First week in Beijing

 Hello! Today I make my triumphant beginning in blogging. What jolly Beijing adventures shall I document here?? Hmmm. I’m still a new bug at this blogging stuff, so I’ll have to learn along the way. Heeding the suggestions of J and Dl, I’d set up my strong vpn before I left for Beijing, but spent a week being thoroughly mystified why it didn’t work in China. Belatedly discovered that the Great Wall of China has been assiduously blocking foreign vpns, blogspot, FB, and seditious materials like the NYT. But thanks to the timely technical support team at vpn (it really was 24 hours service!), who tweaked my setup, now I can blog, and the www is available to me! Hurrah! Let joy be unconfined.

My language school is excellent, and lessons are hugely enjoyable.

Everyone has been talking about the Southern Weekend newspaper (南方周末)， which as one Beijing friend explained, is exceptionally popular because of the quality of its investigative journalism. We are looking for “the truth”, my friend explained. I read some of its articles, and was pretty impressed. Pollution, water issues, the exploitation of the hukou system etc.

Chilled out at Starbucks at historic Qianmen, which is south of Tiananmen Square, before heading off for dinner last night, and was quite tickled by faux Chinese teahouse façade of the Starbucks joint. Dinner last night was at Liqun Beijing Duck Restaurant （利群烤鸭店）, at Qianmen, with Dl and his journalist chums. Funny that a famous restaurant should be in the middle of a crumbling hutong in Qianmen!