I worked Friday, so Somchai was on his own for the day. Beijing is not a tourist friendly city at the best of times, and in the summer, the city is extremely hot and humid. But the real deterrent is that for the middle seven months of the year, the air is mud brown, a combination of smoke, sand from the nearby Gobi desert, and huge amounts of pollution. So it's hard to breathe, and depressing to be outside, since the sun can't poke through the soup. An added issue for this trip is that a US spy jet just collided with a Chinese plane over Chinese airspace, and the Chinese are pissed. It's actually hard to tell when they're mad or happy, because everyone is generally dour, but there were lots of protests and a couple of US consulates were burned down. So, understandably, Somchai stayed around the hotel, doing some shopping and got a massage at the hotel. The massage technique here is quite different from in Thailand, which is mostly about sex. Here, the masseurs are decked out in surgeon gowns, with rubber gloves and hair caps, for reasons completely unknown to me.

After work, we went to the hotel's gym, which is actually very good, but housed in the basement in a really ugly room (since much improved in the renovation). We then went to a nearby art gallery, and bought one of my favorite paintings. It's hard to describe, but it's basically a series of grave rubbings, plus some printing plates from a Qing dynasty book called "I'm here, but lost, which way do I turn now?", which I think is a very existential title for an old book. Then there's lots of red and gold paint lashings to tie it all together, anyway I like it. Somchai hated the owner, a pushy woman who kept giving us discounts because we were her special friends, even though we had never met. So we actually didn't buy it until the day we left because he just wanted to be difficult with her.

Had dinner at the hotel's Italian restaurant, Aria. Nice design, average to tasteless food, poor service of course (11-15-8). Main reason I'm mentioning it is I need a photo for this post, and fortunately I've got one of the China World website. Fortunately, in the next post we'll actually leave the hotel.