{"id":952,"date":"2009-05-25T18:54:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-25T10:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/?p=952"},"modified":"2009-08-01T02:46:08","modified_gmt":"2009-07-31T18:46:08","slug":"beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/?p=952","title":{"rendered":"Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">So having overcome my shock and horror of missing out on the solar eclipse of the century!!!!! <em>I know!<\/em> I thought I&#8217;d report back on my latest travels. Went to Beijing last weekend, well, the weekend before, to see what Beijing has to offer. I had always been of the conviction that for some reason I would not like it there and that Shanghai was much nicer, so I finally, the weekend before last, I had the chance to find out. And guess what: I do like Beijing &#8230; just not as much as Shanghai &#8230; it&#8217;s a Chinese city thing.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">First stop after I arrived was the Summer Palace and let me tell you, it was distinctly underwhelming. I mean it was huge and impressive, but a real pain to walk around in and it was heaving with people &#8230; jam packed &#8230; traffic jam like &#8230; not pleasant! I think my highlight there was the fantastically humorous sign below: I&#8217;m sure they meant something else, but it just lends itself to false interpretation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/dsc00568.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/dsc00568-tm.jpg\" alt=\"DSC00568\" width=\"200\" height=\"132\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/dsc00540.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/dsc00540-tm.jpg\" alt=\"DSC00540\" width=\"200\" height=\"132\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Spent the evening wandering along Qianhai lake, which features, on its banks, many local eateries, a live jazz club and bars. And with the weather in Beijing being gorgeous and warm but not humid, it lent itself beautifully to a nice cold beer outside. Honest, I kid you not, the picture of the lake below is not <em>photoshopped<\/em> or indeed <em>apertured<\/em> &#8230; it&#8217;s au natural &#8230; yeah nice, isn&#8217;t it? Oh and just in case you didn&#8217;t have the time to sit and enjoy a cold beer by the lake: a handy drinking express place &#8230; with cold water nicely packaged and heating up in the evening sun &#8230; they do think of everything!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/dsc00584.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/dsc00584-tm.jpg\" alt=\"DSC00584\" width=\"200\" height=\"132\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/dsc00573.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/dsc00573-tm.jpg\" alt=\"DSC00573\" width=\"200\" height=\"132\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So having overcome my shock and horror of missing out on the solar eclipse of the century!!!!! I know! I thought I&#8217;d report back on my latest travels. Went to Beijing last weekend, well, the weekend before, to see what Beijing has to offer. I had always been of the conviction that for some reason [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","tag-pictures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattisonthompson.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}