Forbidden City and New Friends
We wake up and head off for downtown Beijing. It is early, but day and night are irrelevant categories when you have just crossed the International Date Line. We crowd into two taxis and hope that we all wind up at the same place – I have to admit I am less worried than the other cab because I'm riding with Michael. We squeeze into a Beijing Subway. It is not as crowded as usual because the heat has been so extreme that employers are rotating days off to conserve energy – there's a good news bad news in there somewhere, but my brain isn't working so well.

We seem to move from one crowd into another as we surface at Tiananmen Square. There are thousands of people queuing in serpentine line that stretches back and forth across the square. As we move around the square we run into an English School from Mongolia visiting Tiananmen Square – we talk to the teachers for a bit and pose for pictures with the students. We soon make more friends as people come up to sell us little Red Books in Chinese and English!!! One particularly dedicated salesman is relentless until he is told we believe in "the wisdom of another book." Undaunted he puts away the red book and pulls out a set of Mao watches – apparently even we Christians need to know the time of day!