Back in Beijing

Arrived back in Beijing this morning on the night train which originated on DPRK Railways in Pyongyang and continued on China Railways from the border city of Dandong.  It was an open plan car, 3 bunks high but reasonably comfortable.  Our North Korea tour group parted ways at the station, a couple heading through northern China, some on to South Korea, and the rest, like me, heading home. The Chinese student with us, Mei Xiang (you can call me "Jennifer" if that name is too complicated to remember, she told us) went back to her university in Beijing.  I rushed back to the hotel to drop my bags and to head out to see Mao in his mausoleum on Tiananmen Square before it closed at 12 (the mausoleum had been closed when I was in Beijing a week earlier)  There was a huge queue of locals about four deep and I was told that cameras were not allowed so rushed over to the locker room on the edge of the square only to find that I did not have any change to pay the $3.00 storage fee.  I asked the girl at the information desk where to find an ATM and she said don't bother you won't have time take the money from me which I did.  When I got back to collect my camera (via an ATM) she told me that she hadn't expected to be repaid.  Such is one of the many kindnesses that one experiences in China. The locals take their homage to Mao seriously and almost every one of them laid a white flower at his bier (the guards have little sentiment and move the people through briskly and brusquely).

Today's blip is on arrival at Beijing Railway Station - as ever in China, people everywhere.  The extras are of the flag ceremony on Tiananmen at sundown and a few shots of the local tourists.