One week of work in Beijing behind me. Very intensive all in all. Long days in the office, then restauarant dinner and a few hours of sleep. Managed to spend last Sunday on the Great Wall and in the Forbidden City. The wall is always very fascinating. 3rd time for me and what was special this time, was that there were almost no one else there. Winter season and early in the morning on a Sunday. Great scenary and tough work walking up to the wall and then up & down on it. I got back many nice memories from 2007 when I ran the Great Wall Marathon. On a different section of the wall, but that was by far the hardest marathon that I've done. The Forbidden City or the Emperors Palace is huge and it would take lots of time to capture it all, so we just walked through the place more or less. I'm not really a museum type of person. It's always to much somehow. Once in the 80's, I got an overdose of museums, 3 days in Smithsonians in Washington DC with a personal guide that was a friend of a friend, who really wanted to show me everything about the American history etc. I still haven't fully recovered after that experience.

Beijing and China is really taking big steps forward development wise. There are other aspects also, like enviromental & democratic issues, but that's another story. The new airport was super modern and the traffic in the city is now very organized. Yesterday morning, we took the bullet train (400 km/h) to Tianjin to visit a company there. Fantastic transport system and better stations & facilities than anywhere in Europe. China is moving so fast forward and has so much capacity & potential, so "Hold your hats Westerners" ...