The Yu Garden Market is the first taste of real bargain shopping going on... there is a culturally and historically important site here... but to get to it, you have the opportunity to buy genuine Chinese artifacts... squishy dolls, packs of ten chopsticks and multitudes of Chinese Hangy things! The Gardens are 400 years old and are quite beautiful! Next onto the watertown of Tonghli - it felt like you stepped back in time to visit an ancient chinese village.
The gardens were beautiful and the 
waterfalls made the most wonderful sound! After visiting the garden. there appears this man collecting empty bottles of water... I chugged it down and gave it to him and he became a friend for life! The boat ride later on a canal was so wonderful.
We flew to Beijing later that afternoon and stayed in the North Garden Inn right in the busiest district of Beijing. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would end up in Tianneman Square or the Temple of Heaven or the Summer Palace of the "Dragon Queen" - Empress Cixi. And at night the trips to the Food Market presented some very interesting sights. Seahorses, scorpions, silk worm cocoons, and come kinds of bugs were all there for the fryinf and the eating... no I did not try it, but my friend and fellow teacher John Stephany of The Hutchinson School in Memphis rose to the
occasion. Let's say that it didn't stay with him long!Enjoy the pictures, they can speak far more than I can!!
