Pictures from the last week

Here are a few select photos from the past week:

1. I think this picture was missing from my previous post. This is the deep fried mushroom, eggplant and kung pao tofu dishes we had in Beijing.

2. "Suzhou street" at the Summer palace in Beijing. They charged admission and we didn't end up going - we figured we would be seeing Suzhou in person pretty soon so it wasn't needed.

3. A view across the lake at the Summer palace. This was a stunning view on a hot day, and we relaxed and took it all in for a while.

4. Another view of the same structure from a long bridge covered in dragon and other animal statues.

5. The "all you can drink" beer selection at the buffet in Xi'an. There was also a fridge of cold beer available. In China it seem to be more common to drink things which aren't chilled, as they always ask if you want cold or warm beer.

6. At the same buffet. There are live eels in the bowl on the right, and you move them to the left hand side where you can boil them before taking it to your table. The same thing was available with live crabs - and we saw several people with live ones at their tables trying to escape.

7. This is the south gate to the wall around Xi'an. After paying admission you can go through and access the stairs to the top where bike are available to rent.

8. A view from the north side of the wall as we biked around. This side was full of floats and things that looked like they were used (or to be used) for a celebration.

9. Us with a real live Terra-cotta warrior at the bottom of the Xi'an south gate.

10. Amy and her panda friend are finally together.

11. In Chengdu, this is one of the squares where there will likely be national day celebrations today.

12. I have my ears cleaned by long metal rods at Jinli street in Chengdu. We were told it felt amazing by a girl ahead of us but I beg to differ.

13. The intro singing at the Sichuan opera last night.

14. Part of a comedy act - which was fully in Chinese. I got weird looks from an English speaking family sitting next to us when I laughed at some of the jokes. A lot of it was in the Sichuan dialect though which made it quite hard to follow for us (as it is basically a totally different language).