I realized that I forgot to bring the battery charger for the camera. I'm worried I'll run out of juice, so I'm not looking at any of the pictures I take after I take them. I took a long video today that I hope turns out. I want you to see what I saw.

Today Y took me to the toy and pearl market. I'm not a very ravenous shopper so I feel a little bad that she spent so much walking energy on me. I just walk around and look at things. Markets aren't novel to me anymore, and the things in these markets are not unique either. Everything is made in China, so the things you see are the things you see anywhere. I wouldn't buy those things elsewhere, so I don't need to buy them now.

Posters in the market—One hundred years of politics.

However, markets are interesting just for their smells and quantities. I saw many gameboy games and thought of you. But I understand that the pirated copies do not function well. Apparently they stop at a certain level and there's no guarantee they'll work at all.

In the pearl market, Y helped me negotiate for a good deal on an extremely long strand of real freshwater pearls. They're not perfectly round, but they are real and they were less than $50. Amazing. You buy them in foot-long strands (mine is four strands long). After you decide on a size, color, length, and price, the proprietor ties each pearl to the string. I'm very pleased. I think you'll be impressed when you see them.

Items in the lost and found case at the market.

Quite a few beggars hang around the markets because the markets draw so many tourists. These beggars were fairly aggressive, standing in front of us and grabbing our arms and walking behind us saying stuff. This IS a new thing for me in Asia. I never experienced this in Korea or Japan. The thing is, there is real concern about disease here, so to have people grabbing you is kind of creepy. You learn fast not to touch your face with your limbs.

After the markets, Y left me in town to tour the Temple of Heaven. She returned home and sent the driver back after me. Things in China are huge! Nowhere in Japan or Korea are parks this large. It took me a couple of hours to work my way through it. The Temple of Heaven is where the emperor went to worship heaven and to ask for bountiful harvests and such. The highlight was a circular alter that is elevated maybe a hundred feet. From there is an unfettered view of the emerging Beijing skyline. It was beautiful! It's been a rare clear, blue-skied day. The haze fills in the view quickly, but it was clear enough to see the density of construction and building. You could see kites, which people fly way high and which is a quaint Chinesey thing.

The park is lush and tree-filled—completely anomolous to any other place I've seen here. It was refreshing and beautiful. I saw men walking their birds in the park. They bring the songbirds out from their homes and walk them in the cages. They hang the cages in the trees and sit on the benches for a while.

It was crowded as all places are, and I saw many many Western tourists. I think I stood out being obviously alone. I attracted some looky-loos, particularly when I sat on the steps in the shade of the alter to write in my journal a little. I turned around at one point and an entire family was looking at my writing over my shoulder.

After, I realized I was late to meet the driver. I bought a Nestle ice cream bar and ate it as I walked back through the park. Then I got in the car and was driven home. I tell you, that's a swank deal. There you sit in air-conditioned, roomy bliss and buses packed to the gills pass you by and are passed by you. Usually, I have been in the bus with the others. I was thinking in the car about how much more tiring it is to see the sites when you know you have an hour-long bus ride on either end of it. You do so much less.

I wish you could witness the taoist flow of traffic here. It's amazing to watch buses, cars, bicycles, and people all share the road with an improbable smoothness. Everyone appears completely at ease in the chaos.

Temple of Heaven

3:37 p.m. I'm at the Temple of Heaven in central Beijing. It's a lovely park, greener than anything I've seen here. Ancient cypresses and long lush grasses. The day is pleasant. A muted blue denotes the sky and the perimeter of the sun is sharper than before. There's a nice breeze from the west. The alter grounds may as well be an ant hill for all the human movement. People snap off pics and reach around each other straining to see inside the dark holes into empty halls filled with some old-looking furnishings that pass as artifacts. It's always dusty, always disappointing. The hall of prayers rises quite high from the city and from it is a circumferential view of developing Beijing. Countless skyscrapers and spires, some old tile roof lines. The best are high-flying kites, so high up and small they look like birds or planes. I love these little secrets, these anonymous points of lightheartedness.

A moment ago I found a family standing behind me trying to read over my shoulder. They smiled at me and left.

I'm having trouble getting my bearings. Nothing is as I remember it. On the way in, I didn't recognize a thing. I had traveled that road before, five years ago, but nothing looked familiar—not the road, not the buildings, not even the cars.... The city has transformed itself, everything is new. We drove past the huge and shiny Motorola building. "Microsoft" blazed from a tall edifice nearby. Uncountable skyscrapers are in various states of realization. Hundreds of cranes, for as far as you can see, feed the growing ones.

When I was here last, the city was torn up and what was standing was gray and crumbling. The predominate cars were seconds from Russia and Europe; none were less than 10 years old. I left Beijing then believing that the degree of foreign commitment to the Chinese economy was fantastical. I have been singing that song since, and I've been wrong. Beijing as it is currently, is more cosmopolitan than the Seoul of five years ago. It's come so far so fast.

Y says that when the government wants to build something, it orders existing structures razed and up goes the new thing. No democratic bidding process exists, no zoning laws exist, to make a more measured pace.