We went to Tiananmen and the Forbidden City. While in Tiananmen, I stopped for a photo of Captain America, but Karen and Michael didn't wait for me. As I was reaching in my bag, I looked around for them - which made it seem as though I was about to pull out a poster or Tibetan flag and was checking for autorities. While looking for Michael and Karen, I noticed four lone and plain clothed men stop in their tracks and stare at me intently until they saw I was only taking out a toy, so they moved on and didn't arrest me.
The Forbidden City was overwhelmingly huge and crowded, yet beautiful. A great place to people watch. After our fair share of Beijing's most famous sight, we took the metro to meet Tim and then go to the Summer Palace. Along with Tim was Amanda, Marcus, Ellroy, and Candice - all of whom were incredibly sweet and seemingly very intelligent. The Summer Palace's grounds were remarkable - mysterious, windy, shady, colorful, and all around magnificent. We didn't make it to the Palace part itself, because we were in a rush - Tim and friends had a dinner to get to, and we had to meet Stephane. We told Stephane we would meet him at 6PM for dinner, but never said where. We didn't have internet or his phone number until 6:10 PM, at which point he had just arrived at our hostel. We told him to meet us at Weigongcun metro stop, so we could go to the duck place we tried to go to last night. An hour lator, we were a) waiting for him and b) trying to find Weigongcun - which had us literally running everywhere in the area. I called him and told him to go to exit A at the National Library stop instead, because we knew where that was, but he hadn't heard me. I stood at A for a while until I decided to call him and see where he was. He answered with a "where the fuck are you?! I'm at A." Realizing he probably hadn't heard me, I asked him where he was. Weigongcun. He hopped back on the metro and we finally met up and ran to the restaurant, arriving nearly two hours after we were supposed to meet him. The duck was damn worth it - buttery, fatty, perfect.
After 1001 apologies, we headed back to Hoh Hai. We wandered into a store with hilariously bizarre translated merchandise - designed by the owner. We chatted with him for a while and he showed us a newspaper article to verify his claim of being the inventor of the famous and ubiquitous "ObaMao" image that's plastered on t-shirts, wallets, hats, etc. we then went back to Huxley's, where I had a "Big Dick," "Quick Fuck," and "Between the Sheets" shots (listed in order of deliciousness). We chatted for awhile about Stephane's life and then cabbed home.
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