Greetings from Beijing

Call it the "city of a thousand umbrellas." People in Beijing seem to carry umbrellas all the time — when it's raining, as it was when I arrived, or when it's bright and sunny and warm, as it's been the past two days. This isn't a bad thing most of the time. The city isn't as crowded as I expected, and there's something charming about walking down a city street lined with evergreens and weeping willows — there's so much open space here, and so much green — while couples or groups of Chinese walk hand-in-hand with parasols over their shoulders.

Then again, when you're visiting a major tourist attraction — as we did yesterday, when Burr, his brother Dana, Dana's wife Christina and I went to the Summer Palace — all of those umbrellas at eye-level can be a bit much.

It's impossible to describe the scale of this place. Things were so foggy when I landed that it seemed as though the airport really did go on forever, the edges disappearing into the mist. The Summer Palace is so huge that I couldn't wrap my mind around it. It's a series of courtyards within courtyards, temples stacked on top of temples, all of it gathered around a lake, with dragon-headed tourist boats and little yellow paddle boats rippling over the surface. The whole thing is girdled by the Long Corridor, a passageway that makes the one at MIT seem puny, all of it carved with dragons and phoenixes, painted in red, blue and green, and decorated from time to time with faded portraits of swordsmen and emperors.

Most of the palace was destroyed by the French and English, who finally found something to agree on, during the Boxer Rebellion. The palace was rebuilt by the Empress Dowager Cixi out of funds she was supposed to use for the reconstruction of the Chinese navy. (In deference to that mandate, she did construct a large boat out of marble inside the palace). It's a tribute to government waste, but what a waste: the Temple of the Fragrance of the Buddha, at the end of a long, LONG uphill climb, is impressive enough, but the temple that follows it — with a roomful of stone Buddhas who follow you with their eyes no matter where you stand — is one of the most amazing things I've seen in a long time.

As we stood at the top of the palace, with the temple to our backs and the entire city stretched out in front of us, Burr pointed out a series of cranes over a construction site in the distance. "That's Beijing," he said. "The temples here, and over there, always something being built. Always changing." There's so much to see here, so many layers to try to sift through, so much to write about...I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface, and I only have a few days...

And I haven't even mentioned the food...