MORE DAYS IN BEIJING BEFORE WE FLY TO QUING DAO

We went to see the temple of heaven. That's where the emperor went to pray to his ancestors for things like a good harvest and fertile women. He did this because the chinese believed he was a son of the gods. Also went to a market and did some serious bartering. I'm not too shabby at it now. At first I was spending 15 dollars on a nice sweater but I was soon able to get them down on shirts. Usually a dollar to three dollars (U.S). We also went to the forbidden city. That's where some dynasty of emperors spent their time. It was very beautiful. In the forbidden city we met some retired people who were dancing. I guess when you retire in China, the people are allowed to join all kinds of hobbies like an official neigborhood watch or, like I saw, dancing groups in the forbidden city. We danced with them for about thirty minutes. At first we just did their old dances, which kind of remind me of Teviah (?) from Fiddler on the roof, but we quickly found out that their beats fit well with the electric slide and cotten eye'd joe. Super exciting. And they dont touch each other when a man and a woman dance together. So everyone was really shocked when I took a sixty+ year old woman and started swing dancing with her. But they like it. I gave a woman, she looked about a hundred, one of those chewy jolly ranchers. She followed us for the next one hundred meters thanking me and trying to offer me a piece of a banana.