Kid gloves

What a soft entry into China! Sunni met us at the airport - he works with Weigo Lang who we'll be spending the next week with. Sunni took us to our hotel (5 stars no less) - so we didn't have to try to figure out busses/taxi's etc. Supper was great - we had Cantonese which was really good. The most interesting was "barbeque dumplings" (as Weigo called them - "barbeque" because they couldn't think of anything else to call them...) - which is a dumpling about half the size of a fist with a meat filling. Delicious. Otherwise Won Ton soup and many little meats and vegetables arranged on small plates in the middle of the table.

Right next to our hotel is a big shop which Dad and I had a walk through. About 6 stories and most of it women's clothes/perfume/shoes etc. I guess some things are universal.

Disappointingly (and suprisingly) the digital camera I'm looking for is actually more expensive here than in SA. The best price I've seen so far for the Canon EOS 350D is about R8,000 - and it's available for a grand less than that back home. It doesn't make much sense to me (probably looking in the wrong places) but Weigo will put me in touch with a computer-guy friend of his when we return to Beijing this weekend.

Currently I'm sitting in another Starbucks (only my second - yesterday I was a Starbucks virgin) in the lobby of the Chinese Resources Building in Beijing with Arthur, Weigo and Dad meet with Anglo American upstairs. Ordering coffee in English is not a problem because the menus are both Chinese and English and the waitress understood me with no problem (although the pronunciation of "vanilla" seems a bit different...).