Virtual Home of
Russell Eagling

www.russelleagling.com

Our trip stared in Beijing.  You can read some of Ed's thoughts about the things we saw in his email's home here.

The Great Wall at Simatai was incredibly remote, cold and beautiful.  The sight of the wall carrying-on over the most unfeasable looking mountains was very special one and one that has left me hungry to discover more and more about this spectacular feat of human paranoia.

These are some pictures from the Old Summer Palace.  Ed gives more details about how this place came to be destroyed by the British in 1860 at the end of his  this place in his second email home, here.  (You might have heard about the man responsible in connection with certain cultural relics and Greek history!) 

One of the benefits from traveling at during the New Year Festival (and one that made all the horrors of trying to find train tickets worth-while) was the live shows we saw at the Temple of Heaven.  We saw a spectacular acrobatic lion show as we entered the park and when we got to the main temple itself we saw a show in which about 200 performers tried to recreate some of the human drama to add to the architectural splendor. 

The youth hostel we stayed at was very clean, very cheap and highly recommended.  If you're not going to stay in the soon-to-be-destroyed hutongs, head to the Workers Stadium on the East of the city and find the Youth Hostel that is part of the stadium.  Its new and not in the books yet.  On New Year's night we joined their Jiaozi fest where we tried our hand at making the Chinese dumplings ourselves.  I'm happy to report that my  efforts were far more commented upon than Ed's!