In the office it seems that everyone is smart.  They are almost all from Beijing University (Beida) or Qinghua (a.k.a. Tsinghua University).  I had couple of the Smart Kids take me for a tour around the places where the Smart Kids grow :)  Yimin and Rachel were our gracious hosts.

Stephen, me, Yimin and Rachel at the Qinghua gate.

Cody poses in front of the MBA poster, he'll attend B-School in the fall.

The Profs at Qinghua Business School.

Did you know that Qinghua was founded in the early 1900's using money from the United States?  China had bought some arms from the USA and Americans had overcharged the Chinese.  When the refund was recieved, the money was used to fund Qinghua.

Supposedly, the male graduate students had the worst dorms, here is one of the buildings.

The dorms have bicycle shacks out front.

These are the new dorms, primarily meant for undergraduates. 

This is Cody in front of the main administrative building.

Cody and Stephen pose in front of a large lecture hall.

All of us, posing in front of the famous Qinghua arch!

We took a brief intermission to eat at Quan ju De (Famous Peking Duck) and went onto Beida.

The Computer Science Building at Beida.

Beida has some interesting mix of Chinese/Western architecture.

Cody and Stephen pretend to study in front of the Beida library.

I pull out my best Chinese tourist pose in front of the Beida front entrance.

Beida has a cool tower on the campus.

Throughout our trip Cody and Stephen were very popular.  Many ladies asked to pose with them and have their picture taken.  Here are some of the specimens.

Beida has a beautiful gate in front of it.  The gate has 4 "posts" on it, which means that the people living within that gate were nobility.  If you had 4 posts you were high rank, 2 posts meant lesser rank.

I didn't expect to see Cervantes in Beijing, but indeed here he stood in Beida.  Elsewhere in Beijing there is also a "Cervantes Institute."

Overall, this was a great day!  It was during the Chinese Labor Day Holiday (first week in May), and so it was so sweet to see little children being taken to these institutions of higher learning.  Their parents really wanted them to go to Qinghua and Beida :)

Hou Hai means "Back Lakes" and they are a series of lakes in the heart of Beijing.  Cody, Stephen and myself went on a boat ride and walked around the lake.

The locals like to fish around the lake in droves.

There was a Buddhist temple on the lake shore.  My first visit to a religious institution in China.

We get on board, Cody is the skipper.

These were the type of boats we were paddling along with.

Sunset on the lake.  Too bad my flash didn't work.

Old folks who live around Hou hai excersize on what looks like playground equipment.  Stephen tries it out.

• Chinese Pod -- daily podcast of everyday conversations.
• Learn Chinese Through Music -- lyrics of pop songs with music videos
• International Person -- Online language forum and lessons

Good times!

Over the may holiday I went to the "Summer Palace" the royal family's retreat and play pen of the Empress Dowager.  More than anything profound and historical, I spent the day reflecting on the being a tourist in my own city.

I live in Beijing now, I see the colorful gates with posts on the front of them daily, I see the Chairman regularly, and can buy Peking duck using my company meal card. 

But yet in my free time, I pull out my camera and head to the tourist traps to snap photos.

I can only speculate that this is because everyone seems so much more alive here than at home.  The little children run around relatively unsupervised, if people feel angry, they'll shout no holds barred; even the air here has a mind of its own!

Instead of being a "tourist" in the traditional sense, I consider myself an observer of the local populace.

And then like a monkey I emulate what I see.  In this case, people stroke the bronze pot for good luck.

One day at the Summer palace.  May 2, 2007.