Made in China

China. Where everything is made nowadays - the really cheap stuff anyways.
What I didn't know was that the Chinese also invented long slow queues, traffic jams and bad drivers.

Our first stop was the pizza place. Because everyone knows the Chinese invented pizza.
Tresa's stomach wasn't feeling all that well when we ate in Shenzen. So she saw something she recognized and wanted to eat there.

The next night though I found the food courts in the mall and it ws so much cheaper. For less 8 bucks I had brought back tons of food - all of it chinese though. And some of it I wasn't sure what it was because all the signs were in chinese.


Someone used to call me Chairman Mau. I don't see the resemblance. I still have hair and I'm not Chinese. But that didn't stop all the locals from talking to me in Mandarin and still trying to rip me off.




We were only here for 4 days so we had to cram a lot of sights to see. All I wanted to see was the Great Wall.

But there was also, Tian amen Square and the Forbidden City. This place was massive but we managed to find the food court in the Forbidden city. And immediately afterwards the toilet at the Forbidden city was a very popular attraction for most tourists.



It was like this for most of our trip in Asia. People would look at Kieran, then Tresa and then see me walking behind. Someone even asked if he was adopted from China.

I said 'not made in China, Kieran very good quality, made in Canada'

But the people were really friendly to little toddlers. I remember Dante, Bamdad and Melissa's experience and we were getting the same.




The next day we got a tour to the Great Wall at Badaling for 90Y each. A far cry from the 375Y/person at the hotel and the 600-800Y to hire an illegal driver to take us there.

It included food, but there was a few catches. We had to wait until the bus was completely full so the start time was not fixed. And we had to visit a Jade market about 30mins prior to Badaling. This wasn't on the tour description.
But they were more interested in Kieran than selling. Like how many sales people does it take to make a sale?

So this was what I really wanted to see in China. The Great Wall.
It's pretty chilly this time of year. We made sure we were all bundled and didn't bring our stroller. The locals had never seen a baby backpack carrier before and were just in awe.

We made it as far as the second last lookout tower in the photo. The next tower was pretty steep and we needed to get back to the bus by a specific time.

We also found lots of hawkers there. This guy must have been doing an all nighter.


The wall was steeper than I had anticipated. Which is why I'm hanging on to the railing there and sitting down. With Kieran on my back I was going to make sure I wasn't going to be tumbling anyware.
At least we didn't bring our stroller. Like two other families we saw.



We met these guys that were on our bus and at our table for lunch. The two on the right are from Italy, and the asian dude was Korean. But that didn't stop the the locals from talking to him in Chinese too. He kept telling them he wasn't chinese. But they didn't believe him and continued to carry on the conversation.

The Summer palace was our last stop before heading back to Paul and Susan's place in Hong Kong.
We only spent a couple of hours here but the grounds were massive and very calming.






This was Kieran's favourite place in all of China.
He was able to stretch his legs and roam around.








This is the palace in the background. We made it to the entrance of the palace but we didn't have enough time to check it out.









For some reason, Kieran wanted to hug all the trees on the grounds.
He wanted all of us to hug the trees.

He kept pointing and saying 'tree'. He wanted to hug them all.






This is how we felt after our little side journey to Beijing. Like road kill. The flight back from China was a little rough. Kieran was restless. It felt like Air Canada all over again.

My little speaker that I bought in Sham Shui Po had run out of juice and he was frustrated that no sound was coming out of the Zen player.

Tresa said she could have spent much longer there. And with all the sights to see. Yeah, 4 days wasn't enough. But for her 4 days of chinese food was making her insides go outsides.


Hello Beijing Fotos...