“Dig the well before you are thirsty.”

“Talk does not cook rice.”

“Do not remove a fly from your friend’s forehead with a hatchet.”

These are all English translations of supposedly old Chinese proverbs. Somewhere among the long list of quaint aphorisms is also probably, “When in Beijing, two days is not enough.”

Flaunting our own disregard for 5,000 years of Chinese wisdom, Erick and I decided to try a whirlwind stop through Beijing in 36 hours.

Unfortunately, the first thing about Beijing that strikes most foreigners is probably the thick film of smog that hangs over the city. Or at least this is one of the things that was bothering me as I stewed in the back seat of a “taxi,” still a bit pissed about being bamboozled. (if you don’t know the back story, read this entry)

The smog is so dense it blurs everything in the sky into a muddled murky grayish brown, blurring even the shadows cast on the ground from the setting sun.

Amongst traffic jammed streets and smog as thick as gravy, I sat sulking in the back of a crammed Honda Civic stuck on the interstate. My own excitement, that each new destination usually brings, had also evaporated into a thick haze: I was not happy. Within the first two hours of our 36 hours stay we had run into two of the not so nicest people in the country (one of them was currently driving the car). Fortunately for us, in just over two hours, we’d meet two of the nicest…(to be continued).