China was...

red lanterns, green water, sooty black smoke. China was blaring horns and bicycle bells and the chugging of a million consumptive engines. With the exception of two five-year-olds, China was on the make. (Hello hello hello? Do you like Chinese art? Looka looka, yes, I mean you, look! No way to make eye contact, much less stop to talk, because people would chase you down the street prodding you in the arm.) China was humid, treacly air cleaned suddenly by fat, windless rain. Smells of smoke and spice and sewers, and the impossibility of communication. China was celebrating its national holiday for nearly a week and a half. China was all going somewhere on trains, so we never made it to Xi'an. China was a thousand faces at every street crossing, all marching about their own determined business. It was puppies for sale on the street and a dozen people gathered around a TV on the back of a bike. It was more delicious food than you could possibly eat for pennies, and Fired Frog Wigh Wild Chili, Tiger beer and six-year-old Great Wall wine. It was everyone hawking and spitting all the time. It was faraway voices practicing operatic scales in parks at dusk. It was overwhelming and frustrating and thrilling and ugly and beautiful all at the same time.

And because I care about your immortal souls, here's ( A Lost Parable of the Buddha )

I'm at a loss to write about the Forbidden City, when we made it there the next day. It was amazing, yes, but it feels as if its patch in idea-space has already been picked clean of all possible words by all the other people who've written about it, so I'm just going to show it to you, along with lots of other Beijing pictures. Till I get wifi again, the first lot are here.