China: Beijing I

Well, I'm back from China, safe and sound with nose once more dutifully pressed to the grindstone in good ol' Korea. It was an awesome trip, a big trip, I keep telling everyone, but I'll try to recount the many highlights, accompanied by photos that don't come close to doing the country justice. But they're still fun to look at, anyway.

So we flew into Beijing on April 2nd. Our hotel was near the infamous Tiananmen Square. Here are the brothers in front of the Square's massive Red Chinese flag that is raised and lowered with much military fanfare every day. It's a little hard to see, but from left to right you have Drew, Nate and Peter:


The entrance to the Forbidden City, with a gargantuan portrait of the late Chairman Mao:

Inside the gate we saw members of the Red Army doing running drills, apparently for the tourists' benefit:

The Forbidden City was fairly anticlimactic. Much of it was under renovations for the 2008 Olympics. Here's part of it. The guy with the brown jacket and big hair is Drew: