The description that best fits Beijing is big. The population and size were not much more than alot of big cities, but everything in Beijing was huge. This caused some problems, when all we wanted to do to go just round the corner for dinner. 'Just round the corner' involved a 30 minute walk in -14 degrees. We quickly mastered the subway system, which helped, but our mirror image maps in the photocopied lonely planet made life very confusing when we would arise from a subway station having completely lost all orientation and setting off in every direction except the one we were trying to go in. We also had some very squashed moments - it's no Tokyo, but would give Cambodia a run for its money in terms of quantity of people in a limited space.

Seeing Mao's body didn't have the level of communist obsessive compulsiveness that Ho Chi Minh's did (although we did have an exciting run through Tiannamen Square to drop our bags off in time to get into the complex before it closed), but this was more than made up for at the lowering of the flag at sunset, which we joined hoards of Chinese tourists (the vast majority of tourists in Beijing are Chinese) to watch over a hundred imperial guards march perfectly in time from the forbidden city, across the road to where the flag stands in Tiannamen square. The control faltered a bit when they had to actually get the flag down - it's hard to get three metres of fabric to bend exactly to your will - but the guard tried his best anyway, resulting in an awkward wrapping motion with a hilarity that seemed visible only to me, the white girl and failing not to laugh admidst a sea of serious Chinese men, women and children.

As well as Tiannamen, we did the other tourist staples, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. The Forbidden City was alot more interesting than I expected, it's buildings are beautiful and it was nice to just wander through the vast grounds despite the cold. The most helpful tourist desk in the world pointed us in the direction of two exhibition there - one on vases, the other on clocks. There were hundreds of vases from across the enture history of Chine but it was the simple 4000 year old ones that I thought were the most beautiful. The clocks came in ever conceivable form, from ballon clocks, water clocks, rolling clocks and two-storey buildings somene had to climb up to wind the clocks up.

The Great Wall was cold, but it was better that way because there weren't many tourists. It is a big wall, not so much in breadth, but in length, it just seemed to keep snaking away along the mountains for ever (which it pretty much does). What really lit up our trip though, was the brochure they gave us for the gondala up to the wall (gondalas are for the weak, we walked) which advertised the 'tropical service', the 'fun and varied activities' you could do on the platform (sitting at a table), and, my favourite, 'the great wall apearing through the mist', the caption of the wall on a completely clear summer's day. Not that I can really talk, after two weeks in China my English was beginning to disintergrate, fast, into a basic pidgeon English, basic Chinese hybrid. I now longer come from New Zealand, instead 'Shensheland, shensheland' became our mantra whenever someone was able to gesture effectively enough to ask where we were from. 'Ahh shensheland' they would reply. 'Shensheland, yes, new zealand, like Ostralia" 'Ostralia, ahh Ostralia.' "No, Shensheland' 'Ah, Shensheland'.This is what alot of our conversations were reduced to and not just when speking to Chinese people. By the end I was telling Sarah. "Coffee. To me."while pointing overstatedly at myself. "Coffee. yess" she would reply.

We were getting really used to being the only people around who could speak English, which learnt to stop thinking on the Great Wall when a clearly English speaking tourist milled around while we had a highly inappropriate conversation about US presidents. I did take the risk on our last night and sang loudly about porcupines while walking past a man with a very spiky hairstyle. I don't think he understood me, but it always amazes me how persistant everyone is here. Even if they speak five words of English they will use those five words too full effect to practice more. Sarah now has alot of Chinese penpals and we all have alot of Chinese business cards.

Our favourites of the many people who came up to us to try out their English, were two Chinese women on a tea date who befriended us while we searching for our dinner. Tourists are warned against a famous 'tea scam' in which people try and get you to go out for tea with them and you will be landed with a huge bill. We not only managed to avoid this, but they actually paid for our tea.

The undisputed highlight was the acrobat show we went to on our second to last night. If you have ever wanted to watch men throw tiny 10 year old girls four metres in the air and balance them on their hands, or watch a man ride a unicycle on his head on a slack wire, or see 12 people on a bicycle, you're in luck. The level of focus was intense and it was interesting watching everyone balance the performing elements as well as the safety ones, and making sure they didn't get outside of their own ability. It was all set to dramatic music and people would do little dances in between their amazing feats.

On our last night, almost accidentally, we finally got our wish of Peking duck. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was still quite a shock when the waitress boutght out a metal trolley with a whole duck on it and the chef started carving it up to eat, making sure to give me the head first. It was delicious (not the head, I didn't eat that) but I think our duck was very fat in its lifetime, the level of duck fat in our system exceeded far more than is natural, I could still taste it the next day.

The next day we had to say goodbye to Sarah. This was terrible, as we'd spent just about ever waking moment together for the past two months. I still miss having to wait 20 minutes each morning to use the bathroom, while she completed her contacts-brushing teeth-retainer routine, and stealing her biscuits, and her over-exaggeration to everyone we met about everything ("we were soo terrified to cross the road, we were just stuck shivering on the side of it," she would tell strangers definitively. 'No we weren't,' Sylvia and I would mumble). I also still miss having to stop and wait for her to interact with every cat we walked past (but there are alot of cats in Lebanon, so maybe this is a good thing) and watching her teeth grind in irritation everytime the hated 'You know I want cha' song comes on. We missed her so much when she left our our hostel room that I ran down the street in my pyjamas without a coat on and alot of people staring at me to tell her we would meet her at the airport and say goodbye again. Unfortunately I couldn't find her (for the first time in her life she was fastert than me) so we packed up and ran to the train to try and catch her at the airport. By the time we got there she had gone through security and we were not allowed to check in so we weer stuck in the airport for 12 hours before we could take our flight.

That was a very long day, then night, then day, but finally we got to Beirut, where we are now. But Beirut is a topic for a different day.