Mr. Ping in Taiwan: beijing-a-ling (part 2)

i went to the silk market - a building with 5 floors of knockoff everything.

walking into these things is walking into a death trap

carolee would have gone nuts. purses, ipods, beats by dre, shoes… i’m so proud of myself for just buying a few souvenirs. well, it was either buy that crap or eat....so i guess it wasn't that hard of a decision

bahahahaha yeah right you crooks!

the salespeople there are hilarious! they pounce on you and say “hello friend, hello, hello, hello, shoes, shoes, shoes come in, buy shoes.” they are funny and I just say funny things back to them.

the salesmen write the prices on their calculators so that no one else in the store can hear when someone actually pays a fair price.

im getting a lot better at bargaining. it's actually kinda fun to me now. o how i love messing with them cuz they're so annoying

a guy did the biggest snot rocket right here in the forbidden city. keep it classy, china

in other countries they don’t start with such outrageously high prices so i always felt awkward bargaining. here they start with prices so i don’t feel bad bargaining hard at all.

-spencer's next victim-
in beijing, a random art display of kuna lady. these ladies sell you cool indigenous stuff in panama

no luck finding grandpa

grandpa ping, is that you??

grandpa?

this looks more like grandpa ping to me

so people be so aggressive i just get aggressive back

one guy tried to block the entrance and trap me in his store so that id buy something. i physically pushed him out the doorway

flying tours of beijing. the wonders that you can do with money...

i love hostels. all my roommates were from different countries - estonia, egypt, mexico, france, south korea, russia, israel and antarctica. i love talking to them.

dragon turtle's back!

the israeli walked in asked me in hebrew if i was Israeli.
he said i looked more israeli than palestinian. that was a surprise.
i think that's like that 40th race that someone's asked me if i am

her pose is much cooler than mine so she wins

after a while you get sick of big pretty temple buildings. it's like cathedrals in europe. youve seen a few, youve seen em all.

at the summer palace

saturday i went to jingshan park. the transit directions i received were wrong (like almost everywhere i went!) so it took a while to get there (also like everywhere else i went.) shoulda bought the lonely planet travel guide!

lots of cool buildings in the streets near tiananmen

Jinghsan park is the highest part of beijing. you can look out into the beautiful city as far as the smog will let you see

another benefit of the smog it also covers up my camera's week zoom

tuesday i went to the temple of heaven for a quick peek (so i thought.) it wasn't a temple it was actually a big park

friday i went to the summer palace - which again is a huge park with lots of cool buildings.
btw i should have been born a chinese aristocrat.

the marble boat! i was too lazy to walk closer

chinese is just starting to make sense to me. wish i could take classes. id love to go back to school if i could just take the classes i wanted

i always get curious and hop on and hop off random buses. i gotta stop doing that-i keep forgetting that it's much harder being lost in china than it is in other countries

sunday after church i went to area 798. it's beijing's art district. hipster alert!

dragon turtle! so cool!

so for the art distric they took an old factory complex and made it artsy

it's sad to say but chinese hipsters give me hope for the future of the country

i think the art could be a lil more pleasing on the eyes tho

i felt like i was in america. im surprised the chinese government allows an art district

big brother. also didn't appreciate the fact that the websites i most use were blocked or slowed

i bet each gallery has to have each display approved by the government

im glad that there's some outsidethebox thinking and expression going on in china. this is good news

candy candy candy! if i had money i would have bought one of each! to me that's the definition of fun

i lived in a hutong. they are ancient streets around Tienanmen square. so cool i felt like it was real china. at night they have such a cool feeling

many of the hutongs are being knocked down and they're building cool new touristy ones. i think they need to preserve the old ones, but some new ones are good cuz they're really cool looking

china's economy will surpass the U.S economy this year.

i wonder if this was inspired by Starwars Battlefront videogame

I'm not too worried about china YET because American culture, English, american military, and American innovation dominate (if obama dont ruin it. you ruiner!)

national theatre

also, do people like doing business with the chinese? i don't imagine it's too fun

china first needs to get some priorities straight if it wants to be a world leader. they need some more tai chi, ying yang, and feng shui-whatever those things actually mean.
they need sumtin spiritual

china state tv (CCTV) building. i think this building was designed to be feng shui so that's cool

another thing. the only chinese brand that is a household name in america is lenovo, which actually used to belong to IBM.
how can the world's largest economy not have any brands that are recognized world-wide

ok so i gotta admit even tho they suppress creativity and thinking the commies have some cool modern architecture

even lil taiwan has big brand names in america like htc, asus, acer, and d link

tech museum

another thing. the english language is the world's lingua franca.

i love english! its very versatile and has lots of unique sounds because of the influence that many other languages have had on it. also, a lot of synonyms to choose from