By 8:30am, we were in our hotel room. We added a roll-in-bed to our room for a little extra money. Sue was still unable to sleep so we decided to go out after we all took showers. Insisted by the kids, we had breakfast at McDonald. It costs just the same as in America. We were wondering how an average Chinese could afford to eat it. On the other hand, an average Chinese may not want to eat McDonald everyday with all other exciting food to choose from.

The weather is beautiful outside. For the first time, we saw the sky! Shenyang is so polluted that we did not see the sky at all. For those who do not know, Shenyang is among the ten most polluted Cities in the world. It is a City with mainly manufacturing and steel industry, hundreds of little foundries and the main source of heat in households is coal firing. After breakfast, we took a small walk on WangFuJing Street, the biggest shopping street in Beijing just outside of our hotel. It is the equivalent of magnificent mile of Chicago just a bigger and wider. Shops are clean and somewhat more expensive than Shenyang. There are so many exciting places we can go in Beijing, shopping is not on our agenda, besides, we could not carry anything more any more any way. We went to the Beijing Zoo by bus in the afternoon. The bus ride cost 50 cents for all of us. Kids were excited to see Giant Panda for the first time in person. They are cute things. However, we came at a wrong time. The zoo is very deserted due to cold weather. Shops and restaurants were closed. And the zoo is not maintained very well. We wished they would charge more on entrance fees so they can maintain the zoo better. The entrance fee is only $1.25 per person. Sue remembers that the zoo in San Diego charged $32 per person.
We had our dinner in a Taiwanese restaurant. It was excellent food and unbelievable low price. Josh had fried chicken and rice, Toby had wonton noodle soup, Berthold and Sue had beef noodle soups. Soups work wonders in this cold weather – yes it is cold if you had to walk on the street and take buses! The soup comes in huge sizes too. We paid less than $8 for the whole family. When we were finished, we left $1 for tip on the table. The waitress chased us to the door and told us that we had left money on the table by accident. When Sue told her that that was money for her as tip, she refused and said that they do not accept tips. We learned something!

Sue finally fell asleep at about 8:00 pm. We all slept well after so much fresh air. 5 more days, we will be in Hefei to pick up our little girl. Can’t wait. Toby and Joshua already started counting the days