Exiting the home of the Terracotta Army in Xi’an, China, Alisha and I wandered for a bit before meeting back up with our driver.  We really enjoy exploring the areas around the different cities of the world. Each location has it’s own charm and characteristics that make them memorable.

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Leaving Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and heading back towards the Hutong we were staying in, we passed this stream.  My eyes have a hard time focusing with all of the vertical lines, which is part of the picture’s charm, I guess.

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Most of my pictures from Beijing’s Forbidden City are black and white because the sky was so dreary.  I tried to capture any images with color, but it was just too damn cold to spend a lot time wandering around looking for things to photograph.

Leaving the Forbidden City, however, and heading towards Tiananmen Square (a journey that, for Alisha and I, was far more exciting than it should have been) we passed a fantastic arrangement of bright flowers out front.  It was unexpected, and for the dreariness of the day, a welcome sight!

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Shortly after walking into Beijing’s airport, I was struck by the sheer size of the building.  It is enormous.  I took a picture, more for me, then anything else.  However, yesterday I was reminded of a cute story from when Alisha and I were walking through the  airport earlier in the week.

Having just flown from Xi’an to Beijing, we were exiting the airport and heading towards the tram into the city.  As we approached the ramp to the ticket booth, we found ourselves walking with a group of about twenty older Chinese travelers who, clearly, were new to the hustle and bustle of the big city.  On the ramp, the left side was open walkway, and the right side was a moving walkway.

Alisha and I chose to walk up the ramp and the group of Chinese headed towards the moving walkway.   Clearly, they had never seen something like this before in their lifetime, and it probably isn’t something they’ve heard about either (when was the last time you brought up “moving walkway” in conversation?).  Their young guide easily walked onto the moving walkway and turned around to make sure everyone was behind her.

They weren’t.

She then proceeded to encourage them to join her on the moving walkway, like she was trying to coax a ball away from a puppy, and meanwhile, the older Chinese tourists were all piling up because no one wanted to be the first to get on the uncertain moving sidewalk.  It looked like that scene out of the movie Elf where Will Farrell was tepid about getting on the escalator — except multiply it by twenty.

It was one of the cutest things Alisha and I have ever witnessed, and that’s one of the reasons why we love to travel and experience new cultures.

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