Our Trip to Beijing Municipality, China

1. At the Forbidden City

We left Qingdao on the train to Beijing. We had hard beds for the trip. We were headed for Beijing and the Chinese National academy of Sciences branch in Beijing was supposed to meet us and assist us in getting a hotel room. We arrived in Beijing in the morning, it was an overnight trip. We were met by Shawn Chen and Betsy Wang, his fiance. The Beijing Branch had decided that the Chengdu branch was too lowly to help their people and Shawn and Betsy had travelled five days on the train to meet us. They knew we would need some help. You can't just walk into a hotel and get a room. You need "Guanxi," connections. Shawn was our connections. Here we are the next day touring the Forbidden City.