My Trip to China: Beijing

Usually I blog about my music and film work...my personal life basically consists of sitting in front of a computer and writing music. But at the moment, I am in Shanghai, relaxing my tired feet after a long day of walking around seeing the sites.

So the last few days I was in Beijing, and got to see the Great Wall,

Tiananmen Square,

and Forbidden City (not so forbidden if you buy a ticket, though I got lost and had to ask a white tourist which direction to get to Forbidden City, which is just across the street from Tiananmen Square). My Chinese is pretty bad, so who speaks English better than an American Tourist. Though I can say a few basic phrases to get by...such as "Where is the bathroom?", "How much does it cost?", and "I farted on the dog."

Inside the Forbidden City, I walked for miles, through these temples only to see another huge stretch of open courtyard and another temple-like thing to walk through. Eventually I gave up getting to the end, turned around and walked several miles back to where I came from. I did however discover a cool exhibit along the way of old traditional ceremonial musical instruments, some of which I'm featuring in an upcoming album that I'm releasing later this year.

A big friggin' drum

A little drum

Guzheng (String zither) and various percussion instruments

I also ate some pretty good food, though it's nothing like the Americanized Chinese food that I've grown accustomed to...there's no ORANGE CHICKEN in China! I also had a strange dish at a KFC, which after pointing to what I thought was a picture of a chicken wrap, I ended up with a Mexican style burito (though burito's are probably more American than Mexican) with fried chicken inside.