It’s our 4th day in China. The first 2.5 days we spent in Beijing which is stepping on the footsteps of Shanghai: A fast growing modern City with a lot of sky scrapers, highways, bridges, traffic jams and not so much bycicles. The old quarters are being wiped out, every bit of material (like bricks, iron etc.) are being recycled and new apartment hirisers are placed instead in short time. Our guide, Yehuda Shafrir, is himself surprised of the pace. We saw the New Olympic stadium in the last stages of building (from the highway) and it seems amazing, apart of the technological wonders according to Yehuda. We visited all the important sites like the summer palace, Tien an men square, the forbidden city and climbed the “Givat hapecham”. Mom climbed it very well to my big surprise. Maybe our morning walks contributed to that. Before leaving the Capital we went to the Great wall. It’s a steep piece of the wall and mom again did very well strolling up more than 200 steps. I continued another few hundred to reach a pagoda at the top point.
Yesterday we flew to Xian (where I am writing from), about 1.5 hours flight south west of Beijing. It’s the ancient capital of China. Today we visited the Terracota soldiers site, which is amazing when you hear the story and see the excavations and the huge amount of soldier figures natural size. Then we visited a terracote figurines factory (these are commercially being sold on every corner) and a Jade “factory” where we saw beautiful art works made of that stone. Mom bought earing, to complete her “sharsheret”.
This evening we had a dumplings festival in a restaurant in the city. we had about 10 different dumplings (mom eats vegeterian only and is sitting at a vegeterian table together with a few other tzadikim) and it was delightful. tomorrow a flight to chongching, after visiting here the muslim quarter and a mosque.
Please forward this message to Sarit, Benny and whoever you want. I cannot reach my contact list because of a computer problem here.
I also can not read the inbox letters. I hope further down the trip the computer conditions will improve.
Wish you a Succesfull start of your big American Tour.
Kiss the kids for us
Dad