes are in ALL the shops and you can buy large, posh ones in big, fancy boxes and bags for hundreds of yuan, or you can buy a variety of little ones each day. Or whatever. It's kind of like Easter Eggs and boxes of chocolates . I just wanted to try one, since they're all here. Turns out they come in all different flavours, and the flavour is written in Chinese ON the cake. There were all sorts of yuck sounding savoury ones (I may have mentioned this, but it's worth saying again - the Chinese do NOT like sweets!), and the sweetest ones had nuts or egg, or double egg. I assumed egg meant custard, so I got one of those, and some funky little Japanese rice-ball things.

Of course, egg does not mean custard. It means egg. There's a solid yolk in the middle of my cake. The rest of the cake is sort of crumbly and sweet, and then the yolk is solid and salty. Very odd sensation. It's also taken me two days to eat, since it's a lot heavier than you'd imagine. The rice balls were nicer. Squidgy little doughy things with stuff like marmalade inside. I liked. It also turns out that Ying has hunantv, which meant Wudi!!! Hurray! It was at 10:30, not 10, but I dealt with it. ;)

Today I was woken by a funny beeping noise that I eventually realised was the phone . I'm always wary answering the phone here, because although it's usually Ying, it's been other people on occasion too, and I've just had to say "English, sorry, sorry" over and over again and then hang up abruptly on them. Happily, it was Ying this morning, but it was less happy news. I had planned to go and see the decorations at Tian'anmen Square today, but it was going to be closed off for practices at 12pm. The subway was also going to be shut down at 3pm. I had to get my skates one.

I washed my teeth with Evian (I'm posh, me) and legged it out the door and on to Tian'anmen East station. To my dismay, it was already all cordoned off and no one could get in anywhere. Margaret Ward may think she has one up on me, but just know: I WAS THERE TOO. I blundered about with the other tourists for a while, then gave it up as a lost cause and went back to the subway and to the Wangfujing Post Office again, with my extra purchases. On the way, I decided to buy myself a Wudi DVD box set, because I love it, and it's only like E8 . I was much more efficient in the Post Office this time, and knew exactly what was in my sealed box. A man even let me go in front of him in the queue! It was amazing.

Wangfujing street itself was extra busy today. There was an abundance of bubbly young girls with cameras and I got stopped several times and asked to say "Welcome to Beijing" in mother tongue. After a few confused attempts in English and Irish, it turned out that they wanted to record me saying it in Chinese. I forget it now, but after the first few times, I just said it to anybody who looked at me, and it threw them off-guard enough for me to slip past unnoticed.

When I was a child, the Irish Blood Donors (or whatever their official title is) used to park a truck and a bus outside the Angler's Rest hotel in Headford. I used to assume that the blood was taken from people IN the bus, or the truck. When I went to donate myself for the first time, I was slightly surprised to find out that It's in the large and comfortable environment of the hotel conference room . It needs to be, since there are so many stretchers and people and queues and booths and, most importantly, a table full of snacks. I don't know what I was ever thinking. But I found out today that I wasn't entirely wrong in my scenario, just the wrong location. Because on Wangfujing street today, people were giving blood. ON A BUS. Extraordinary. They didn't even get snacks.

I got back to the subway, which was also extra busy, since everyone who actually went to work on it was trying to get home now, before it closed. This, of course, ruined my plans to go to the Lama Temple. Especially when the first train passed and it was too crowded for ANYONE to squeeze in. The second one came shortly after, and those of us at the head of the bundle had steeled ourselves to push, no matter what. It ended up being a real squash - I had to hold my trousers and hair in from the door. As well as being the first three on, myself and the other leaders were also the last three on . It was very bad. I was changing at the next station, and somehow made it along the corridors, down the stairs and onto the right train without any pause. I had to push there too, but it's a newer train on line 5 and it seems to be more slippery or something.

As I was ascending the escalator, a girl in front of me looked back and smiled. I smiled back, naturally, but I didn't know what was so amusing (seems I never do, here). As I left the subway station, I passed her out, but she caught up and seemed to stay in step with me. She was a tiny little thing, and was trotting pretty fast, so I figured she was in a hurry and I slowed down to let her pass. But she slowed down too... So I sped up again.

So did she.

I tried this a couple of more times, before I looked over at her, and she was still beaming at me.

"Are you a student at the university?" She asked .
"No."
"Oh I'm sorry, I thought you were a student. There are some foreigners there, you see!"

She looked a bit embarrassed at this, so I decided to be pleasant.

"I'm staying with a friend. It's very nice in Beijing."
"Oh yes!"
...
"Are you from Beijing?"
"No, I'm from dsodfodfuhgnsdkf in the south. You know it?"
"Uh... no."
"Oh.... Are you staying here long?"
"Well I've been here a few weeks now, so I'm going to Kunming on Sunday."
"Oh Kunming is beautiful, lots of flowers!"
"Oh lovely! ... Different to Beijing."

It was with relief that I saw my entrance coming up.

"Okay, I go here!" She announced.
"Oh... me too." Yay...

Anyway, we survived the next few seconds, and I managed to decipher that she was from Hubei, which I do know. We parted on pleasant terms and never saw one another again.

That's it for my recent adventures, but I've also been trying to keep notes of the unusual things I see around the place. I keep forgetting things, but there're some you've GOT to hear.

Remember here, I told you about a wax baby in a butter churn? Yeah? Well, it's not a butter churn. It's a playpen.

Seriously.

I was showing it to Ying and she burst out laughing . When she was young, she says, her grandmother used to mind her and her cousin. Granny preferred the cousin, since he was a boy, and she used to put Ying in this playpen thing. It meant the baby could look around, but not escape or break things, and the guardian could get on with making silk or grinding rice or whatever sort of fun they used to get up to. Ying also said that in winter, Granny would leave her in the sun, so she'd be warm. As well as being warm, though, she ended up brown. But just on her hands and head. Her mother was of course very concerned about this odd skin pigmentation, but didn't figure it out for years. Now, of course, the Chinese prize white skin as much as we "pasty pale" people crave brown skin. For every tanning product we sell, they sell as many - if not more - whitening products. I don't agree with either, for the record.

Most of us already know that Chinese grandparents do a lot of minding on children, since the parents have to go to work and most people don't even know what a babysitter is . However, grandparents are sociable creatures, and like to hang out with one another during the day, strolling their dogs or toddlers, smoking filterless cigarettes and haggling over the price of an apple. You can imagine that changing nappies and such like doesn't fit into this vigorous schedule very well at all, but the wily grandparents have developed a handy little solution: slit pants.

Again, seriously.

There are heaps of little kids walking around with a slit in the back of their pants, and every so often their guardian will pick them up (it's hard to describe this: they hold them under their knees with the kid's head resting against grandparent's chest, so they're sort of swinging) and hover them over the path until something comes out. Usually the kid just looks a little bit dazed, and I've passed on too quickly to see if it's generally successful, but I imagine there's some sort of business still in the slit-pants industry.

They're not the only disgraces children have to put up with . You know how the only good thing to come out of Presentation College Headford was the fact that girls could wear trousers? Well girls wear trousers here too, but they're the exact same trousers as boys, Unfortunately, I'm not as brave as the Chinese, and I didn't stop anyone for a picture, but imagine the worst, shiny, baggy, neon, eighties tracksuit you can, and you're pretty close to the standard school uniform here. For the first few days I was even convinced people were still wearing their volunteer tracksuits from the Olympics. This is an internet example, and they come in all colours, but, apparently, only one size...

On a different topic, everything in the outside world today was at fever pitch. I forgot to mention all the helicopters and soldiers at Tian'anmen Square, but yeah, it was crazy mad. There's this big film coming out too, and I think the English name is "Founding of a Nation" (since "Birth of a Nation" is the hours long, black and white, KKK propaganda we used to have to watch over and over in college) . I REALLY want to see it, but I'll be elsewhere and otherwise occupied. :( There are a few entertaining segments of the stage version being shown on TV every now and again, though. I tell ya, the Olympics are nearly looking shabby in comparison. It's amazing. No one can organise a stage crowd better than the Chinese. Even the audiences are perfect. They always clap when they're supposed to and smile when they're supposed to. Even if they forget, or get confused (as they did during a western magician's performance), someone in the control box plays some resounding applause anyway, so at least the viewer understands what's going on.

My Beijing lung is getting worse. I'm beginning to see why everyone spits so much, but I will NEVER join in, I tells ya. It was very hazy yesterday, and I'm getting a pain in my ears from breathing through my nose the whole time, to filter the air as best I can. You end up with amazing shades of brown and black snot at the end of a day outside too, I can tell you . It was as hazy yesterday as my first day here, and you could look at the sun and just see a faint, glowing disc. Magical, and yet somehow, not right.

I don't know what the plan is for the rest of the day now. Ying has to come home early too. I'm kind of glad the subway is out for today, because I wrenched my shoulder on the last escalator. The handrails on ALL escalators (subway or shopping centre) go much faster than the steps, and if you leave your hand in one place, you end up reaching for the person three in front of you, and looking very awkward indeed. 

Now, what to do with myself...

I think I'll go reorganise my clothes...

{edit}

So Ying and I went shopping for knock-offs at Wonderful Pretty Shopping Centre (that's the name of it, God's honest truth), where she bought loads and I persuaded her to, because it's half nothing in euro . It was amazing. There were incredible knock-offs of designer bags and jewellry and clothes, and real make-up at discount prices. If I had anymore room, I'd have an entire new wardrobe for Kunming. Afterwards we looked for pasta sauce in the "hyper-markt" downstairs (which I did find, in a large can), but it was much more entertaining to look at the dried foods section. They eat the same stuff my brother feeds to his turtles. Dried shrimp of all varieties, sea cucumbers (fresh, dried, large, small, whole, dissected...), fish of every kind (and live and dead are options too), grubs - as in larvae, not a colloquialism for foods - and at one stage I was even afraid Ying was going to buy a live crab. I tried to help one escape, but the assistant caught me and drowned him again. There was a spices section that was interesting in an olfactory sense, and it was even labelled "from the Jia Jin Qing Dynasty 1530 AC". The 'AC' was to cover all bases, I assume, so we'd realise that it was really old, and not just messing about.

We were on the bus home when Ying discovered that she didn't have her fare card with her, so we had to walk aaaaallllll the way back to Wonderful Pretty Shopping Centre and up to the place where she had tried on a pair of trousers . It turned out to be the only booth that was closed, and we were just sitting down to wait for someone to call the assistant, when I spotted the card under a chair. We grabbed it and ran. When we got home and my pasta was almost cooked, we had another crisis: Ying doesn't posses a can opener. Trusty leatherman penknife/multitool to the rescue! I love my Leatherman. It opened a giant tin of tomato sauce, and I had a satisfying home cooked western dinner.

Now, some Wudi, and some bed. Good times.