Taken me long enough to do this so here we go. This is from a trip I took to Beijing. Overall have to say Chengdu was my favorite place, Beijing was very overpopulated, lots of pollution and the people didn't seem as nice. Picture heavy review so beware if you're on mobile.

Part 1: Beijing
Flew from Dallas to Beijing nonstop (12 hour flight), got through customs and attempted to find a taxi. Got sent to several different taxi stands, after 20 minutes someone helps me with the right line. Get up to the taxi and the driver starts screaming at me in chinese and waving his arms like he was not going to take me. Cops come over and an argument pursues for about 5 minutes so another taxi shows up and the guy won't take me either. Finally on the 3rd try I am able to catch a cab and head to the hotel by Peking university. Once at the hotel this is my view for the next week

After sleeping about 15 hours, I wake up sunday morning and head off to summer palace, Tienanmen square and forbidden city for a day of exploration. Summer palace is the getaway for everyone from the city on the outskirts of town so it was pretty crowded. Hired a tour guide for 200 yen ($30ish) so I could learn what was so important about the palace grounds.

Tour guide walking around

People doing tai chi

Really nice water lillies

There is a huge lake there but the day I went the pollution was bad as seen in the photo below

Once my tour was over, I went to Tienamen square and forbidden city. Took the subway down and it was very clean, interesting thing was that they X-ray everything that goes into the subway (similar to TSA). Once at Tienanmen, had to wait a half hour to get through more security and finally was there

They set up a choreographed water show at the main gate which was cool, have a video of it but will have to find where to upload it. Other interesting observation is everyone's obsession with Mao over there. He is on all of their money

So still in Tienanmen, there's some huge cool buildings from the old dynasties. There are no trees on the side of Tienanmen because it was thought that intruders would use them to climb in and assassinate the leader. Tienanmen is actually connected to Forbidden city so it's very easy to go from one to the other. Here's some pics from inside forbidden city

Once done with forbidden city, do not do what I did and try to find the nearest subway station. It was a 45 minute walk from there to the nearest station, I should have just taken a bus but didn't want to be lead astray in Beijing...

So the conference begins and it's a very well organized conference. After a few days, they had set up a trip to see the great wall. I had no idea the steps were so large and the span of it is amazing

Very steep...

Beijing is a very crowded place, people, bikes, cars, trucks, tuk tuks all on one road

Some food from the conference dinner, fish with their heads still on

Photo of Peking University

Photos from a bus ride on the outskirts of town

One thing I noticed is that there are some sayings that get lost in translation. Here is one, more to follow

Part 2: Mianyang
Since this conference was for neutron radiography, there was a review workshop in Mianyang. This town is a military town that was only recently opened (last 10 years ish) to non-military. Had a nice early morning flight on Air China out of Beijing. The airport itself is huge, so many people and long check-in lines.

Once in Mianyang, it was spent touring the city. Very nice town

Still a little hazy

Dinners always had these rotating tables, makes it very easy to constantly move around and sample whatever is put on

Another sign lost in translation. This was in the hotel...

This was amusing

Best dinner food is hotpot. Basically a giant pot of boiling water that you add spices, chicken, beef, etc to it and flavor as you'd like. At one point I added noodles and couldn't get them out so the waitress comes over, uses my chopsticks and calls me "Big baby"

This post was edited on 8/15/17 at 4:56 pm