See a bigger picture of the dragon. This is a closeup of the center dragon in the Nine Dragon Wall located in Beihai Park, Beijing.

Written by Al Wong (Send Email) This is my adventure in Beijing, China in the Summer of 1999. I was taking an intense conversational Mandarin Chinese course there. This is the starting webpage for this story. Background Information Some Preparations 10/20/99 Update - I finally received the big box I mailed to myself from Hong Kong (HK) which contained most of my pictures of China. The HK Post Office told me it would take 1 month for the box to arrive from HK to the US via slow boat. They lied. It actually took about 2.5 months to arrive! The moral of this story is to keep your pictures with you no matter how much they weigh (I took hundreds of pictures). Or mail the pictures back via airmail! At any rate, I will be scanning selected pictures onto this trip report. The daily entries which have pictures and/or graphics will be denoted with a panda bear icon, Calendar for China Trip, June-July 1999 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat June 27 Flight to China 28 First Day in Beijing 29 Reminbi, Email, etc. 30 Tianamen Square July 1 Eating Scorpions! 2 Class Begins 3 Silk Alley, NASA 4 Xidan Bookmart 5 School Visit 6 School #2, Painting Ducks 7 Temple of Heaven 8 Ethnic Cultural Park 9 Hutong, Hong Qiao 10 Beihai Park 11 Chinese Acrobats! 12 Painting Goldfish 13 Calligraphy, Jingju 14 Great Wall of China! 15 Summer Palace 16 Tian Jin 17 Farewell to Beijing 18 First Day in Xi'an 19 Terra-Cotta Warriors! 20 Shaanxi Museum 21 Tang Dynasty Day 22 Farewell to Xi'an 23 End of Trip 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 My Writings Al's Wild Web Page