two weeks in the Middle Kingdom

The past two weeks in China have been a blur of language instruction dangerous bicycle rides and holy taoist mountains. Two weekends ago I went with a few friends to Tai Shan a mountain which is a seven hour train ride from Beijing. After the overnight train ride which compared very favorably to Indian trains we started climbing the mountain. It sounded easy enough with steps leading the whole way up and a hotel for tourists on the top of the mountain (There is a cable car to the top) but it turned out to be a reasonably difficult climb. Along the way we saw ancient Chinese Charachters carved into the rock face and stunning scenery. The trees were all bare and it was still fantastic so I can only imagine what it would be like in summer. The mountains had the famous white rock faces and the rolling hills nearby were stunning. There were also several temples at the begginnning of the climb and one at the top. In fact every Emperor used to climb Tai Shan and Mao even climbed it himself.
The other day I rented a bike for my stay in Beijing and biking around the city has been a lot of fun although there have been some close calls with other users of the road. It's great to wander by bike around and see the sights and all of the massive construction that is going on. I read that there are more construction sites in Beijing than in all of Europe and I beleive it. They are knocking down a lot of the old hutongs to make room for the new buildding which is unfortunate.
Life in my hutong has been great however. There have been some miscommunications. Last week my host mother asked what I ate for breakfeast in the U.S. After failing miserably to describe the concept of cereal with milk I was greeted the next morning with a bowl of plain milk.
Yesterday we moved out of the hutong so we could focus on our case studies. A group of eight students including myself are working on a project to examine the role of NGO's and the government in combating AIDS in China.
That's all for now. I'll write more when I get a chance