Long Time No See Beijing - Part 1

This is my first time back to Beijing in 3 years.  Beijing is where my misadventures all jumped off when my aunt who was working for the Washington Post invited me to come live with her in Beijing, thus starting the gear rolling in my head and the start to what has now been a 4 year living around the world adventure.  I ended up living in Beijing for 1.5 years before i moved on to Tokyo.

Incheon international airport in South Korea.  I flew on China Southern to Beijing.  Gate 341?  how is that even possible?  Is this a joke where the walls spin around and i'm on a gameshow?

I stayed at the hotel debbie and salih stayed at when they came to visit me.  it's on Gulou dong da jie (Drum tower east street).  It's called Eastern Airline Star Hotel (

北京东航之星鼓楼酒店).  It's about $25 a night and not a bad place, for china that is.

Nan Luo Gu Xiang has expectedly become a little more commercialized that it already was.

don't know what this hutong is but its always interesting and always bustling 

my god i love jian bing so much.  i think i ate 1 everyday.

Lost! an annoying and ugly little rat that is probably covered in AIDS and syphilis now.  Please help!

Nan Luo Gu Xiang by night.

Chinese guys getting hammered with a table of Italians behind them.  The chinese guys would have had me drinking with them if i stayed there any longer and i was knackered from the flight and stuff so i high-tailed it out of there.

i guess pork belly and some kind of meatball.  I don't know i can only read like 200 characters so i just ordered by picture.  i asked if they could do half portions because i'm 3 years older now and can't eat that much and they said no.  so far the only place i've been able to do that is at the local dumpling places.

I started taking photos of this guy flying this ultra long kite on Nan luo gu xiang somehow and then these 3 Chinese people my age came up and were looking at my camera and saying stuff and asking me questions.  The one guy had a Canon 5d Mark III, the new version of mine that is $1000 more.  I became friends with them, they bargained one of the guys kites down for me (only got a 40 meter long one instead of the 80 meter long one he was flying cuz i don't know how to fly these things) and ended up hanging out with them a few other times during my trip in Beijing.  

i lightened this photo a lot because it was super dark back there and i thought for a second that I saw robocop.

that unknown hutong again at night.

famous hot pot place next to hou hai.

Boats for rent on lake Hou Hai.

construction all the time in Beijing, and all of China for that matter.

i've never seen this drink before and i saw it on every corner this time around so i tried it out.  its soda, that's that.

T7 the reggae bar off of Hou Hai.  When i first started this blog 4 years ago all my posts from Beijing for the first 2 weeks had like 75 photos each.  Now that i have lived here there is less stuff to amaze me at ever turn but there is still enough to keep me coming back.